Slavery, Segregation, and Rice’s Second Founding

By Tracey Rhoades

As co-chairs of Rice’s Task Force on Slavery, Segregation and Racial Injustice from 2019–23, historians Alexander X. Byrd ’90 and Caleb McDaniel traced the university’s history from its foundation through the tumultuous process of desegregation. What resulted was “Slavery, Segregation, and the Second Founding of Rice University,” a publication chronicling their findings and the university’s fundamental and ongoing process of transformation. 

Byrd and McDaniel explore the difficulties of integration in the late 1960s and 1970s and the struggles even after desegregation began with the first Black student’s admittance to Rice in 1964. Emphasizing the central role of Black students, Black communities and historically Black colleges as catalysts driving this change, the book contends that Rice’s desegregation constituted a “second founding” of the university, the last major private research university to desegregate.

Citing one of the book’s central themes, co-author McDaniel contends, “You can’t understand the full history of Rice without also understanding the histories of Black Houstonians and Black Texans.”

A foreword, written by Ruth J. Simmons, a President’s Distinguished Fellow at Rice, praises both the significance of the task force’s work and the tome’s detail-rich history, noting that “Alexander X. Bird and Caleb McDaniel masterfully document the elements of the period, bringing to life for today’s readers a fuller understanding of those times.”

Presented as a chronological journey, the book includes a never-before-discussed will written by William Marsh Rice in 1868, providing a candid look at how Rice’s past informs its present and a reminder that the entire Rice community — students, faculty and alumni — play a role in shaping the university’s ongoing pursuit of inclusion, equity and excellence. 

Slavery, Segregation, and the Second Founding of Rice University by Alexander X. Byrd and W. Caleb McDaniel
Published by LSU Press, 2025

From the Winter 2026 issue of Rice Magazine