00:00:10.970 - 00:00:20.760

This is, I'm always glad it's Friday, but I'm very glad it's Friday today. And I'm glad you're going first, Dr. Byrd. Am I going first?

00:00:20.790 - 00:00:29.340

Yes. Okay. This was by prior arrangement. Was that an email? Was that sent in email form?

00:00:29.700 - 00:00:36.690

Was a memo? Did I get copied? I don't...I never go first! I'm copying you now.

00:00:36.690 - 00:00:45.810

I'm copying you now. Okay. For good reason, I never go first. I'll be ready, I'll be ready, but just because I'm going first doesn't mean I start the thing, does it?

00:00:45.840 - 00:01:19.340

No, that's true. We'll, we'll give, give people a couple of minutes to arrive. It's been another interesting, interesting week on campus. We're pivoting again, I feel like, or those of us whose classes were too big to be face-to-face last week, on Monday will be face-to-face.

00:01:22.580 - 00:01:34.760

Yes, yes, we're... I'm ready. Pivoting back to online. I saw Jason Hafner, our colleague in physics, was saying on Twitter that, we're

00:01:35.030 - 00:01:55.180

going back to in-person, so he said, cue the 1980s training videos montage. So then I got, I got "Eye of the Tiger", I had Rocky, so. My kids only know Rocky as that movie where the guy is running on the stairs. Yes.

00:01:55.360 - 00:02:11.970

They've just seen that clip. They don't, they don't know anything else about it, but that's how they...they know "Eye of the Tiger", but if they try to say what movie it's from, it's the one with the guy running on the stairs. I like, I like Rocky, but I'm okay with people not knowing anything about it.

00:02:13.590 - 00:02:35.480

I'll keep, I'll do my best to keep it that way. Okay, well, welcome to our weekly doc talk. My name is Caleb McDaniel, I'm the chair of the Department of History and co-chair of the Task Force on Slavery, Segregation, and Racial Injustice here at Rice, and this is

00:02:35.480 - 00:02:54.860

our third webinar in the doc talk series for this academic year. We're really excited to be up and running again and glad that you're joining us every week for a look at some of the documents that we are examining and considering as we continue our work as a task force.

00:02:54.860 - 00:03:21.200

We're charged, of course, to understand and investigate and also help to share the history of Rice and its entanglement in the histories of slavery, segregation, and racial injustice. And so we have a wide chronological scope of things that we're working on. Hopefully you had a chance to take a look at the extensive updates that we

00:03:21.200 - 00:03:39.590

released this summer, which are on our website at taskforce.rice.edu, along with recordings of past doc talks and past webinar events. So you'll also find information there, hopefully soon, about some upcoming events that we're very excited about, including here on doc talks.

00:03:39.590 - 00:04:00.470

I think we want to make sure to let the people know, one week from today, we are going to be joined by some outstanding historians, including from Georgetown University, Professor Adam Rothman, and also from Johns Hopkins University, Professor Martha Jones, who was in The New York Times yesterday.

00:04:00.890 - 00:04:19.450

Did you see this Dr. Byrd? Has signed a four-book deal with Basic Books that, I didn't know that could happen, but she's, she's amazing and clearly much more productive than we are. But...

00:04:19.450 - 00:04:38.780

Speak for me. She's busy, she's busy doing all of that, and she is also leading an effort at Johns Hopkins University, similar to ours, to understand the university's history, and they are going to be joining us to talk about those updates that we released this summer

00:04:38.780 - 00:04:59.480

and kind of give some of their perspective on them as people who are outside of Rice, but experts in the field, as historians who are engaged in similar institutional history projects at Georgetown and Johns Hopkins to give us their peer review. We're hoping to have maybe one or two other guests on the panel as well, so we'll keep

00:04:59.480 - 00:05:08.940

those as surprises. You'll have to come back next Friday at noon to join us for that discussion. I'm really excited about hearing from them. I am really excited.

00:05:09.820 - 00:05:26.960

You know, they get their honest feedback, what did we, what did we do right and what did we get wrong? That's what I want to hear, too, it's, are there ways we could improve this work? We release these updates partly as a, as a window onto our work in progress, but as we

00:05:26.960 - 00:05:45.800

made clear, there's still work to be done, and some of the conclusions we need to keep testing with the evidence we're finding, and that's why we're here every week on doc talks is to look at the evidence and and measure our conclusions by what we can find in the archives. So we're thrilled that you're here joining us.

00:05:45.800 - 00:06:04.550

We hope you will, you'll tell others about the doc talk series, and let's dive right in. Dr. Byrd, what are you presenting to us today on doc talks? So I'm going to spend some time in the yearbook and in the Thresher today because I have a problem.

00:06:05.920 - 00:06:31.610

I have run into a problem, and I really need this problem to be a bigger, I don't need this to be a small problem. I need it to be a big problem because that will make it more interesting, though, if it is a small problem, it will, it will, it'll be a good lesson for me.

00:06:31.970 - 00:06:56.810

Right. Every once in a while, as a, I'm an aging historian, as an aging historian, you, you run into an issue where you can't figure something out, and you wonder, is this an actual historical problem, or is my eyesight failing, or my memory going, right? Have I, am I just looking in the wrong book?

00:06:57.470 - 00:07:21.030

So this could be a small problem, but if it's a big problem, it's quite interesting. And that's enough with the cryptic introductions, also some technical problems, which you will also get to see. I'm gonna start us off by going to the Thresher from December 20th, 1929.

00:07:21.030 - 00:07:46.820

And I'm still interested, I think we both have been, the last couple weeks, about what it could mean or did mean to be black at Rice before black students arrive at the university, and sometimes even before what we would, what we would think of as official black staff, right, though, though, if you've been listening to us for a while,

00:07:46.820 - 00:08:15.710

you'll, you'll know that black people have been working at the university from the beginning. And, and so today, following that theme, I'm gonna go to 1929, the Thresher from 1929, and just speak a bit about an article that we find there.

00:08:16.130 - 00:08:35.720

And if you can see, you can see the slide, hopefully, Dr. McDaniel? Okay, good. We've got what's come to be our kind of normal 1920s, early 1930s layout of the, of the Thresher. I like this owl, actually, I haven't said it, this is becoming one of my

00:08:35.720 - 00:09:07.570

favorite owls, the late 1920s owl on the Thresher. But what I'm most interested here is in an article in the third column about halfway down where the headline reads, "Loma Linda Will Be Scene of Dance. Colored Orchestra Call 'Texans' Secured for Colorful Hop." The Loma Linda, as

00:09:07.570 - 00:09:36.460

far as I can tell, is a roadhouse in Houston at the time, which I think would distinguish it from, say, the dances that may have been held across the street at Autry House. You would not have described Autry House as a roadhouse, nor I think would you have described the River Oaks Country Club, which also hosted dances at the university as

00:09:36.460 - 00:10:03.670

a roadhouse. And I don't even think the university club is a roadhouse. So this is, this begs certain kinds of questions, not the least of which is whether the second part of this headline should have been further edited. We've got some, maybe some attempt at some punning going on, I'm not sure.

00:10:04.900 - 00:10:28.120

"Colored Orchestra [...] Secured for Colorful Hop." So something is going on with the, with the language here. And I want to take a look at that article for us now. Unfortunately, the resolution is such that I have to switch someplace else in order to get

00:10:28.120 - 00:10:52.540

us there. Hopefully, are you just seeing, or I know maybe, I haven't shared. Are you seeing the website for the Thresher? Okay. Hopefully not also my colorful background and all of that, but maybe. Yeah, we are, that's okay, it's not bad right now.

00:10:53.860 - 00:11:13.030

So we have "Loma Linda Will Be Scene of Dance." The Rally Club, there's some confusion around the scheduling of this, the Rally Club dance, originally scheduled to be held November 26, I guess. And maybe I can make this bigger, maybe that will help.

00:11:13.030 - 00:11:37.330

Does that help any? "To be scheduled November 26th or 29th, but postponed due, due to conflicting dates will be held the night of January 19th at Loma Linda," and the dance is held by the Rally Club and typically supports the football team and the cross country team.

00:11:37.330 - 00:12:01.640

But here in the second paragraph comes the news. "This year, an attempt is being made to surpass all previous efforts. Two orchestras. Two orchestras will play, the Collegian and the Texans, the latter an imported all-Negro

00:12:01.640 - 00:12:27.770

orchestra, which has made an enviable record with its playing to the east. A midnight supper of chicken a la king and coffee will be served. It goes on to tell people to get their bids or their tickets early. And because there is constantly ticket trouble at Rice dances is one of the things

00:12:27.770 - 00:12:44.240

that the Thresher, you'll learn from the Thresher. If you don't buy your tickets early, it may not have enough food. If you buy your tickets too much early, too early, people will forge tickets. There's just, there's all kinds of business going on.

00:12:44.240 - 00:13:09.350

So we have this what looks to be an exciting event from the perspective of the university. The Rally Club has two orchestras that will be playing, one of them an all-black orchestra, and they'll be at the roadhouse.

00:13:09.380 - 00:13:29.360

Not gonna be, gonna be at the Loma Linda. But now here comes my problem, right? So one of my methods when I come across things like this is I find the, you find the dance, right, and then if you want to get a sense of, maybe a better sense of how things

00:13:29.360 - 00:13:57.780

actually unfolded, you can run to the yearbook and oftentimes there'll be an additional writeup concerning, concerning the event in question, especially on the social calendar. But for me, something strange happens when I, when I head to the

00:13:57.780 - 00:14:15.720

Campanile to get an idea of what is going on. We're not seeing the, we're seeing the slide by itself, but not the presentation. Maybe hit play. Oh no! Let me see what I can do.

00:14:17.450 - 00:14:24.450

Let me see what I can do. Thank you. Nope. Still no.

00:14:24.470 - 00:14:54.110

There it is. There it is. There it is. Okay. But when I run to the Campanile for that year, for the 1929 Campanile, I see a shot, right, of the what looks to be maybe the Rally Club dance, but maybe the EBLS dance.

00:14:54.440 - 00:15:21.980

But the Rally Club dance, the Collegians are the music that was provided, right, but I don't see any mention of the Texans. And also, it hasn't, it's, it's not located at the Loma Linda, it's at the University Club. And in addition, the date has now changed.

00:15:23.090 - 00:15:50.890

It says the 26th, like it said in the Thresher, and not January. Don't worry, folks, that's not the end. But we will pause. What, what questions, right, I'm gonna take maybe about eight more minutes with this

00:15:51.250 - 00:16:07.960

total, but I'd like to pause for a second. So that's, that's the problem that that I found myself in today, Dr. McDaniel. So I guess one question is, did the Texans actually perform?

00:16:08.290 - 00:16:33.070

That's got to be one of the questions on your mind. Yeah. Did they play, I wanna know. And and what's with the, what's with the venue change that I can, that I can see? Right. Is that, is that a mistake I'm making in my, in my research?

00:16:33.160 - 00:16:49.310

Am I, did I miss it in the yearbook? Did I not turn far enough? But, but then if I let my imagination run wild, I can get excited about other things. If it didn't happen, it looked, this looked huge!

00:16:51.320 - 00:17:21.890

"Surpassing all previous efforts." "Surpassing all previous efforts," a double use of "colored" in a, in a headline, as if to call attention to the newness of, of, of this event. And also, I do want to add that the, the Texans are treated in ways in their

00:17:21.890 - 00:17:54.600

description in the Thresher that black people and black performers cannot always count on, right, so, that I find, I find that interesting. So I need to, I need to search more, and I've got to figure out what happens with this dance, because I'm, at this moment, I'm, I'm unable to locate it actually

00:17:54.600 - 00:18:18.810

happening. And I'm excited to find it happening because I want, from what I know about dances, at least in the Thresher, and what it would mean to have a black orchestra playing for the, the Rally Club. So I said I was gonna take eight more minutes, so that means I'm only gonna take

00:18:18.810 - 00:18:55.370

six more, and I'm going to go to something else quickly. Only, only two docs for me today, or maybe three, right. So this is a little bit later, right, about a year later, January 10th, 1930. And the headline here is, Rally Club Ball's coming again, just like it did last time.

00:18:56.150 - 00:19:24.780

And we see it's gonna be at the Loma Linda, "will be the scene of a very swanky struggle." And then when we move down into the article itself, it unfolds quite, in some ways, like the other one did. "At ten tonight at Loma Linda," now we have them showing up, right.

00:19:24.960 - 00:19:53.760

We've got, "at ten tonight at Loma Linda, the social season will kick off, and the band will be the Texans, a colored orchestra, which is really hotter than hot. The Rally Club feels that in presenting the Texans, they are providing everything that is desirable in peppy dance music.

00:19:54.690 - 00:20:16.650

At midnight, a tasty supper of chicken a la king and toast and coffee will be served and there will be room enough to seat and present at one time everyone who attends." Can we talk about the toast? Because chicken a la king on toast, that's not my idea of a swanky...

00:20:17.070 - 00:20:30.410

I like that. I like that chicken a la king on on toast. Or on biscuits. I'm fine.

00:20:30.420 - 00:21:00.810

I'm fine with it. So then we do find the Rally Club dance in the, in the 1930 yearbook, and the Texans are located in it, playing by themselves though, and at the Loma Linda.

00:21:07.650 - 00:21:31.260

So I'm curious, Dr. McDaniel, did things come off? I can't find evidence that things came off all at once, that both of these bands ended up playing together, but can find evidence that they did indeed play,

00:21:32.700 - 00:21:52.560

if separately. And that's, that's, that's part of where I am with this. What are, what are some of your thoughts? Yeah. Or if they did play together the first year, why that wasn't in the yearbook.

00:21:54.560 - 00:22:10.250

Because there's a silence in the archive. We've encountered that a lot in the past. If in fact it did take place, then we could ask the question of why it was described, it wasn't described in 1929, if it was described only a year later.

00:22:12.220 - 00:22:28.910

Yeah. Or I'm sure there's probably, probably a better, the better answer is gonna be I'm messing up somewhere, though, I think, Dr. McDaniel. It's a possibility. I mean, it's a possibility I'll entertain, but it could just

00:22:28.910 - 00:22:50.750

mean there's more, more research to do. I wonder if you'd be able to find out more about the two orchestras. I know there's been some Thresher articles I've seen, too, that show, at some of these dances, that there were orchestras who were playing or bands playing, and it was clear

00:22:50.750 - 00:23:09.560

that the, the name of one of them was called The Virginians, I think, and they, they were playing "peppy dance music," as it's described, and some of the articles kind of suggest, I mean, that's another thing I'm drawn to, is the description of the music as having a certain tempo or having a certain peppiness.

00:23:11.360 - 00:23:32.510

And you can see that in some of the other descriptions of orchestras that play at Rice. But I, I think this is interesting because I don't think I've seen one that describes the orchestra as being an all-black musical group. But we've seen the one, I'm thinking back to one of our earlier doc talks we looked at,

00:23:32.510 - 00:23:52.100

was it in the seventies, we did see bands that were invited from Houston to perform at the RMC. But this, this would be, I think, a unique example from the 1920s, from that period. So I can see why it's got your interest.

00:23:53.890 - 00:24:19.690

I'm, I'm, well, you know, sometimes I like to go too far, so I'm gonna go too far here. I'm not sure, I don't know, for example, I don't know what the Collegians are comprised of. Like, I don't know their racial background, but I would imagine that they're white, because they aren't described as colored, where the colored band is.

00:24:22.180 - 00:24:55.810

And and so one of the things for 1930 that that I guess deserves greater investigation on on my part is how come the Texans seem to come off in 1930, right, but not with the promised second band. Were they refusing, were they refusing to play, for example?

00:24:55.810 - 00:25:06.250

Yeah. Alongside, on the same bill as the Texans. Even though they had played, they had played previously, right. Even though they had played previously at the university, so.

00:25:06.250 - 00:25:25.120

So the Rally Club was attempting to have both bands together, but then it raises the question, if they weren't able to pull that off, why? Was there some objection, from the bands or maybe from beyond the bands. I mean, as I read that second article you showed us, you didn't see in the first

00:25:25.120 - 00:25:47.700

article any, anything approaching kind of an explanation. Well, I guess you did see, in the first article you saw that they were the imported band from the east that had, that had played well in the east. But it seemed to me, and maybe I'm overreading, that in the second article, the

00:25:47.700 - 00:26:12.500

Rally Club was kind of justifying or explaining its course by saying the Rally Club has done everything, I forget the exact wording, everything in its power to provide peppy dance music, that this is kind of the, the reason, the reasoning behind this band, Which could just be advertising about, about the dance and about the music.

00:26:12.530 - 00:26:37.560

This is a dance you'd wanna come to. But I wonder if it could speak to some larger debate or conversation or discourse around the Rally Club's decisions about which bands to, to invite. There, there is going to be a long, I think we'll be able to call it long, there will be

00:26:37.560 - 00:27:07.760

a long history of black entertainers associated with the university long before the university officially desegregated. Mhm. Mhm. I think that's an interesting thread for us to continue following, and I hope you'll, I hope you'll be able to find out more about these two dances in the weeks

00:27:07.760 - 00:27:25.490

to come. Great doc. There's a lot to think about there. Well, the document that I wanted to talk about today was from later in our chronological scope, we're gonna be looking at something from 1977.

00:27:26.030 - 00:27:45.080

But it does connect in a way with the conversation we've just been having, because it's an, it's a recording from a radio show on KTRU. I'm not sure if we've gone to KTRU yet, or the KTRU archives yet in our doc talks, so this might be a first for doc talks.

00:27:45.320 - 00:27:58.060

Those of you who are here can say you were here when we talked about a KTRU episode for the first time. Are you still able to hear me? I hear you perfectly. Okay, great.

00:27:58.630 - 00:28:30.880

So the clip that I wanted to show is from an episode of a show hosted on KTRU in 1977 by a student named Craig Jackson, who graduated in 1977 and apparently had a show on KTRU called Africa that he hosted from time to time, and one question that I still would like to know more about is when that show began and how long it ran, whether there

00:28:30.880 - 00:28:48.520

were other hosts or whether Craig Jackson was the the founder and only host of this particular show. But the document that I wanted to talk about today is from one particular episode of this KTRU show Africa that aired on January 30th, 1977.

00:28:51.220 - 00:29:12.970

And it's a show about another show that was having its series finale on that day, January 30th, 1977. Somebody who's listening to the audio later and they're not looking at it as we are can can try to guess what was, what was airing on January 30th, 1977.

00:29:13.000 - 00:29:38.950

Of course, our audience can see that that was a big day in television history because it was the series finale of the miniseries Roots on ABC, which broke all previous records for viewership on television at that time. I think I was reading earlier that some, somewhere around 100 million individual

00:29:38.950 - 00:30:03.970

viewers turned in to see the Roots miniseries, and that's at a time when the entire population of the United States was maybe a little more than double that, 226, 227 million people. So a lot of people tuned in to ABC in 1977 to see the finale of Roots,

00:30:04.210 - 00:30:33.550

based of course on the, I was about to call it a novel, although of course, scholars would say there's some, some debate about the book that Alex Haley wrote, called Roots, which he himself described as a mixture of fictional, fictional narratives and his own research into his family's history, stretching back to the origins of his family

00:30:33.550 - 00:30:55.660

in Africa. And so of course, you, our viewers, I'm sure, know about the, the breakout performance of many actors in this, in this miniseries, including LeVar Burton as Kunta Kinte. And you may know that about five years ago, there was a a new version of Roots

00:30:55.660 - 00:31:21.820

that aired on the History Channel and AMC and Lifetime as well, so there was a lot of attention being paid in 2016 to this new version of Roots that was going to be, be airing. But the document that I wanted to share today is a discussion on KTRU between the host of the show Africa, Craig Jackson, and his guest, who is somebody that we met

00:31:21.820 - 00:31:45.790

just a couple of weeks ago, figuratively, on our doc talk, Dr. Rose Brewer, who was a visiting sociology professor at Rice at the time, and of course Dr. Byrd, you told us a lot about Professor Brewer's CV and her path to, to Rice. And so we can see on, on this particular page, which is a blog post from the Woodson

00:31:45.790 - 00:32:10.060

Research Center, a picture of Dr. Brewer and other members of the sociology department in 1977. And we know from some of the work that she was doing in sociology that we discussed a couple of weeks ago, that it made sense that that Craig Jackson would have reached out to

00:32:10.060 - 00:32:30.010

Professor Brewer to come on to the show and talk about this this national event. 100 million people tuning in to see the series finale of Roots. And so before I play this clip, I also want to tell you a little bit about Craig Jackson, because we've met him before as well.

00:32:30.910 - 00:32:54.340

As I mentioned, he was a graduate of Rice in 1977, and so this would have been at the very beginning of his last semester at Rice. He went on from Rice to law school at the University of Texas and became a scholar of international and constitutional law and has taught at the.

00:32:54.630 - 00:33:14.550

Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University for the, for the last three or more decades. And we were very fortunate to have Professor Jackson come onto one of our task force webinars that we hosted last year featuring black alumni talking about their experience

00:33:14.550 - 00:33:31.950

at the university. And I felt an immediate kinship with Professor Jackson when he said on that webinar a little bit about his hobbies. He said that one of his major hobbies was listening to jazz music, and he actually

00:33:31.950 - 00:33:54.480

said, if you recall in that webinar, that he, he began that hobby, he sort of cultivated that interest in jazz music while he was a college student at Rice. And I also, as you know, Dr. Byrd, I'm a big, big jazz fan, and also became, I think, more of a jazz fan during my

00:33:54.480 - 00:34:13.530

college experience. That's when I took, I took a class about the history of jazz, I was able to meet a lot of people who share that same interest and introduced me to a lot of artists, so that was part of what Professor Jackson shared in the webinar, but he went on to talk about his experience at Rice.

00:34:13.530 - 00:34:31.330

And let me just play you a brief clip of him describing what it was like to be at Rice as a black student from 1973 to 1977, from his perspective. And I'm hoping that I shared sound. Let's see if this works.

00:34:36.040 - 00:34:55.790

It's not working, is it? Okay, let me go back here, stop my share, try again. It does say share sound. Still nothing. Uh oh. We're gonna have a problem.

00:35:07.750 - 00:35:20.510

Can I hear you? Can you hear me? Yes, I can hear you. Okay. Well, let's try, let me see, let me try one more time to see if this will

00:35:20.510 - 00:35:42.010

work. We, we tested this. You're my witness, Dr. Byrd, that we did test this earlier, so sometimes... We tested it and it was working. But not this time. Okay, well, I'm hoping then that we'll be able to even listen to the

00:35:42.010 - 00:36:00.010

clip about Roots. I would encourage you, if you can't hear it now and you didn't hear it originally, if you go to the Task Force website, you can find the recording of this entire webinar and you can can hear a little bit more about Professor Jackson's experience.

00:36:00.010 - 00:36:19.410

But basically, I'll just summarize it by saying that he shared that it was a frustrating experience. He told a little bit about his his own history of coming to Rice from Beaumont, Texas, where he graduated from high school, at, I hope, I'm kind of betraying my own

00:36:19.420 - 00:36:39.160

ignorance here, but I hope I'm pronouncing it right, he went to Hebert High School, or Hebert High School, in Beaumont, Texas, which he describes elsewhere as a historically minority high school. And so when he came to Rice, he expressed the experience of being for the first time at

00:36:39.160 - 00:37:05.140

a school that was predominantly white, and he expressed some of the frustrations that he felt at that time at Rice. And we I think also in a previous doc talk last year met Craig Jackson in another context too, as a, as a leader on campus of the BSU working to try to get the SA to

00:37:05.140 - 00:37:29.600

change the blanket tax to direct funds towards black student activities and cultural events, including, if I'm remembering right, to kind of bring all this together, the invitation of, of bands to campus that that would be present at at these BSU events. And so we've met, we've met Craig off and on in the webinar and in these earlier doc

00:37:29.600 - 00:37:44.710

talks. But what I wanted to share with you, and I hope will work today, is this discussion of Roots that he had with Dr. Brewer on KTRU. So cross your fingers everybody, and everybody can cross our fingers together.

00:37:47.780 - 00:38:10.530

Nope. I really don't know what would have changed. Oh, now I can't hear you. Maybe my AirPods are not good. I say, I promise I was telling the truth when I said I could hear it during preshow.

00:38:11.520 - 00:38:31.890

I'm gonna try changing my speaker and see if that helps us. Okay. Can you still hear me? I can hear you perfectly. Okay, let me try now.

00:38:41.270 - 00:38:58.010

Still nothing? Nothing. Well, let me see here. "You're sharing sound from your computer." Okay, I'm gonna try over here.

00:38:58.020 - 00:39:06.370

Maybe it's a YouTube problem. Let me try this. Take this, will there be any changes in perceptions and attitudes? Will people...

00:39:06.370 - 00:39:23.930

Okay. So let's try this. I'm gonna go back here. Thank you for your patience. Okay, this must be a YouTube thing. I'm gonna try this one more time.

00:39:37.090 - 00:39:59.210

This is gonna be good when, when we get there. Well, and it's, you know, we have, there are a large group of people who work on these webinars to turn them into podcasts, and sometimes we need to provide them with some extra challenges when it comes to editing, and I think they'll, they'll be happy about

00:39:59.210 - 00:40:14.650

this, 'cause they can test their chops. Yes. Okay, let's try it one more time. We were discussing Roots and a whole lot of other things, had a question that somebody wanted to ask, and it was, you know, how do you think the public will take this?

00:40:14.660 - 00:40:25.580

You know, will there be any changes in perceptions and attitudes? Will people change? You know, it's no secret that black history has been hidden, and whether or not it's been purpose, on purpose or what have you.

00:40:25.970 - 00:40:40.490

But the whole thing, you know, like from, from Africa, they found that, you know, these these people were not worshipping roots and, you know, they weren't worshipping dirt and all this other, you know, paganism that people thought they were, they were very intelligent, civilized people worshipping Allah, which, one of the major religions, one

00:40:40.490 - 00:40:54.020

of the three major religions of our time, you know, the Nation of Islam and what have you. And they were not, you know, just savages brought over here. The savages were the slave catchers, more or less. And the whole, you know, evolution is something that I think has been conveniently

00:40:54.020 - 00:41:08.930

left out of American history. Do you think there would be any changes in perceptions now that this is brought forth in the magnitude that it's been brought forth? It's very difficult for me to separate my experience with the book from the experience

00:41:08.930 - 00:41:26.780

with the TV production, because as I suggested earlier, the book was a revelation to me as a black person in this country. Haley, Haley has done an excellent job in in pointing out what you just mentioned, the continuity and the beauty of the culture of the people who were were torn from their

00:41:26.780 - 00:41:46.640

land. Of course, the movie production or TV production does this a little less successfully, and from the article that you read to the people earlier, I would imagine that for those kids who haven't read the book, the TV production is having as big an impact on them as the book had on me.

00:41:48.140 - 00:42:06.860

Seemingly somewhat negative in that they haven't been given a true history of their ancestors and are very upset about it. And I think that's to some extent a failure in the school. However, a long, long-range impact seems to be, I guess, over, overestimating the impact

00:42:06.860 - 00:42:24.110

of this particular production. I see it as people getting probably temporarily up in arms about it, and when the production is over, things pretty much quieting down and we're still at the status quo. I don't see policy changes per se coming out of, out of, out of the book.

00:42:24.110 - 00:42:42.590

I don't know how school systems, among the school systems that are using this as a teaching device, are going to alter their curriculums or or attempt to present black history in a more accurate sense. However, wider, long, wider-range impacts, I'm very reluctant to say anything is gonna

00:42:43.040 - 00:42:54.110

transfer from it. To my knowledge, nothing has been done here at Rice, you know, to bring Mr. Haley in or maybe have any readings on that, of course. And you just mentioned he was in the area.

00:42:54.520 - 00:42:59.480

Yeah, well, he didn't come to Houston, TSU couldn't get him, you know, so, I mean, he wasn't... He passed through? He passed through Houston?

00:42:59.480 - 00:43:06.710

No, I don't know if he did, I'm asking you. No, he didn't get them, TSU was trying to get him, but he came to Texas, went to Austin, went to Kansas City, just like that. I see.

00:43:06.740 - 00:43:24.200

So he hasn't made his big Texas tour. You know, it's, we can hope that eventually when he comes to Texas and comes to Houston, there'll be an effort on the part of, on the part of maybe the President's Lecture Series or the history department or something, you know, to get him on the Rice campus, or to

00:43:24.200 - 00:43:35.990

have some kind of program oriented toward it . A lot of colleges are having courses and they're using Roots, as, you know, one of the readings in their courses and something like that, it seemed like something should be done here at Rice, since this is a major institution.

00:43:36.650 - 00:43:54.470

Well, that's, we've discussed the problems with, with this institution in presenting a cultural perspective that reflects more than than one ethnic group, and it's particularly difficult when people don't seem to be as sensitive as they should be regarding the importance of black history.

00:43:54.470 - 00:44:09.020

And there are no black history courses offered on this campus either. No. Well, no, put it like that. We're talking with Dr. Rose Brewer, who is the... Okay. That's the clip, I really hope...

00:44:09.500 - 00:44:27.800

It's good stuff. Ooh. I really hope that our audience was able to hear that. If you can't or couldn't, I'll put in the chat a link to the clip that we just heard, which makes clear, one question I have is, is whether we can find the earlier

00:44:27.800 - 00:44:42.950

conversations between Dr. Brewer and and the host of this show, Craig Jackson, because they refer to previous conversations they've had. But that recording just sort of picks up at the, in the middle, it seems, of this episode

00:44:42.950 - 00:44:57.680

on, on Roots. And we also have more of this particular episode, so you can see there I stopped after the first 4 minutes, but there's about 36 or 37 minutes of conversation about the meaning of Roots, the impact of it.

00:44:58.640 - 00:45:23.660

They return to some conversation about Rice later in the show. We, we learn that Craig Jackson has been in one of Dr. Brewer's classes the previous semester, because he says that he had wanted to read the book, but he couldn't because he had to study for her final, her final exam at the

00:45:23.660 - 00:45:35.420

end of the semester. We learn that Dr. Brewer has come into the KTRU studio for this interview, driving in bad weather all the way from Sharpstown.

00:45:35.420 - 00:45:56.000

So we learn a little bit about where Dr. Brewer was, was living while she was teaching here at Rice. And we also get, I think, a glimpse into the musical tastes of the host of the show, as we referred to earlier, because interspersed with this conversation are clips from the the

00:45:56.000 - 00:46:20.240

Ghanaian English rock band Osibisa from the 1970s. And also at the end of the show, he plays the entire album of a Bootsy Collins record while turning it off to go and watch the finale of Roots. So there's a lot of great material in this particular episode in conversation, but I

00:46:20.240 - 00:46:42.440

wanted to talk about this opening clip in particular and get some of your reactions, Dr. Byrd. What questions does it raise for you? So I'll start with my very, my very first note on on listening to it was I wrote down the word "relationship." And so maybe Dr.

00:46:42.440 - 00:47:05.060

Brewer and Professor Jackson, those many years ago, were just quite practiced at radio conversation. I'm about to disagree with all this, you can tell because I started with "maybe." Maybe, maybe they're just very practiced at radio conversation, semi-professional in, in this

00:47:05.060 - 00:47:26.180

discourse, though any of you who have listened to me and Dr. McDaniel, who have been doing this for a long time, right, we sometimes struggle. But there's an easiness to the conversation, and so the direction I was heading in, when they get into the work of critiquing the university and critiquing the curriculum of

00:47:26.180 - 00:47:54.020

the university, I read that less, or I was inclined to read it less as, these conversations are preserved in an archive somewhere of this radio show, than, this is what we talk about when we talk about a liberal arts education at a school like Rice and what we talk about, especially when we talk about a diversifying, a desegregating,

00:47:54.410 - 00:48:16.610

diversifying university and what it means for a faculty to also be as diverse or to tend toward the diversity of the student body. But, but, but I felt like these were, this was a conversation that was being picked up from conversations that had happened elsewhere, not in the studio though.

00:48:16.940 - 00:48:32.120

Not in the studio. Yeah, no, the way he started in the clip saying, we're here with, with Dr. Brewer talking about things, kind of sounded like they were coming back from a break. But I agree with you, it's, it's clear that, that these are conversations that, that go beyond the studio.

00:48:32.120 - 00:48:53.360

And I agree with you, there's, there's a sense of a relationship here that, I mean, you can see it, too, in the fact that, that Dr. Brewer was willing to, to come up to the studio after hours in the bad weather all the way from Sharpstown to appear on the show and talk about these these issues with

00:48:53.570 - 00:49:12.290

Professor Jackson. So it's clear that there is a previous relationship and rapport there, and I think it gets at, it's a source that helps us see something that we kind of know is there, but it's sometimes hard to, to find in the archive, is evidence of the kinds of mentoring relationships that that Dr.

00:49:12.290 - 00:49:31.610

Brewer would have been providing even during her short time as a visiting professor in the sociology department here at Rice. So I agree, absolutely. I think the critiquing also obviously caught my attention because it's clear that part of,

00:49:31.610 - 00:49:57.980

part of the conversation around Roots for them provides a chance for reflecting on what Rice is not doing in 1977 in teaching students or providing classes about black history or opportunities within the classroom for students to reflect on this national event. I mean, again, if 100 million people are viewing this show in 1977,

00:49:58.730 - 00:50:24.200

it's the kind of thing you would imagine could be talked about in the classroom. But it's being talked about here on the student radio station, in, which is a great place to talk about it too, but why, why is it, they want to know, that Rice hasn't attempted to invite Alex Haley to speak on campus or or incorporate readings into some

00:50:24.200 - 00:50:43.430

of these courses? I was struck by Professor Jackson's response when Dr. Brewer says there's there's no black history courses at Rice, and he at first kind of said, "Well, no." So I'd like to know a little bit more about what, what, what was motivating that particular response from him.

00:50:44.540 - 00:51:09.080

Yeah, that, and it sounds, right, I wouldn't be surprised if it was a kind of critique, right, of, of what we live in fear, or I live in fear of this, right, it was a kind of critique of an effort somewhere at at the university. Maybe it's not that the topic was being entirely avoided, but it wasn't being, it

00:51:09.080 - 00:51:26.120

wasn't being taught in the way that Professor Jackson and Dr. Brewer were talking about it in the context of this, this larger episode. And I find it interesting that Dr. Brewer came back later in this episode, we didn't listen to the entire thing, returned

00:51:26.120 - 00:51:49.770

to this, this question of, of some of the problems Rice was facing in that area, as she, as she put it, being sensitive to providing a broader perspective on black history and black issues at the university. And so we're kind of hearing, two, two weeks ago, you showed us the CV of, of, and we

00:51:49.770 - 00:52:04.230

talked a little bit about how Dr. Brewer got to Rice, and trying to read between the lines of, of some of the, the dates, and the, the grants, and the fellowships that may have led to her being hired in in the Department of Sociology.

00:52:04.230 - 00:52:22.860

But I pick up, and maybe I'm going out on a limb or reading too much into some of those responses here, I feel like we're picking up a little bit of the end of that story, or some of the things that may have made it difficult for Dr. Brewer To stay at a place like Rice, which is a, it's a tragedy when you see the rapport

00:52:22.860 - 00:52:40.310

and the relationship between Professor Jackson and Dr. Brewer, you kind of wonder why why her distinguished career that she went on to have at multiple places, including the University of Minnesota, couldn't have continued at Rice University.

00:52:40.320 - 00:53:05.550

She talked some in the, in the, in the episode as well about her, her own experience of coming to the Southwest from, from the North and the Midwest and the, the differences, the surprises in, even within black Houston and the way that African Americans she met in the South thought, for example, about their connection to Africa,

00:53:05.550 - 00:53:29.230

which is a major theme of this particular episode. So there's a lot of richness in this episode, I think we can agree, and a lot of questions that it raises for us going forward. And I think as folks who teach history and who teach African American

00:53:29.230 - 00:53:56.350

history, I think sitting with what it means to interpret the consequence of a moment, right, so here in 2021, we can see, I'm sorry, hear, them address what, what they think the consequence of a certain moment, what looks like it could be a historical moment, what that might mean, and we can sit here now and have a little clear view on

00:53:56.350 - 00:54:25.690

that. But, but also what I found striking is the, is the, the perseverance of this theme, right, this theme of loss and hidden history. And I'll go one step further, though it wasn't articulated in the clip that we heard, of lives and the ways that those three things affect the stories that we tell

00:54:25.690 - 00:54:42.130

ourselves about ourselves as a, as a, as a nation. The, how, how persistent that theme is in African American history vis-à-vis American history. They talked about that a little bit, what's in the textbooks and, and what's taught in

00:54:42.130 - 00:54:55.600

the schools, and Dr. Brewer referred to kind of a failure of the schools to, to give a more accurate picture of African history. And you can, you can hear that some in Professor Jackson's comments, too, about

00:54:55.870 - 00:55:18.760

Roots providing a different portrayal of of African history before the Atlantic slave trade. I was struck by his turn of phrase that the savages were the slave traders, the savages were the slavers who came. But that reflects kind of the moment that, that he was speaking in, of this, this, what

00:55:18.760 - 00:55:43.750

we could say or may what have, what have, what may have appeared at the time like a larger national reckoning in 1977 with those lives or with that kind of partial telling of history. I forgot to mention earlier that when Roots broke the record for viewership of a television series at 100 million viewers in 1977, the previous record had been set

00:55:43.930 - 00:56:00.270

just the previous year in 1976, and the previous record was held by a very different show. Can you give a guess? I knew you were about to ask. That's why I started, that's why the wheels started turning.

00:56:00.270 - 00:56:14.940

Midway? Midway? Nope. The television premiere of the 1939 blockbuster film Gone with the Wind. No, no, tell me, no, tell me that's, I want that to be an error.

00:56:15.090 - 00:56:39.120

Nope, that's true. That was 1976. So if the year before, what most people were turning on their TVs to see was a version of the antebellum South and of the history of slavery that as we, as we know, was] terribly distorted and contributed, you know, contributes to this day, I think, to the

00:56:39.120 - 00:57:00.390

misperceptions that a lot of people have about the Civil War era and the history of slavery. And that was just a year before. So I think giving that context maybe helps explain some of Dr. Brewer's very prescient skepticism that, that this show would, would have some of the,

00:57:00.390 - 00:57:19.050

the larger, wider-ranging consequences that it seems that Professor Jackson is kind of asking about or would like to know, is this, is this a turning point? And she said she didn't foresee changes in policy, that people would would watch the show and then they would forget about it.

00:57:19.050 - 00:57:48.840

I think that kind of speaks to what, what I think historians in the United States could say is a constant on-again, off-again relationship of American popular culture, and, and I guess we should say, the majority white American public sphere, in their relationship to the history of slavery, you know, that there may be, there may be a big

00:57:48.840 - 00:58:09.540

event like Roots that comes on and there's a lot of attention to it, or maybe a book is published, or there's, there's a movie that comes out, and then the spotlight moves on. The spotlight moves on, and then, and then it rediscovers again, maybe a generation later, something, something like Roots.

00:58:09.810 - 00:58:24.760

And so I think Dr. Brewer could see that, even at the time, and we're sharing that perspective on the, on the show. And it does, maybe one of the, one of the advantages of studying history is that it gives you then a perspective on your own present moment.

00:58:25.120 - 00:58:48.400

Is this a moment, you can open up the newspaper on any given day and see a discussion of national reckoning, of, of a kind of coming to terms with our history, of being honest about our history, changing the way we teach history, and there's a little bit of, when you listen to a clip like this, a little bit of déjà vu that in 1977, those

00:58:48.400 - 00:59:13.830

same things were being said. And yet, from the perspective of, of a viewer, a television viewer, in the years after 1977, I think we can, we can [...] for example, that looked like Roots. I know we're running apart on our on our deadline, but, our quit time, but I wanna say

00:59:13.830 - 00:59:39.910

one more thing, that I see a difference in speaking to the importance of African American history in the moment, that I see a difference in a student perspective like Professor Jackson had in 1977, and some of the student perspectives that, that, that we see now at Rice.

00:59:39.910 - 01:00:07.800

Professor Jackson's 1977 self approaches this history of Roots as kind of additive, right, that this needs to be added to American history, this history of slavery. And I think a difference that I see with some of our students who would be on the same kind of spectrum of engagement as Professor Jackson was while he was here, I think are

01:00:07.800 - 01:00:28.230

more inclined to see this history as fundamental. So the argument is less, "this needs to be a part of American history," and more of, "we cannot understand, we cannot even grasp American history until this history of slavery is central to the story that we tell about ourselves."

01:00:31.850 - 01:00:47.060

Absolutely. Well, thank you all for joining us and thinking about these documents. We apologize for the technical difficulties, which, again, I promise we were not having before the show. We're glad you stuck through those with us and hope that you'll be back with us next

01:00:47.060 - 01:01:00.270

week. Remember, we're gonna have some great guests on our doc talk next Friday, Dr. Martha Jones, Dr. Adam Rothman, others to be announced. And so I hope you'll, you'll be back next Friday to... Prof!

01:01:00.380 - 01:01:09.530

To be with us. Yes. Prof, for next week. Tie? Are we going ties and jackets because we have special guests? Let's take this offline.

01:01:09.530 - 01:01:14.630

We'll, we'll talk. We'll talk. Okay. Thank you all. Have a great weekend.