Resources related to Slavery and Racial Injustice at Rice University: Topics and the related documents

It is possible find evidence of William Marsh Rice's slave ownership by looking at:

• census records, such as the 1860 record noted here.  Census records 80 years and older are public record, accessible online from the National Archives.
• WMR's early business ledger, such as those online here, and in particular the 1859-1862 ledger, in which Rice hires out and hires enslaved people (pg. 256), and his business with the Confederacy (pgs. 530-531)
• deed records which show transfer of property, available in libraries such as Clayton Genealogical Library, and in county records.

There is a wide variety of possible sources for this topic.

The entire run of Campanile yearbooks are online. Some years include events with participants in blackface. For example:

• 1966 Campanile pg 204 shows Hanszen Minstrel Show
• 1988 Campanile pg 135 (PDF page 138) shows Baker College partygoers in blackface

The Rice Thresher newspaper can be explored for evidence of racist activity over time, as well as protests against such activity.

• “Slave Auctions” in 1980s as fundraising for Beer Bike were announced in the Thresher in 1980s. BSU students met with Rice University President Malcolm Gillis in the 1990s to express opposition to this.

College records document public parties over time, college governance and policies. These are not generally publicly online but are open for research.

It is hard to say what WMR would have thought of these questions. The records we have of WMR are very business oriented, and do not include personal journals or even many personal letters. We are more able to see what he did, than what he thought.

An example of this lack of clarity can be observed in the Charter Trial Records, where participants try to discover if WMR intended to found vocational school or a research centered school, and the record is not clear.

A rare example of seeing WMR's personal views would be the letter from Rice to Albert Patrick on Aug. 3, 1900 stating that he wanted to be cremated and interred in Wisconsin with his wife. Early Rice Institute Papers, Box 51, Folder 4, call # UA 101, Woodson Research Center.

This is a very difficult question, given that records were not created or maintained on this topic for many years.

Some helpful documents include: 

• “Rice University students not of the white race,” Box 12, Folder 7, Pres. Pitzer papers, call # UA083
• Chandler Davidson “Black Pioneers at Rice University,” c. early 2000s, Folder 10, Box 5, Chandler Davidson Papers, UA 189

• Black Student Association records in our archives start at 1972 and are only 2 boxes in size. See finding aid at http://archives.library.rice.edu/repositories/2/resources/1040
• Black Student Union. The Knowledge c. 1991, Box 5, Folder 7, Chandler Davidson Papers, call # UA 189, Woodson Research Center, Fondren Library.

Documents in the archive show that starting in 1922, a committee consisting of President Lovett, William M. Rice, Jr. (nephew of WMR, brother to Benjamin Botts Rice), and Benjamin B. Rice (nephew of WMR, brother to WMR Jr.)  began to formulate plans for disposition of WMR's ashes, which to that point had been stored in New York but not interred.  We know about the design of the statue, but not exactly where in the pedestal the ashes were placed.

On 28 November 1928, the Board of Trustees appropriated $25,000 for the memorial, commissioning John Angel as sculptor and Cram and Ferguson as architects.

May 22, 1930, the ashes were interred in the pedestal, and on 8 June 1930, the statue was dedicated as part of commencement.
The inscription has been transcribed and translated.

The statue has become a focal point of protest in 2020.

The Racial Geography Project (part of Task Force) looks at events (Rice and Slavery, Events on Campus, Land and the Environment, Construction of Physical Campus / Starting to Identify Workers) that have happened on campus (when and where) to show visually as a map.