Slavery, Segregation, and the Second Founding of Rice University by Alexander X. Byrd and W. Caleb McDaniel documents the efforts of Black students, staff, and faculty to survive and desegregate an institution built on anti-Blackness. Specifically, the authors ask, “How was a university that was not opened until the twentieth century connected to the history of slavery? Conversely, how did the history of slavery and segregation continue to shape a university even after integration had begun?” (p. xviii). The authors find that Rice University was founded on enslavement via William Rice, who was both an enslaver and a businessman who profited off other enslavers. The Rice Institute grew into a university rooted in White supremacy, sustained by segregation and racism. This exclusionary foundation at Rice meant that the university’s desegregation, executed by Black students, staff, faculty, and Houston locals, constituted a second founding. Because desegregation challenged the very framework of the institution, refounding Rice was, and remains, a difficult project led by Black campus leaders.
One of the book’s strongest features is the decision to foreground African Americans from the first page of the introduction through the last page of the conclusion. Earl W. Rand, Bettie Leonard, Sallie Wicks, Jack Shelton, Henry Allen Bullock, Raymond Johnson, Linda Faye Williams, Rodrigo Barnes, Kendall Vining, Milkessa Gaga, Shifa Rahman, Velma McAffee Williams, two enslaved individuals named Merinda and Captain, many others “played vital roles in educating Rice students, faculty, and administrators about the ways that race worked to structure their shared world” (p. 7). Their stories are well researched, as Byrd and McDaniel draw on a wealth of sources from campus archives as well as Houston, state, and national collections. They also draw extensively on newspapers and include several oral histories, either found in archival collections or conducted by the authors. While William Rice is included in the text, most mentions of him only appear in the first two chapters. Slavery, Segregation and the Second Founding of Rice University is predominantly a Black history book.
The original concept for the book emerged from a taskforce that, as a member of the Universities Studying Slavery, was studying Rice’s roots in enslavement. The first half of the book, split into two sections—“Before the Founding” and “The First Founding”—reflects the basic thrust of this project, illustrating the ways that Rice University was founded on enslavement via William Rice. Repeatedly, this part corrects errors in the historical narrative regarding basic facts, such as by providing a more accurate picture of the number of enslaved people that William Rice owned. Chapter 1 introduces readers to Merinda, one of the people Rice enslaved to facilitate his rise as one of the wealthiest Houstonites. The revenue he earned as an enslaver constituted his endowment to the Rice Institute and its founding mission of educating poor White students. Rice’s commitment to the Confederacy and the context of his will are the subject of chapter 2. Written by a confederate sympathizer and in an era of expanding Black educational opportunities, the will and Rice’s financial allocation for the education of low-income White youth rested on an intentionally racial strategy: He was protesting education for formerly enslaved people, such as Captain.
Chapter 3 opens “The First Founding” with Rice Institute leaders’ vision of building the future university in the predominantly Black Fourth Ward neighborhood, including on land that Sallie Wicks bought and passed on to her daughter, Bettie Leonard. Byrd and McDaniel illustrate “that the Rice Institute did not float above the many events and decisions that built a Jim Crow city,” (p. 100) but that university leaders actively built segregation into Houston. Chapter 4 highlights the ways that Black employees on the Rice Institute’s campus navigated a deeply racist workplace. For example, Jack Shelton, a Black athletic trainer and groundskeeper, faced Jim Crow policies on his way to work and a campus culture that enjoyed degrading him with slurs and caricatures. This second part concludes by documenting events that foreshadowed Rice’s desegregation, such as a lecture by Dr. Henry Bullock from Prairie View A&M and athletic competitions against Black teams. Though still a segregated university, these events were some of the first moments where Black students and educators were invited to campus.
The second half of the book narrates efforts to desegregate Rice University. Chapter 6 introduces Raymond Johnson, the first Black student at Rice, whose experience matriculating as a math PhD student was marred by the university trustees’ unwillingness to desegregate without legal approval. The trustees stalled desegregation, claiming that the charter’s mandate to educate White students required legal approval to allow Black students’ enrollment. His status at Rice was in limbo as administrators patiently waited to see how legal battles over the charter’s language and trustees’ authority would pan out. The undergraduate students who came after Johnson, including Linda Faye Williams, are the subject of chapter 7. The authors show that “Rice’s earliest efforts to integrate were not spirited or concerted, but sluggish and conflicted,” and despite some progressive White faculty’s efforts, Black students were isolated and not provided adequate supports. Chapter 8 highlights the Black Student Union (BSU) throughout the 1970s, with particular emphasis on the ways it navigated bringing change to campus. As Black students, including Rodrigo Barnes, pushed for changes, such as hiring more Black faculty and creating a physical space for Black students on campus, they were met with token support. Still, the BSU did successfully convince administrators of the need for Black spaces and faculty.
The final section of the book charts modern-day efforts to fully realize the second founding of Rice University. Similar to the BSU in the 1970s, Black students in 2020, led by Kendall Vining and Milkessa Gaga, demanded that the university hire more Black faculty and provide additional resources to support Black students, such as a designated space for them to gather, demonstrating the limitations of desegregation and need for further change and improvements. Chapter 10 follows the movement, led by Shifa Rahman, to physically decenter the statue of William Rice on campus. The conversations and plans to move the statue, Byrd and McDaniel contend, reflect Black students’ efforts to make campus more inclusive and the university’s willingness to grapple with its history. This ongoing process of desegregation is an effort that Black students, staff, and faculty continue leading. These concluding chapters invite readers to consider what would constitute a complete second founding of the university: What structures, policies, and practices remain in need of change?
Slavery, Segregation, and the Second Founding of Rice University is an insightful and thorough treatment of Rice University’s history. Narrated through the lives of Black people, the book challenges the university’s William Rice-centric narrative and demands credit where credit is due for the institution’s second founders. The book provides a well-crafted example of an institutional history through the lens of people excluded from and then marginalized within that institution, and will be useful for scholars of race, higher education, and the South.
