Diversity: That Was Then, This Is Now

By Christopher Dow

Racial diversity at Rice, as at most Southern universities, began within living memory—within the tenure, in fact, of some of Rice’s current faculty. Rice’s road leading up to desegregation was not always the smoothest, but the university has come a long way since then.

“Our History, Our Present, Our Future,” a daylong, 40th anniversary commemoration of the first African-American students to enter Rice as undergraduates and earn degrees, was held Feb. 20. Featuring talks and panel discussions on the history of Rice’s desegregation, the black student experience here and the future of racial diversity at the university, the event served as a reminder of how much education—and the educational experience—has changed at Rice since the original Rice charter ban on nonwhite students was lifted in the 1960s.

“At Rice, we firmly believe that diversity makes us better at producing knowledge and educating students ,” President David W. Leebron said at the event. “In our contemporary world, diverse research communities often produce deeper knowledge.” In fact, the mission statement and fully half of the 10 points of Rice University’s Vision for the Second Century—Rice’s blueprint for the near future—address the need for diversity.

It wasn’t always so. Rice’s charter stated that the institution was to admit only white students. While a handful of Hispanic and Asian students did attend during the university’s early decades, students of African-American background were expressly prohibited. Even so, stirrings of desegregation began soon after World War II.

“In 1948 or ’49, the Thresher ran an editorial saying that the university should desegregate,” says Melissa Kean ’96, Rice’s historian and an expert in the development of higher education in the South. “And every once in a while throughout the 1950s, a student would write a letter or somebody would write an editorial or there’d be a poll. But there was no real pressure from within the university to change things. Nor did Houston have an auspicious climate for agitating for desegregation at the time.”

But pressures from outside were building. Desegregation laws were being enacted, and social and cultural attitudes were driving the movement toward diversity at a grassroots level, as well. The dynamic at Rice began to alter with the makeup of the Rice Board of Governors, which, by the late 1950s, was dominated by George R. Brown and Newton Rayzor. “Brown and Rayzor had a national outlook as well as a sophisticated understanding of finance,” Kean says. “They had a strong need for competent Rice graduates in their businesses, and naturally they wanted Rice to be in the elite category of institutions.”

Brown and Rayzor knew that Rice had to change its stance on integration. One of their challenges was to replace President William V. Houston, who suffered a heart attack in 1960. Their search led them to Kenneth Pitzer—an eminent chemist from Stanford University who had served as director of research and chairman of the general advisory committee of the Atomic Energy Commission. Pitzer was a leader who knew how to obtain federal research funds, and when they approached him, Brown and Rayzor were explicit about the goals they wanted him to achieve.

“His job,” Kean says, “was going to be to take this good school that was, by now, clearly losing ground in its competition with other universities—even other Southern universities, some of which had begun to desegregate as early as 1950—and make it a great school.”

Principal components of this would be to raise research funds from the federal government and major foundations and to attract the best faculty possible. At his first meeting with the board in 1961, Pitzer made it clear that Rice could not be turned into a major research university if it remained segregated. Not only was the federal government writing nondiscrimination clauses into its contracts, but the big national foundations were making it known that they would not continue to put money into institutions that did not meet new standards of diversity. Nor would Rice be able to recruit and retain the caliber of faculty it needed, because many potential faculty members were steering clear of segregated institutions.

The board assured Pitzer that the matter would be resolved as quickly as possible and, though the legal wrangling went on for another three years, the charter was formally amended in 1964 to admit capable students regardless of color.

Graduate student Raymond Johnson ’69 was admitted immediately, and the next year saw the admission of the first two African-American undergraduates: Jacqueline McCauley and Charles Freeman. Both left Rice within a couple of years. Freeman ended up getting a degree from Lamar University in Beaumont, and McCauley became a Houston radio personality. Two more black students were admitted in 1966. They were Linda Faye Williams and Theodore Henderson, both of whom graduated in 1970. Williams went on to become a respected professor of political science before succumbing to cancer last year, and Henderson works in the hospitality industry in Hawaii.
“To me,” Kean says, “the most moving part of all of this is these kids. There’s no way we can pay them back for being brave enough and strong enough to come here. They saved us from our own failings and set us free.”

Since then, minority admissions have steadily risen, and in fall 2006, 44 percent of incoming undergraduates were students of color. For more information about diversity in admissions, see “More than Simple Numbers.” To see some of the efforts to improve relationships on campus, see “More than a Simple Equation.”