User talk:98.195.9.58

Hi, I'm new here but I have a comment and a request for a modification to this page. My name is Melissa Kean and I'm the author of the book that is cited here in footnote 10. While I think this article is quite good there's a problem with the third paragraph from the bottom in the Career Section, which refers to William Houston as a "staunch supporter of segregation" and ends with the implication that he personally prevented any progress towards desegregation during his years at Rice. Both these things are simply untrue. Houston was a northerner who had never lived in the South before accepting the job at Rice and all his actions regarding race relations were directed solely by the board of trustees, southerners all. I don't know what the etiquette is here but I would gently suggest something more like this, which acknowledges the events of 1948 and Rice's slow, painful road to desegregation but doesn't unfairly lay all the blame on Houston's shoulders:

In 1948 during W. V. Houston’s presidency, a debate raged in the letters page of the campus newspaper, the Thresher, regarding integration of the university, explicitly forbidden by the university’s original charter. This debate included letters from the executive secretary of the Houston branch of the NAACP, civil rights advocate James Dombrowski of the Southern Conference Educational Fund, and segregationist Gov. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. After watching several months of back and forth, under pressure from the Board, Houston sent a note to the Thresher pointing out that this debate was “academic” because of the language of the founding charter. Rice remained segregated until a changed Board broke the charter and Black students were admitted in 1963.

In any event I don't think it's fair to cite my work for propositions that I don't believe and that--if you read the entire book--are not what I said.

Thanks very much, Melissa KeanMelissaKean (talk) 19:01, 10 June 2020 (UTC)