Hard Histories on Two Texas Campuses
Prairie View A&M and Rice are discovering pasts of slavery, racism, and more
Asking academics to see beyond their blinders to hold themselves accountable is a lot like asking police depts to reform itself. Hopkins as a private institution has never been accountable to the citizen neighbors. … There's NO trust. — Keesha Ha
Last Monday afternoon, Hard Histories at Hopkins hosted colleagues from two Texas universities: Prairie View A&M and Rice. Thank you to Dr. Marco Robinson, Assistant Director of the PVAMU Ruth J. Simmons Center for Race and Justice, and Dr. W. Caleb McDaniel, co-chair of the Rice Task Force on Slavery, Segregation and Racial Injustice, for talking with us.
While an historically Black university (HBCU), like PVAMU, or a private university founded in the 20th century, like Rice, might appear to be very different from Johns Hopkins, the parallels between their circumstances and ours are striking. The land on which Prairie View A&M sits today, like our Homewood campus, was at one time worked by enslaved people. Rice was founded well after slavery’s abolition and still its founder and namesake, like Johns Hopkins, was an enslaver in the pre-Civil War years. We are all, it turns out, Their working to uncover more about these histories and to promote a reckoning with the past.
We also heard how different the work of hard histories can be. While at Johns Hopkins our research has been hampered by a paucity of sources about Mr. Hopkins and his household, extensive records permitted Rice researchers to know a great deal about the extent and nature of the slaveholding of William Marsh Rice. Prairie View researchers have collaborated with today’s descendants from Alta Vista plantation, Black and white. We’ve not had that opportunity at Johns Hopkins, though we’d welcome it.
Both Dr. Robinson and Dr. McDaniel explained that student researchers are critical to their work. Students put novel questions on the table, bring to bear special expertise, and ensure that hard history discoveries will inform the future as students become alumni, benefactors, and even trustees.
We ended with reflections on trust and how to engage with skeptics who doubt the university’s commitments and capacities. Among them during our conversation was Keesha Ha, whose comment opens this post. Dr. McDaniel suggested that distrust may be well-placed, especially when it comes to private institutions that exercise out-sized influence on the community of which they are a part. Dr. Robinson urged that community partnerships are what foster trust - we cannot hope or expect to accomplish this work alone.
Hard Histories at Hopkins aims to be a force that fuels the university’s reckoning with its past. Still, our research and its frank look at the past is only one step toward a more just and equitable future. Thank you to those of you who have joined us on this journey. We value your trust in us, even as it may come with an insistence that we do better. For those of you who remain skeptical, we thank you for setting the bar high and challenging us to do better.
Thank you to our co-sponsor for this event, the Houston Museum of African-American Culture and our friend there, JHU alum John Guess. You can watch the entire conversation here
— MSJ