Rice marks 40 years of African-American undergraduates

Academic freedom
Rice marks 40 years of African-American undergraduates

BY B.J. ALMOND
Rice News staff

”Most of us are here today standing on the shoulders of true heroes,” said Jeffery Rose ’77, one of several alumni who participated in a panel discussion last week about black students’ experience at Rice.

He thanked those heroes for leading the way after Rice trustees overturned the university’s charter ban on nonwhite students in the mid-1960s. Among those he acknowledged were Raymond Johnson ’69, the first black student to earn a degree (Ph.D.) from Rice; Ted Henderson ’70 and the late Linda Faye Williams ’70, the first two black undergraduates to graduate from Rice; and Stahle Vincent ’72, the first black to play football at Rice.

JEFF FITLOW

Graduate student Talithia Williams was among the many current and former students commemorating the 40th anniversary of the matriculation of the first black students to earn degrees at Rice.

The panel discussion was one of three held Feb. 20 to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the matriculation of the first blacks who earned a bachelor’s degree from Rice.

Participants on the first panel reminisced about Rice at the time of desegregation and shared anecdotes about society’s discrimination against blacks, including an incident in which a black student from the University of Texas was refused service by the Rice Hotel in downtown Houston until UT administrators demanded that he be treated like the white classmates with whom he was traveling. 

Johnson pointed out that the Rice trustees made their own decision to allow black students to enroll, unlike UT, where black students had to sue to effect the change.

Chandler Davidson, the Radoslav A. Tsanoff Professor Emeritus of Public Affairs and Sociology, remembered how few black students were enrolled at Rice when he joined the faculty in 1966.  ”It must have been an intensely lonely place for them at times,” he said. Davidson encouraged Williams to go to graduate school in political science, and he still has a 50-page research paper that she wrote in 1969 for his course on political sociology.

JEFF FITLOW

Trustee Teveia Rose Barnes ’75 welcomed guests at a private luncheon where Melissa Fitzsimmons Kean ’96, centennial historian, spoke about the history of racial desegregation of Rice University.

Karen Kossie-Chernyshev ’85 read an ode to the hired help. She recalled that after Rice was desegregated, the only other black people that black students were likely to encounter on campus were those employed in food service or the maintenance department. ”They provided many black students with the encouragement needed to complete their studies,” said Kossie-Chernyshev, now an associate professor of history at Texas Southern University.

John Boles, the William Pettus Hobby Professor of History, said raising the consciousness of whites about civil rights was ”painfully slow.”

Although the number of black students at Rice has increased since the ’60s, only 6.3 percent of the current undergraduates are black.

Senior Kenitra Brown, who will graduate in May, said Rice needs more black students and faculty. ”The best tool this university has for recruiting blacks students is its current black students, faculty, staff and alumni,” she said. During the panel discussion on black students’ experience at Rice, Brown said it is ”difficult for black students to just be students, without having to handle the burden of being called ‘tokens,’ considered less intelligent, stereotyped, profiled or exploited.” Black students are ”stretched thin,” and the same students end up planning various events around campus, she said. Brown has seen an increased effort from the administration to communicate with black students. ”The university recognizes our voices matter,” she said.

”That’s why students say we’ve come a long way but we have a long way to go,” said panel moderator Cathi Clack, assistant dean of students and director of multicultural affairs at Rice.

Panelist Alex Byrd ’90, assistant professor of history, said these issues are being considered by President David Leebron’s Minority Council and the new Task Force on Diversity (see story on page 3). ”What worries me is that there are students I have a great deal of respect for who are not satisfied,” Byrd said. ”That’s what needs to be addressed.”

The final panel discussion focused on the future of racial diversity at Rice. Tamara Siler ’87, senior associate director and coordinator of minority recruitment at Rice, said one of Rice’s most successful efforts to compete for the very talented black students who are also sought by all the other universities is the Vision program. Rice helps pay travel expenses for select students to visit the campus on Vision weekend to interact with faculty, alumni and students. ”Rice makes a very strong commitment to having this in February because we want to be the first people out of the gate to meet these [highly recruited] students,” Siler said.

Larry Payne, president and CEO of Houston’s SEARCH (Service of the Emergency Aid Resource Center for the Homeless), said diversity must be a ”nonnegotiable” core value of Rice.

Richard Tapia, University Professor and the Maxfield-Oshman Professor of Computational and Applied Mathematics, noted the underrepresentation of minority faculty at Rice, particularly in science and engineering. ”Rice should enforce accountability,” Tapia said. ”We know which departments aren’t doing well. It’s not really that complicated. You just have to do it.”

Panel moderator and trustee Teveia Rose Barnes ’75, who hosted the day’s events with  Leebron, said the panel discussions were ”the first step in identifying issues that affect Rice and to holding people accountable.” She encouraged the student leadership to be conscious of the effects of their words and actions.