On a spring day in 1958, Philip Johnson had Frank Lloyd Wright over for a cocktail party at his famous glass house in New Canaan, Conn. A photographer later recalled the meeting of the two great 20th century architects. Apparently, in the middle of lecturing the other guests on the history of architecture from caves to skyscrapers, Wright got up to refresh his glass of scotch and also took the liberty to move a sculpture from the center of the room over to the side.
When Wright resumed his talk, Johnson got up and put the statue back in the center of the room. Once Wright realized this he blew up, saying, “Philip, leave perfect symmetry to God!”
This month, Rice University finally caught up with Wright and decided to move the statue of William Marsh Rice, its namesake and founding benefactor, over to the side within the main quadrangle. For 91 years, the bronze statue has sat atop nearly eight feet of pink Texas granite and Rice’s cremated remains. It occupies the middle of the central quad where the main paths intersect — right at the point of symmetry.
William Marsh Rice, however, was far from infallible. He was a man from Massachusetts who moved to Houston in 1838 and made a fortune. He enslaved at least 15 people and specified in his bequest an institute for “white inhabitants.” That institution is rightly struggling to reconcile its towering achievements with its racist origins.
Its decision to relocate the statue, rather than to remove it as many students and others have demanded, is the right choice for now and navigates the competing currents in our ongoing culture wars.
One side wants to tear down all monuments that have any association with slavery. Another side says we should not “cancel” or “erase” history. Others call for new statues and monuments that reflect a more diverse time in America or credit contributions long overlooked in standard histories. At Rice, student Shifa Rahman led daily protests for months calling for permanent removal of the statue while former Secretary of State James Baker, for whom the Baker Institute is named, told attendees at a Heritage Society luncheon that he opposed removal of Rice’s statue and “None of those kids would have an education without him.”
The university’s plan should be more than a compromise. It should invite not just the Rice community but the entire city into a conversation about our difficult history — a conversation that is uncomfortable and that can make us more free. If the plan is executed well, the result could also be a campus that is more beautiful and more vital.
But if the plan is to have lasting value, Rice will have to go far beyond simply relocating a statue. Rice must continue to use the controversy over the statue as an impetus to do long-neglected research on their own entanglement with slavery.
It began that work in 2019, when Rice announced a task force on slavery, segregation and racial injustice chaired by two of its foremost historians, Alexander X. Byrd and Caleb McDaniel. The group organized 11 panel discussions, 23 webinars and hosted a research collective that unearthed primary documents. It found that Rice not only enslaved people, he played an active role in recapturing those who tried to escape and that he built his fortune, in part, by financing plantations that used slave labor. It also found the motivation behind commissioning and installing the statue was to honor Rice’s philanthropy. The speeches at the dedication did not mention or glorify the Confederacy, though they also maintained silence on slavery, Jim Crow segregation and the exclusion of Black people from the school.
Last June, the task force recommended that Rice make a “bold change.” At the end of last month, the board of trustees announced the plan to relocate the statue within the quad with historical context including his ownership of enslaved people as part of a redesign of the entire quad with a new monument of similar prominence commemorating the beginning of the university’s integration in the 1960s, well after many leading schools.
Byrd, who grew up in the Northside and graduated from Jack Yates High School, told the editorial board, “I am hopeful that something powerful will result.” McDaniel told us that the quadrangle receives visitors from around the state and from around the world. The new design should better educate all visitors about the significance of slavery in the history of Texas and the origins of Houston.
Statues erected after the Civil War to glorify those who fought to defend slavery, or to celebrate a distorted view of our history, have rightly been removed all over America. Rice’s statue falls into another category. He was celebrated merely because he founded a great university.
Houston Chronicle
