00:00:04.680 - 00:00:20.070

Okay. I will give a few minutes here for our attendees to arrive and then we'll get started.

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(mouse clicking) Okay, well, welcome to everyone who's here joining us for our second Friday Doc Talk with the Task Force on Slavery, Segregation and Racial Injustice.

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And this is the second of what we hope will be a continuing series throughout the fall semester as Dr. Byrd and I as the Co-Chairs of the Task Force on Slavery, Segregation and Racial Injustice,

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we will be sharing documents that have come up in the research that the task force is doing, and talk a little bit about how historians think about these documents,

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what kinds of questions they answer, what's the kind of questions they raise, why they matter to our work and to the present and future of the university

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and so we're really excited to have you joining us today. We also want to tell you about another event coming up with the task force this Monday that you definitely don't wanna miss,

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so please put it on your calendars. At noon on Monday, we're gonna be joined by Professor Deborah Gray White and Professor Mercy Flinters of Rutgers University

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to talk about slavery, dispossession and the way forward for universities. And they will be drawing on their expertise as the leaders of Rutgers, similar task force project,

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The Scarlet and Black Project that is now entering I think it's fifth and final year of work. And so we are really looking forward to hearing from Dr. White and Dr.Flinters about their experiences

00:02:03.830 - 00:02:14.180

and what we can learn here at Rice from the work that they've done at Rutgers. So please go to taskforce.Rice.edu where you can find more information about our work

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and also the Zoom information about that particular webinar. I'm excited about that Dr. Byrd, are you looking forward to that one? You are not as excited as I am.

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Well, it's not a competition, we can both be very excited and I'm very excited about today's talk as well, do you wanna tell us a little bit about what makes this one different from the one

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we started off with last week? Well, we're gonna talk a lot less and we're going to feature four Rice folks who are alumni of the university

00:02:48.690 - 00:02:58.810

or current students of the university and we're gonna feature their work, they're gonna introduce themselves a little more deeply. I'll just tell you who you will hear from

00:02:58.810 - 00:03:15.690

and in what order you will hear from them. First up, we have Edna Otuomagie who is a 2017 graduate of Will Rice College, Second up, we have Andrew Maust

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who is a 2018 graduate of Brown College, those are two alumni researchers. And then we'll hear from Indya Porter who is at Baker College and will be graduating in '22.

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I didn't check that with you Ms. Porter, I just said it, (chuckles) it is correct.

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And then that include George Huang who is also a '22 graduate from McMurtry College. So we're in for a real treat. We are indeed

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and I'm so thrilled that all four of these researchers were able to join us. One of the great things about working at Rice is getting to work with outstanding undergraduate students.

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And in the History Department, we have a lot of great students who come through who do research in our archival research and they pull up documents that we haven't seen

00:04:15.280 - 00:04:27.340

and they interpret them and they help connect them to the work that other historians are doing. So I would say that, these are not just student researchers that we have with us today, these are historians

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who are going to be sharing with us their expertise and their work on topics that are related to the work of the task force. And so we're thrilled that each of you are here

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and we're gonna give you just a few minutes to say a little bit more about yourself. Edna, do you wanna start by introducing yourself and telling us about where you are?

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Hi, I'm Edna. I'm actually currently in New York city, I'm in Brooklyn. I currently attend NYU,

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I'm a Master's student in the Media Culture and Communication Program, studying Global Communication and Media and Visual Culture and Sound Studies.

00:05:04.570 - 00:05:13.460

Interestingly enough, when I was at Rice I was actually a VADA major doing Filmmaking and Photography but I've worked a lot with the Humanities Research Center

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which connected me to the Woodson Research Center and allowed me to do my practicum between decisions the exhibit that I published that was the research that I did.

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So it was really awesome because honestly I wish, sometimes I'd been in history but I also really love VADA too, yeah. I just wanna underline that

00:05:34.940 - 00:05:42.610

for all of our non-history majors in the audience, that we have an alumna who wishes that she had been a history major. Okay, that's the last thing I'm gonna say

00:05:42.610 - 00:05:53.640

in my role as Chair of the History Department, but thank you Edna. Andrew, can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Absolutely, So I graduated from Rice In December of 2018,

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I was a Political Science Major so another non-history major. I'm excited to be back and continuing to work on my research and have this still be relevant and help.

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Not so much what else much to say, I'm not involved in anything to do with my major for work at the moment and just enjoying where I'm at. Great, thank you so much.

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Indya? Hi, yes, so I'm Indya, I'm a Junior at Baker, I'm majoring in Political Science and Psychologies. so another non-history major

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and like Edna I kind of wish I had done a history and I guess I could still maybe. (chuckles) But doing research with the task force

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has been like a really good way for me to tap into like that side of me a little bit more, and I'm really involved in Baker Government at Rice and I'm also on our Powderpuff Team,

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so, yay we won the championships last year. I've done some previous research in the past, but it's mostly been in an RA like helping role and doing small tasks here and there.

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So, doing research with the task force has also allowed me to sort of like take on my project and like see it through and have just like more oversight of it,

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which I've really enjoyed. Great, thank you. And then last but not least, George do you wanna introduce yourself?

00:07:18.770 - 00:07:27.920

Hi, I'm George, I'm a Junior at McMurtry College and I'm studying History and Political Science. So I got involved with the task force

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by taking Dr McDaniel's course last semester and I had learned so much about the history of our university, and I knew that there was more to look into.

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And so in the course, I started looking into eugenics, the history of eugenics at Rice University and then over the summer, I decided to focus more on a specific professor who taught here,

00:07:50.770 - 00:07:59.280

and so I've learned a lot from this whole experience, my first research experience, and I'm really grateful for this opportunity that the History Department and the task force

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has allowed me to have, and I'm really excited to present what I found with you guys. Well, not as excited as we are to hear from each of you,

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we're just thrilled by your work and these Doc Talks that we're doing, we're trying to sort of zoom in on a particular document each week

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and this week we'll have four from each of you to put those documents in context, to think a little bit about, what they mean, what they tell us, maybe what they don't yet tell us

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and what questions they raise for additional research. So without further ado, I'm gonna turn it over to Dr. Byrd and we can to each of you about the documents that you have brought today to the table.

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We can't hear you, Dr. Byrd. We still can't hear you. (laughs) Well, I don't know why I'm not heard now.

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Now we can hear you. Okay. Edna is going first and so if she would queue up her document.

00:09:08.100 - 00:09:24.540

I've got it here. Okay, Dr. McDaniel is gonna queue up for the document. And last week we had a photograph of Jacqueline McCauley that we studied who was the first woman African-American

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accepted to the university. Today, Edna has brought us a document related to the first black female graduate of the university, Linda Faye Williams

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and so we're going to focus on her admission's essay. Can and we get a better shot of it or a larger? Here we go, thank you. The larger shot of it.

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And it's a normal size sheet of paper, it has some typescript across the top which asks applicants to talk about their choice of major or concentration.

00:10:13.240 - 00:10:28.050

There's a box to the left of the question but it's not the box that all of Rice students know it's just a box And in that box we have just a wonderful picture

00:10:29.220 - 00:10:41.860

of Linda Faye Williams. She is in, I don't know if it's a top or just the top of a dress, but she has on a striped top with that alternates

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between a darker stripe and a lighter one. She's got a wonderful kind of half open smile on her face, her head is tilted in one direction, her hair if I remember from my mother and my sisters,

00:11:04.480 - 00:11:17.790

is in a state of posts being done, (laughs) Her hair has been very expertly done, especially around her forehead

00:11:17.790 - 00:11:31.680

and is curled around her ears. Under the type written question, we have her long hand, cursive response, which this could be a problem

00:11:31.680 - 00:11:47.390

for some of the people watching us. I know my children don't have a command of cursive, I don't know if our folks at Rice now went past the time when they can read cursive.

00:11:47.390 - 00:12:10.730

But it's then her essay explaining her choice of major and just a wonderfully evocative document. And now, Edna, what drew you to this document? And could you tell us something about

00:12:10.730 - 00:12:22.940

what questions it raises for you? And maybe even speak something about how one might use this and other documents to address the questions that it raises for you.

00:12:22.940 - 00:12:35.960

Yeah, what originally drew me to this document was one that it was in this cursive, I was just like so blown away by just how intricate it was. I was so used to looking at files

00:12:35.960 - 00:12:46.580

in so many different print files and things that obviously were printed with a typewriter, but to see like someone's handwritten anything, was really influential and impactful for me.

00:12:46.580 - 00:12:58.110

So, and also the fact that it was Linda Fay, I am doing this research far between decisions about gender and race relations and to hear from a person who intersects

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with both of those kinds of issues and both of those realities here at Rice, I was intent on like reading it and featuring it in my exhibit.

00:13:08.770 - 00:13:17.650

Yeah, I think also another thing that really kind of hit me a certain way was the fact that she said, that she wants to be an English major.

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I don't remember if she graduated with English, but I know she graduated like Political Science or Sociology and that's really what kind of changed the course of her life,

00:13:26.610 - 00:13:36.510

is when she took that course with, I think Dr. Jim or Davidson. And I was like, wow, so she started in one major and switched to another which is the story

00:13:36.510 - 00:13:46.010

of a lot of Rice people, including myself. And so, yeah, I think that, that was really, I don't know I felt like I could resonate with that.

00:13:46.010 - 00:13:58.820

But I think what really drew me the most to this document was that even from the very beginning, even before she came to Rice, she had the intention to pursue teaching

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and she already had experienced mentoring, she said that she was a student tutor of her classmates in English. And I was like, dang, like she went...

00:14:10.400 - 00:14:23.010

Like I remember people talk about her students at the University of Maryland were literally saying years later, decades later that she was such a great teacher of the course,

00:14:23.010 - 00:14:33.700

she mentored them so well. And it's that mentorship that led to the establishment of the Social Justice Prize. So even before she came to Rice,

00:14:33.700 - 00:14:44.680

her legacy was already in the making, isn't that wild? I mean, it was, I dunno, that really hit me some type of way and so I think that's how it was powerful.

00:14:44.680 - 00:14:55.970

And I think one thing that this document reveals is really how she viewed herself and how she viewed Rice University, where she fit herself in Rice University, right?

00:14:55.970 - 00:15:09.360

She saw her potential as a teacher and a mentor already and she saw that Rice could help her get there. She didn't know how, she didn't know if they truly could, but she believed it

00:15:09.360 - 00:15:20.320

and I think that that was really powerful, yeah. I am still trying to figure out what other questions this document raises like, I'm still like trying to figure out,

00:15:20.320 - 00:15:36.370

but those are the things that really kind of hit for me. I'm taken by this first sentence of what I believe is the last paragraph because it opens up an inquiry when you...

00:15:36.370 - 00:15:49.100

This is her thinking about entering the university, "I choose to attend Rice University "because of its fine cultural and social background." And then she goes on,

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Of course I agree it is a phenomenally, confidently written essay. But when you compare some of the things she has to say later about her experience at the university,

00:16:04.730 - 00:16:17.830

with this great optimism, at least as expressed in this essay upon entering it, you then I think begin to help open up this whole world of exploration about the expectations

00:16:17.830 - 00:16:29.890

that black students bring to the university and then the opportunity to explore the experiences that they have here. Yeah, and how their experience at the university

00:16:29.890 - 00:16:39.530

matches up with their expectations 'cause I will definitely say, I had very kind of blind optimism attending Rice and then I got here and it was not what I expected,

00:16:39.530 - 00:16:50.160

but it wasn't terrible I just needed to re-adjust my expectations for sure. She closes by talking about her abilities but also about her potentiality

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which I think is a really evocative award at the end of the essay as well. Such a great writer already, just bet there. (chuckles)

00:16:58.550 - 00:17:06.790

Could you tell us a little bit more, I know you've mentioned a few times this exhibit that you worked on, that you featured this this document in,

00:17:07.800 - 00:17:15.800

what was that exhibit about? And can you tell us a little bit more about the work that went into it? Yeah.

00:17:15.800 - 00:17:27.040

The exhibit was essentially about... It's called, Between Decisions: From Co-Education To Integration, and it just kind of explores very kind of in a brief way,

00:17:27.040 - 00:17:36.940

the history of gender and race relations at Rice particularly around students of undergraduate study, but I do feature some graduate students and professors and staff members.

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And so that's essentially what it's about. I think the work that women was a lot of work (chuckles) it was for a one semester,

00:17:46.550 - 00:17:56.890

I just went to the Woodson every day. I looked at their information files and I just kind of poured through documents after documents after the documents after documents,

00:17:56.890 - 00:18:07.350

to kind of understand what it was like to be a woman at Rice, I mean, it's inception to now and from its inception especially to the establishment of the residential college system

00:18:07.350 - 00:18:19.440

and also what it was like to be black at Rice and to be a black woman at Rice, from integration around 1964 to 1975, that's where I kind of cut it off

00:18:19.440 - 00:18:29.720

because at that time was when I think it was Dr... What was her name? Dr. Brown? One of the former art historian professor

00:18:29.720 - 00:18:41.490

who became the Dean of Undergraduate Students. And then I forget his name, I blanked I'm so sorry. The man who became kind of, he was a psychology professor,

00:18:41.490 - 00:18:54.530

he kind of became the head of like advising or something like that and he... But it was a black man and a white woman kind of became these two leaders of the undergraduate section

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of The Rice University and that kind of was like, this very interesting meeting point. Because the original like years were like, '57 to excuse me, '64,

00:19:06.750 - 00:19:16.920

but I kind of wanted to expand beyond that a little bit to tell the story just a little bit more to kind of flush it out, yeah. That's wonderful and we'll try to get the link

00:19:16.920 - 00:19:27.200

to this exhibit in the chat for our attendees to look at. You're not the only researcher on the call who has gone into Woodson Research Center and spent a lot of time there

00:19:27.200 - 00:19:38.350

and discovered the many documents that the university holds in its special collections. I wanna turn to you, Andrew because I know that your research project

00:19:38.350 - 00:19:48.570

also involved some time spent in Woodson. Can you tell us a little bit about your research project and the document that you'd like to discuss today? Absolutely.

00:19:48.570 - 00:19:57.340

So my research project, I wanted to just learn more about who William Marsh Rice was and what's his connections to slavery might've been. It was actually born out of

00:19:57.340 - 00:20:07.800

one of your Civil War History classes, Dr. McDaniel and after class discussion about, well who was Rice? What was his role ? Originally I wanted to learn, was he a gun smuggler

00:20:07.800 - 00:20:16.960

and did he trade to both union confederacy? It was a very narrow set of questions. But through some conversation with you, it expanded to, well, who was he?

00:20:16.960 - 00:20:30.110

What role did he play in enslavement and even post civil war and into reconstruction? What was his role and into the founding of the university? So part of that research, I went into the Woodson

00:20:30.110 - 00:20:39.040

and I read as much as I could. Everything from Andrew Forest Muir, who was a former Rice student, Rice Professor, and wrote the pretty much only full length

00:20:39.040 - 00:20:49.020

Rice biography I could find, his research notes, as well as the original source documentation from William Marsh Rice. And one of those was his business ledgers,

00:20:49.020 - 00:21:02.320

this was a very large document, had all of the transactions that his business made and this specific document that I'm presenting from today, was from 1858 to 1859.

00:21:03.480 - 00:21:12.940

And this page is page 88, it detailed his accounts with I believe SS Ward might also be Jay's, we're getting into the old cursive again,

00:21:12.940 - 00:21:22.980

I know last week you talked about some of this is a little bit hard to decipher. On the left hand side of the screen is the debit's column, this is gonna show what he gave to the individual,

00:21:22.980 - 00:21:32.910

and on the right-hand side is the credits, this is gonna be what Rice received back. As opposed to how we look at businesses and ledgers now where it's your own business,

00:21:32.910 - 00:21:41.940

you have your debits which is like your assets and your credits which is your liabilities, it's flipped because this is presenting from Ward's perspective that Rice is holding.

00:21:41.940 - 00:21:54.320

So we can see the dates, we're looking at 1858 and if we scroll about halfway down this page and I'm not in control, so we're gonna have to look on the--

00:21:54.320 - 00:22:04.060

That's all right, I'm sorry, are you able to see... You're all able to see the ledger, right? Can you see it on the screen? Absolutely Okay there we are at least I'm not scrolling.

00:22:04.060 - 00:22:17.420

Yeah, sorry, that's me doing the scrolling, and I'm just struck as I'm looking at this document by... As you say, it's a very large page and only one page of a much larger book.

00:22:17.420 - 00:22:29.570

I think over 700 pages in this one ledger of business transactions that date from 1858 to 1859. So I think it's one of a couple of ledgers

00:22:29.570 - 00:22:42.330

in the Woodson Research Center that give us a glimpse into Rice's business dealings in a particular moment of time in 1858 and 1859. And there's a lot of very detailed markings on here

00:22:42.330 - 00:23:00.230

from dates on the left to dollar amounts on the right of each row, some of the markings refer to cash to interest, to groceries, they seem to have other annotations

00:23:00.230 - 00:23:10.560

to pages in different books that might give us more information about each one of these, but it's clearly a document that's been made by a very meticulous clerk.

00:23:10.560 - 00:23:24.140

And you can understand why when you see some of the dollar amounts here that this account alone, in this much larger book is talking about, $14,000 worth of transactions up through January, 1859.

00:23:26.800 - 00:23:39.320

And so, Andrew, what drew you to this specific page or excited you about reading this particular page in this very large ledger? So when I was first reading it,

00:23:39.320 - 00:23:48.280

I was kind of in a half asleep state. This is page 88 of several hundreds and was probably couple hours into my visit to the Woodson that day.

00:23:48.280 - 00:23:57.810

But then as we can see now in the middle of the right-hand side of the screen, the ledger entry from March 30th, I believe this year is 1959 or 1859

00:23:59.190 - 00:24:15.260

that says, "Negro property" and a dollar listing of 1450, $1,450. And it just hit me like a ton of bricks that this is a transaction that is following

00:24:15.260 - 00:24:29.940

the changing of hands of human beings and it just kind of shocked my system, pulled me back up to something that I was like, whoa, we just went from business transactions

00:24:29.940 - 00:24:37.440

to detailing of human life, and there's has been no change it's just a small, almost a footnote in the historical document.

00:24:37.440 - 00:24:45.400

And a pure banality of it is what really drew me to this, it was historical moment because we know that Rice held slaves,

00:24:45.400 - 00:24:55.080

we know that he was involved in this sort of business, I know last week in the Doc Talk, y'all about how enslaved individuals were held up as collateral for loans,

00:24:55.080 - 00:25:10.930

but to actually see this transaction listed out, that's just what really drew me to this document. I'm gonna make sure that it is shown and noticed and seen. Wow, well so what...

00:25:10.930 - 00:25:23.980

I think you've spoken a little bit to some of the questions that a document like this could help us raise about Rice's investments in enslaved people and how it fit into his larger business interests

00:25:23.980 - 00:25:37.650

and it maybe helps us to understand a little bit about the outcome of some the transactions and loans that we talked about last week. I know in your larger research project

00:25:37.650 - 00:25:47.070

which ended up producing an article that you published in the Rice Historical Review which is an undergraduate history journal here at Rice, you talked a little bit about

00:25:47.070 - 00:25:57.380

the fact that Rice was both a merchant who was providing groceries, but also in some ways functioned kind of like a banker. Can you say a little bit more

00:25:57.380 - 00:26:09.600

about that set of relationships that Rice was involved in and how that might relate to this particular page? Absolutely, so in my research, I was able to find from work other historians have done

00:26:09.600 - 00:26:19.320

that there wasn't really a cohesive banking system in both the republic and later the State of Texas. So merchants had to step into that role to help supply capital

00:26:20.330 - 00:26:30.160

and this speaks to just... It's further up the page on the left-hand side, we see that in addition to central goods their listings for cash being given to Ward,

00:26:30.160 - 00:26:41.300

so Rice lended some money, there we have one right there. And when coming to collect, one of the ways that were acceptable for collecting on this debt,

00:26:41.300 - 00:26:51.490

would be the changing hands of enslaved individuals. And so I think speaks to that that was a commonly accepted practice, it's one that Rice engaged in,

00:26:51.490 - 00:26:59.710

we have proof of it here on the page. Unfortunately, we don't have very much more information than that. Well that was my next question

00:26:59.710 - 00:27:12.490

is what sort of questions does a document like this raise for you that you think might warrant further research? So I walked away having a lot more questions than when I started.

00:27:12.490 - 00:27:24.260

We don't know who this individual or set of individuals was, all we have is a date and a dollar figure, I know that also in my research, I've looked at the slave schedules

00:27:24.260 - 00:27:34.380

that came out in the 1860 census and this was just one year later. Did this person appear on that list? Do we have any other documents supporting

00:27:34.380 - 00:27:41.060

giving more information? Do we know their name? Is there anything else that's preserved that tells us more about who they were?

00:27:41.060 - 00:27:50.410

Because all we have is one entry on one page with no other details. And that kind of raises the question about what history gets preserved,

00:27:50.410 - 00:27:58.910

this is economic history, it's a large business document that Rice would have stored very carefully would have kept his meticulous records for years and years

00:27:58.910 - 00:28:07.860

to come to show what his business dealings were, make sure if the counts were balanced and that is what got preserved. Not any more information,

00:28:07.860 - 00:28:18.330

I don't know if we have any other primary source documentation, new letters that Rice might've written saying, on March 30th, 1859, I ended up adding

00:28:18.820 - 00:28:31.190

another enslaved individual from this transaction. Is that a way that maybe we can find a name, can figure out what part they played in Rice's life. But that information may not be as well preserved,

00:28:31.190 - 00:28:43.260

'cause this is a very remarkably preserved document for being over 150 years old, which as side note, I'm very excited that Fondren has digitized the records. You may miss out on some of the both exhilaration

00:28:43.260 - 00:28:55.870

and absolute panic of thumbing through 150 plus year old documents, but the accessibility is great. But that is what we have left and what other information is out there

00:28:55.870 - 00:29:05.540

that we may not be getting, because that is the only history that's been preserved. I would love to fill on some of the social history gaps with more time and more resources

00:29:05.540 - 00:29:18.090

to try and find some of those supporting documents. Fantastic, well thank you for sharing that work and I think it does spotlight some of the differences in the documents we have,

00:29:18.090 - 00:29:30.370

last week, we talked about a mortgage deal that did list enslaved people's names but did not really specify how they related to Rice as ultimate economic investments.

00:29:30.370 - 00:29:40.720

Whereas this one tells us that but doesn't provide names as you point out. So part of our task and the difficulty is trying to triangulate a lot of these sources

00:29:40.720 - 00:29:49.710

and see if we can build out a fuller picture. When you were talking about falling asleep, thumbing through all of these ledgers, I was reminded a little bit of another presenter

00:29:49.710 - 00:30:00.170

that we have with us today, who's also been going through some pretty large record books. Indya, could you tell us a little bit about your work?

00:30:01.010 - 00:30:08.830

Yes. So for my project, I'm going through the previous general announcements, I'm starting from 1965 on.

00:30:08.830 - 00:30:20.090

So, yeah, as I can relate to some of what Andrew is saying 'cause I'm just scrolling through the General Announcements which look pretty similar year to year but then also keeping an eye out

00:30:20.090 - 00:30:35.220

for those little changes across the years. And so basically what I'm doing is I'm going through and looking to see courses that to me signal they're related to race or culture or ethnic groups

00:30:35.220 - 00:30:44.560

'cause there's like a variance of wording that professors have used throughout the years in describing this, so it's kind of looking for keywords,

00:30:44.560 - 00:30:56.320

but then I'm also trying to read between lines. And so as you can see on this slide, I provided just like a screenshot of what the outside of the General Announcements book looks like

00:30:56.320 - 00:31:07.570

as well as one section of sociology courses that I've been looking into, and so I've highlighted those courses as purple which I have different certainty levels

00:31:07.570 - 00:31:19.600

that I categorize them into because some classes are very explicitly related to race and others are like less so and so purple means that with very high certainty,

00:31:20.190 - 00:31:29.200

believe that the class is related to that and so a lot of these courses are in the same departments year to year but it can vary a little bit.

00:31:29.200 - 00:31:40.800

And so Sociology has like consistently been one of those departments where I find classes related to race and so... Oh yes, I have some transitions if you can.

00:31:43.110 - 00:31:55.860

Yes, so these are the categories that I'm with so far, it could change as I keep going through general announcements as the years go on, it becomes wider and wider

00:31:55.860 - 00:32:08.580

like there're groups as in, instead of being... Like grouping people into very broad categories, those have been broken down throughout the years, so recently I added a South Asian category

00:32:08.580 - 00:32:18.360

because previously classes related to India and such were just... They weren't explicitly said, there was a lot of Asian Studies and history of Asia,

00:32:18.360 - 00:32:29.980

whereas now I'm seeing classes of Culture and Society in India. And so that's been added and then Black Americans was also recently added one

00:32:29.980 - 00:32:41.460

and as you can see, I initially going into the project was thinking like, okay, I'll just be able to find like it will explicit... I'll these like very normal categories

00:32:41.460 - 00:32:53.160

that we see in like everyday life of what racial group it would belong to, but that's not as easy and especially in these early years of 1960s and 70s,

00:32:53.160 - 00:33:04.770

because the wording that professors choose to use are pretty different, and even though one thing I'm curious about is, if I were to look at the syllabi

00:33:04.770 - 00:33:15.560

of some of these classes if those are still available, if that would provide me with more context on like what groups these are actually... The classes actually I ended up touching on,

00:33:15.560 - 00:33:27.540

because for example, the category Meso-America, Peru, early civilized societies, that to me is very broad and also narrow because there are several classes throughout the years

00:33:27.540 - 00:33:38.100

where this term is explicitly used, but it's not descriptive enough for me to then break those down into their own respective categories.

00:33:38.100 - 00:33:48.190

And so that's something that I think looking more into what that class was actually like and how the professors structured it, would allow me to do.

00:33:52.360 - 00:34:02.150

Yes. So then here's just a screenshot of my database for now, the spreadsheet that I've been working off of. And so there are several categories in it

00:34:03.410 - 00:34:14.100

that I've chosen to include so that for future research, it can be as useful as possible. So I've chosen to include the department that it belongs to, the course level, the professor,

00:34:14.100 - 00:34:24.820

the course title, the course description, and then in those first three check boxes, those are the levels of certainty, so I have high certainty, medium certainty

00:34:24.820 - 00:34:35.140

and low certainty that the course touches on race or culture or an ethnic group. And so, those departments like anthropology and sociology

00:34:36.160 - 00:34:46.830

and history tend to have a lot of high certainty courses, where there are departments such as architecture or political science where they have medium or low certainty.

00:34:47.810 - 00:34:59.240

And then I have just a black line to sort of give myself some division with all those check boxes, and then I go into breaking down into those categories that I showed on the previous slide.

00:35:00.360 - 00:35:10.880

And so as I'm working through adding more categories and such, and it's definitely a thing where I have to take a mental break in the middle

00:35:10.880 - 00:35:21.420

to be sure I'm not missing anything because just going through GAs, it would be easy for something to fall between the cracks and so I think that was something that I learned early on

00:35:21.420 - 00:35:34.290

as I was working through multiple GAs, I would go back and realize, oh no, I assumed that this department wasn't gonna have any courses and like they do and so as time has gone on,

00:35:34.290 - 00:35:43.900

I've gotten better at developing sort of a scheduling system for myself to make sure that I'm touching every course and also being sure that they belong in the categories I put them in.

00:35:48.570 - 00:36:00.100

And so here are some major developments that I've had so far. So I was really excited in 1969, so that's for about four five years into General announcements,

00:36:00.100 - 00:36:12.230

there was a course that touched on specifically Black Americans, which was when I added that category, and right now I'm in the late 1970s and this is still the only class

00:36:12.230 - 00:36:24.490

that is touching on black Americans specifically. And it's a history course and so this was really interesting to me because courses definitely do vary

00:36:24.490 - 00:36:34.870

in how long their course descriptions are and like what they go into and for me, in knowing if a course is related to race, I look for a lot of key words in the descriptions.

00:36:34.870 - 00:36:43.530

However, for this course the only thing that signal to me that it was related to race was the course title itself. The description is like very bare

00:36:43.530 - 00:36:54.800

and doesn't really touch on what exactly the course is going to be going into in relation. And I also thought it was interesting that some course they require,

00:36:54.800 - 00:37:05.030

you have to have prerequisites, you have to be a certain year to take the course, but for this course, it requires the permission of the professor no matter what

00:37:05.030 - 00:37:15.600

or it just doesn't do what goes into the decision to allow someone to take the course. And so I thought that was really interesting, and this was also a course where I feel

00:37:15.600 - 00:37:29.620

looking at the syllabus would provide a lot of more details and knowledge and just how the course was structured, and who was taking it. And then also in the early 1970s,

00:37:29.620 - 00:37:38.790

this Architecture course popped up which I thought was really interesting because in the early years it was definitely just the same disciplines over and over teaching

00:37:38.790 - 00:37:46.750

the same courses over and over, and so architecture was a department that I definitely would scroll through and there would be no queries

00:37:46.750 - 00:37:58.450

and that was not surprising to me. So when this came up, I thought that was interesting and so I've highlighted the section of it that am letting you know that it was related to race,

00:37:58.450 - 00:38:09.850

because they say minority problems and I think that's interesting because I think today a lot of people would acknowledge that, in architecture a lot goes into making those decisions,

00:38:09.850 - 00:38:19.550

and a lot of that is related to the racial demographics of the area that you're in and the socioeconomic levels and such and so I thought that that was really interesting

00:38:19.550 - 00:38:32.490

that this course was touching on that in the 1970s. Well, it's interesting too and then that one talks about the format a series of visiting lectures on these subjects,

00:38:32.490 - 00:38:49.890

So then it raises the question too of who might been the lecturer on that subject who came in. And so here, I've included some pictures of professors who have consistently popped up on my database

00:38:50.370 - 00:39:00.910

with teaching these courses. And as you can see, it's like the disciplines that I would expect anthropology, history, and there've been a lot more political science courses

00:39:01.900 - 00:39:11.830

as I've gotten into the late 60s, early 70s. And so for now, I'm just still working on going through those announcements and categorizing all of those courses and finding them.

00:39:12.750 - 00:39:22.810

And then after I complete that, I want to go back because I feel that with a project like this, my mindset has sort of shifted like slightly

00:39:22.810 - 00:39:30.770

as I'm working through it, because it's just natural for... In the beginning and versus the middle and the end of your thresholds

00:39:30.770 - 00:39:45.730

for how you consider courses to be will shift slightly especially as courses become more specific and such. And so I consider doing that as I was working through it but I feel that it'd be easy for me

00:39:45.730 - 00:39:57.260

to miscategorize something if I'm consistently working through it and considering a lot of courses repeat themselves, I want to be sure that I have all of those courses set

00:39:57.260 - 00:40:15.070

before I go back and redo that and so, yeah, that's where I'm at now. So I love hearing implicitly and explicitly from our researchers about their attention to methodology.

00:40:15.070 - 00:40:29.110

And we've talked some about the range of research and disciplinary experiences that these researchers have brought to the project and kind of jokingly about the importance

00:40:29.110 - 00:40:44.400

of history in this. But what's also clearly evident is that, is how interdisciplinary this enterprise is and should be, and you can just see in people's work

00:40:45.370 - 00:41:01.240

they're bringing what they've learned and experience from other disciplines and really in enriching the project. We're rolling toward the end-

00:41:01.240 - 00:41:10.510

Okay. And so- We have one last presenter, but I wanna remind all of our attendees as well that if you have a question about any of the presentations

00:41:10.510 - 00:41:20.770

there is a Q&A feature at the bottom, so you can click on that if you'd like to ask a question and we'll leave some time for that at the end. But George I wanna hear a little bit more from you

00:41:20.770 - 00:41:32.920

about you told us in your introduction how you started on this research project in the spring and then you moved this summer into researching a lot more about a particular professor

00:41:32.920 - 00:41:44.980

so sort of drilling down in the ways that Indya is hoping to eventually to be able to do once we identify key faculty members. So, who did you decide to research

00:41:44.980 - 00:41:56.180

and which document have you brought today? Right, definitely. So to start off the document I have for everybody is a cover letter of sorts of John Willis Slaughter,

00:41:56.180 - 00:42:09.180

who was a ultimately a professor here at Rice. Here we have the cover letter itself and he's sending it to President Edgar Odell Lovett. So Rice's very first president is receiving this letter

00:42:09.180 - 00:42:19.890

and Dr. Slaughter is applying for a professorship of Sociology. And so that's some background before I get into the nits of the document itself.

00:42:19.890 - 00:42:31.890

As I had mentioned earlier, I was researching... I spent the summer researching eugenics at Rice University, the history and legacy of eugenics. And some background in my course with Dr. McDaniel,

00:42:31.890 - 00:42:41.180

we read a book from Craig Steven Wilder called 'Ebony and Ivy.' And so in that novel, we talked a lot about or he mentions how elite universities in America

00:42:41.180 - 00:42:51.330

use their academic resources to investigate all kinds of sciences, including eugenics. And for those in the audience who do not know what eugenics is,

00:42:51.330 - 00:43:03.750

the dictionary definition would go somewhere around, study of how to arrange reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable.

00:43:03.750 - 00:43:18.670

And so in the 20th century that often led into some very, Nazi ideologies concerning race and what was a desirable trait and what races had desirable traits.

00:43:18.670 - 00:43:28.800

And so I started off by just being shocked that a school like Rice, I hadn't even thought about it, but it makes sense the more you think about it that a school like Rice would have likely had published

00:43:28.800 - 00:43:37.720

research contributing to this at the time deemed scientific field. And so this being said, I wanted to see exactly what was the school I attend?

00:43:37.720 - 00:43:47.880

What was their legacy in this? And so Dr. Slaughter came to my attention and under my focus because he previously, as you'll see in this cover letter,

00:43:47.880 - 00:44:01.920

was very connected with the eugenics circles, intellectual circles. Okay, so what we have here is unlike the the application that we started out with the cursive handwriting.

00:44:01.920 - 00:44:17.410

This is a typescript letter from 1919, it's on letterhead from the Community Councils Of National Defense, which Slaughter at the time was a director of in New York, New York.

00:44:17.410 - 00:44:28.660

But as you mentioned, it's addressed to President Lovett, and this if you will look down at the bottom, it leads today in Woodson Research Center in the Lovett Presidential Papers,

00:44:28.660 - 00:44:40.930

so we have it because it was by Professor Lovett. And what struck you about this document giving your interest or made you excited to find this particular source?

00:44:40.930 - 00:44:52.540

Right, so when I was starting to look into Dr Slaughter's career, what his legacy was, what his influenced on the campus was, I found that the most helpful thing to do

00:44:52.540 - 00:45:04.630

was to build a timeline, and so fortunately for me, this being his cover letter, he really did go through a brief history, not every day, not every little piece of information I needed,

00:45:04.630 - 00:45:18.280

but I got a nice, concise timeline. If you look in the first paragraph here, he talks about where he was born in Alabama, where he got his PhD at the University Of Michigan,

00:45:18.280 - 00:45:28.700

and then also other universities that he was affiliated with. And so actually, having studied him more in depth, I learned that there's so much more in between these lines

00:45:28.700 - 00:45:38.600

that he could have added, but he didn't and so that's what made me realize everything he added here, must've had some kind of significance to him. And so if you start looking

00:45:38.600 - 00:45:48.720

in the second and third paragraphs, which focused on references, people, professors he's worked with other academics that vouch for him. The focus on the bottom of the second paragraph

00:45:48.720 - 00:46:02.020

is with Sir Francis Galton, he writes, "I was also associated with Francis Galton "in his eugenics work for some years before his death." And so the first question

00:46:02.020 - 00:46:10.410

and that when I read this whole document, the only thing I could think of right after was, okay, so what was this work with Francis Galton who is also deemed the father of eugenics?

00:46:10.410 - 00:46:24.450

So this isn't just someone who was well known in the field but he was actually credited with inventing the entire concept and really spreading it in the late 1800s and the 19th, sorry the 20th century.

00:46:27.110 - 00:46:34.300

Wow, so yeah, I mean, it's... He's dropping some names here, but he's he's also talking about how, when he was in England,

00:46:34.300 - 00:46:46.980

he was associated with the circles of scholars who were interested in eugenics work. So what questions do you think this sort of answers for you and what questions might it raise for you after you read it

00:46:46.980 - 00:46:53.890

that you're continuing to work on as you're doing this research? Right, so I definitely just touched on... The timeline itself was really helpful

00:46:53.890 - 00:47:01.240

and that was one of the questions that was immediately resolved more or less by this great document and so I was able to go through that

00:47:01.240 - 00:47:10.210

and stick some of the dates I had on my own personal timeline I was working on and have that more cleared out. But then obviously if it was a really good document,

00:47:10.210 - 00:47:18.250

if it really peaked my curiosity, it should have raised more questions at the end of the day. And so ultimately what I had found from this document after reading it all...

00:47:18.250 - 00:47:25.190

I mean, as Dr. McDaniel, just highlighted so much but it's just kind of these name listings and I'm sure that those are all interesting people and I'm sure that they all have something

00:47:25.190 - 00:47:32.740

to say about Dr. Slaughter, but I can't really reach out to them, I could look their works, but the thing that caught my eye first and foremost

00:47:32.740 - 00:47:43.410

was this idea of him with Francis Galton in England doing eugenics work and so I was thinking, okay, so how... What exactly was he talking about? Because obviously he discusses his eugenics work

00:47:43.410 - 00:47:54.040

but he only mentioned it by name, doesn't go into any details whatsoever and so what I was looking into is Slaughter with British Eugenic Societies and what did find?

00:47:54.040 - 00:48:05.640

And I found that he was working with the British Eugenics Education Society which was a break-off splinter group of another larger like the what today would be called,

00:48:05.640 - 00:48:17.700

like the Galton Institute which is still in function and still promoting eugenics today. That organization he worked with, he became quite involved with it

00:48:17.700 - 00:48:27.400

right before he came to Rice and so one thing that I have to look at now is, how did that work if it did transfer or translate into what he did at Rice

00:48:27.400 - 00:48:37.220

or why perhaps he was hired at Rice in the first place, Was it because of his work in this field? And so this raises several questions just about his involvement in eugenics.

00:48:37.220 - 00:48:47.780

And so I as coming into this project, want to research about the legacy of eugenics at Rice found from this document, a character who is more involved in this

00:48:47.780 - 00:49:00.540

and would be better to look into on a more isolated level to understand the specifics of one person's work- Right At this university. That's fascinating

00:49:00.540 - 00:49:15.050

and I'm struck by this is my historian brain kicking in to see that where this letter was filed, in the Rice archives is in box 57 Folder 1 of the Lovett Presidential Papers

00:49:15.050 - 00:49:27.420

which was a folder titled Civics and Philanthropy. And I think you've found that Professor Slaughter taught a lot of courses in sociology, but also specifically in philanthropy

00:49:27.420 - 00:49:37.020

and philanthropic work at Rice. And so, one question this raises is, for this period of time, what was the relationship that scholars in this field saw

00:49:37.020 - 00:49:47.690

between eugenics and philanthropy? How are those two things connected? And then to see that this was addressed to President Lovett and then his papers,

00:49:47.690 - 00:49:58.220

it does raise the question too of, why Slaughter might have thought mentioning this work would appeal to President Lovett and whether President Lovett would have noticed that line

00:49:58.220 - 00:50:07.840

or if it would have carried any weight for him to see that he had worked with Francis Galton. Do you have any thoughts along those lines? Right, well, the first thing that I was thinking about

00:50:07.840 - 00:50:20.500

when you had mentioned that was this idea of the fields that he was studying or teaching here at Rice which is Philanthropy and Sociology, and frankly both of them have changed significantly

00:50:20.500 - 00:50:31.140

since Dr. Slaughter was here and if he was alive today walking around at Rice at the Sociology Department, or I took a course in philanthropy with the CCL

00:50:31.140 - 00:50:41.370

actually the last semester. And both of them, I'm sure he would be very shocked at how the focus has changed and I'm sure that if maybe perhaps Indya looking at the GAs

00:50:41.370 - 00:50:51.360

of many courses would see something similar to that and this idea that even though these departments or fields have one focus, they often do shift and so that's the first thing I have to say about that.

00:50:51.360 - 00:51:05.010

And now the next thing is, if you look... Parts of my research project that I've figured out was that Dr. Lovett, President Lovett when he took over here at Rice,

00:51:05.010 - 00:51:15.880

he was actually also interested in this field of eugenics and he had stated... He put eugenics right all alongside all the other scientific fields like engineering and physics

00:51:15.880 - 00:51:27.840

or anything like that. And he held that with just as equal merit and standing, and so he was saying that Rice as his institution was going to become such a leader in all these

00:51:27.840 - 00:51:37.710

scientific fields, including eugenics. And so when I was doing research, before I encountered Dr. Slaughter, when I was doing research about all the professors at Rice

00:51:37.710 - 00:51:51.970

who had involvement with eugenics, I realized that Dr. Slaughter was definitely there in part due to his involvement in this field because of President Lovett's explicit desire

00:51:51.970 - 00:52:02.820

to improve the body of research in that field and then also his goals for Rice, how Rice was set up, whether would that be the Biology Department,

00:52:02.820 - 00:52:11.570

whether would that be the Sociology Department, and their goals for these departments at first, let's say in the beginning of the 20th century when it was sort of Rice Institute.

00:52:11.570 - 00:52:23.860

And I think that all of these factors really show that, first of all, how our institution and these departments at our institutions have evolved over time in itself, but also how, if you look at that change,

00:52:23.860 - 00:52:38.860

how starkly different it often was from a modern day curriculum. Thank you so much for sharing that research. Dr. Byrd do we have any questions from the audience?

00:52:38.860 - 00:52:48.390

Do we have? And I've populated, we've got a lot of excellent comments as well and so if you look in the Q&A you'll see comments

00:52:48.390 - 00:53:03.600

on the work of our panelists. One question about eugenics that has just popped up is how generally accepted was eugenics as a discipline in the US at this time?

00:53:03.600 - 00:53:15.620

That's definitely a great question and in my findings, I've found that, it's interesting because it seems that World War II was the time and date when eugenics became less accepted

00:53:15.620 - 00:53:29.530

culturally although there was... It never became erased from either the American medical profession or the academic profession. And so I think it really genuinely evolved

00:53:29.530 - 00:53:46.230

into a different form of racism almost, but I think that after World War II, after the atrocities committed against Jews and other minorities in Europe occurred,

00:53:46.230 - 00:54:00.660

people became less gung-ho about eugenics and less likely to come out and support something like that. Although I would say that before that time, for example in some of the things I've read from Dr. Slaughter

00:54:00.660 - 00:54:12.970

and other professors, they do discuss this idea of positive eugenics versus negative eugenics. And so one thing that these people were focused on was not necessarily the like euthanasia or slaughter

00:54:12.970 - 00:54:24.550

or genocide of people that they think are undesirable, and some of them were focused on say, just promoting as some people would say is the they're white, they have white supremacy

00:54:24.550 - 00:54:40.210

and they believe that white people should prosper. And so a big argument wasn't always let's kill everybody or let's prevent other people's traits from passing on. Regardless it's a very racist history,

00:54:40.210 - 00:54:58.620

and I do believe that after World War II, it did shift into a different form of not as direct, not as open discussion of sterilization or positive traits. Professor Lee has as proffered a response

00:54:59.770 - 00:55:18.950

in the Q&A as well and that can be helpful. And we've had several examples of that in the Q&A so thanks so much for folks providing direction for the task force's present and future research

00:55:19.030 - 00:55:32.120

and for the work of the scholars on the panel right now. We're gonna wind up in a minute but I wanna underline something that's been implicit in every one of these presentations.

00:55:32.120 - 00:55:47.400

It's clear that we're in the debt of our panelists but it's also clear that all of us, right? Are in the debt of the Woodson Research Center at the Fondren Library who are just doing tremendous work

00:55:47.770 - 00:56:00.080

and especially a tremendous work under the present circumstances where it's a lot more difficult to get access to the material in making these primary sources available

00:56:00.080 - 00:56:13.900

to folks who are interested. And maybe we could hear from the panelists about, would you recommend to students who are here now, what did you gain from this kind of research

00:56:13.900 - 00:56:27.500

and as you look back on on doing this and some of you are still very much in the middle of it. Have you learned the most from doing this of archival work? I can go.

00:56:28.660 - 00:56:39.480

I found it to be absolutely one of the most valuable experiences during my Rice career. I can't believe it's still being talked about to this day. 'Cause when I was doing it,

00:56:39.480 - 00:56:50.410

it was my first time doing research, I didn't... I knew it was important, I knew it was absolutely vital, but I wasn't sure if anyone else would agree with me because the task force didn't exist

00:56:50.410 - 00:57:00.320

at the time I was doing my research. So I was like, maybe people will care maybe but people do care and they always cared. And I think it was when I finally presented

00:57:00.320 - 00:57:13.300

them with all of these a bunch of information and I was helped by Miss Amanda and Miss Rebecca, that honestly it really changed the game. And I think that I would not have been able

00:57:13.300 - 00:57:20.320

to do this research but what's then obviously because they have all the materials, but also they guided me because I was coming on boarder as an Art Major,

00:57:20.320 - 00:57:31.430

they guided me on how to actually conduct a research, how to like create a narrative, how to handle the objects and the materials, but also handle the stories of people's lives,

00:57:31.430 - 00:57:41.750

that was powerful to me too. So yeah, definitely would recommend you ever stepping in or consulting our scholarship.rice.edu and all of their abundance of information

00:57:41.750 - 00:57:52.480

and documents for sure. I'd like to echo much of the same. They were an incredible help and what a great resource that the university has not just on university history,

00:57:52.480 - 00:58:00.120

but they also have archival material on the greater of Houston area as well. I know I also did some light research for another class on Sugarland.

00:58:00.120 - 00:58:08.240

So I'd really recommend for students to take advantage of what we have on campus, both the knowledge of the people working in the Woodson as well as the documents themselves.

00:58:08.240 - 00:58:17.540

I mean as far as the research goes also probably the highlight of my wife's career, and thank you for the opportunity to get that started Dr. McDaniel.

00:58:19.130 - 00:58:28.700

Well, I'm so glad to hear that. And this is definitely the highlight of my a week to hear from all of you and get to see some people I haven't seen in a while

00:58:28.700 - 00:58:39.630

and just hear these fantastic presentations. We're so grateful to each of you for doing the work in the first place and then also being willing to share your knowledge

00:58:39.630 - 00:58:48.400

and your insights with us and our audience. I wanna remind those of you who are in attendance one last time, that on Monday, the task force is going to be hosting

00:58:48.400 - 00:58:57.560

its next public event, at noon. You can find information about it on our website, taskforce.rice.edu and we hope to see you again next week

00:58:57.560 - 00:59:02.450

for our next Friday Doc Talk. Until then, stay safe, be well and have a great weekend.