Rice’s annual Juneteenth recognition and celebration will bring together professors from across the university and the country to explore ideas and questions central to the meaning and promise of the important holiday. Spread across two days, programming includes a trio of speaking panels as well as a public lecture.
“Juneteenth is a significant milestone in America's history that should be remembered and celebrated," said President Reginald DesRoches. "I am proud of Rice's efforts to do so in such thoughtful and constructive ways like this year's panel discussions and the lecture by Annette Gordon-Reed.”
The half-day webinar “Leadership” will take place June 15 via Zoom, with an introduction at 8:45 a.m. from Amy Dittmar, the Howard R. Hughes Provost and professor of economics and finance.
Fay Yarbrough ’97 will chair the first panel session, “On Unity and Black Difference,” starting at 9 a.m. She is the associate dean of humanities, professor of history and founding faculty for Rice’s Center for African and African American Studies.
The “On Unity and Black Difference” panel will also feature Brandon R. Byrd, associate professor of history and African American diaspora studies at Vanderbilt University, whose topic of discussion is “‘United We Stand, Divided We Fall’: Unity and Difference in Post-Emancipation Black Politics;” Masonya J. Bennett, assistant professor of anthropology at Southern Illinois University, will talk about “Southern Solidarities”; and Jeanelle Hope, director and associate professor of African American studies at Prairie View A&M University, will speak about “The Enduring Legacy of Juneteenth and American Fascism.”
The 10:10 a.m. panel “Key Questions in Black Leadership” features a talk from Derek R. Avery ’01, C.T. Bauer Chair of Inclusive Leadership at the University of Houston, followed by Alison V. Hall Birch, assistant professor of business at the University of Texas at Arlington, whose topic is “Colored Credentials: Presumed Competent To Lead in the Crushed Velvet Ghetto.”
Danielle King, assistant professor of psychological sciences, will chair the 10:10 a.m. session.
The 11:20 a.m. panel “Very Ready for the Year Ahead” includes talks from three Rice staff members. Richard Baker, executive director for HR people, equity and development and Title IX coordinator; Cecilia Fernández, assistant director of diversity, equity, inclusion and outreach for the George R. Brown School of Engineering; and Constance Porter, senior associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion and associate clinical professor of marketing in the Jones School of Business.
Alexander X. Byrd ’90, vice provost for diversity, equity and inclusion, will chair the third group’s discussion.
On June 20, the day after the holiday, Annette Gordon-Reed, the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard University, will deliver a lecture about her book “On Juneteenth.” Weaving together American history with a memoir of her own experiences growing up in Jim Crow Texas, Gordon-Reed’s book provides a historian’s view of the country’s long road to Juneteenth, recounting both its origins and the complex history of Black Texans before, during and after the rise of chattel slavery in the state. The presentation starts at 7 p.m. in the Hudspeth Auditorium at the Glasscock School of Continuing Studies’ Anderson-Clarke Center.
Gordon-Reed has won 16 book prizes, including the Pulitzer Prize in History in 2009 and the National Book Award in 2008 for “The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family” (W.W. Norton, 2008). Additional honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship in the humanities, a MacArthur Fellowship and the National Book Award.
Gordon-Reed’s lecture is co-sponsored by Humanities Texas, which will hold an institute for local teachers on the Rice campus June 21-23 about teaching the history of the Civil War and Reconstruction. Other co-sponsors include Rice’s Task Force on Slavery, Segregation and Racial Injustice; the Department of History; the School of Humanities; the Office of the Provost; and the Office of the President.
Attendance for all events is free, but registration is requested for the panel series via Zoom on June 15 as well as for the in-person and Zoom lecture on June 20.
Celebrated nationwide, Juneteenth is of particular prominence for Texans. The holiday originated in Galveston and marks the anniversary of General Order No. 3 issued on June 19, 1865, which proclaimed the end of slavery in Texas and the official emancipation of its enslaved people. The original version was unearthed in the United States National Archives in 2020.