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The photo is reproduced, again without names, in a 1913 book called "Houston as a Setting of the Jewel, the Rice Institute," which opened its doors to white students in 1912. archive.org/details/houstonassetting00mont/page/30/mode/2up
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The 1913 book describes the woman in the front row as "a negro woman 85 years old, who is attending one of the night schools in order that she may learn to read the Bible." A caption again describes the young man as her grandson.
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Robert London was still living in Houston in 1930, according to the census, still working (as the Post reported in 1912) as a porter in a drug store. familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33SQ-GRZF-86J?i=26&cc=1810731&personaUrl=%2Fark%3A%2F61903%2F1%3A1%3AH149-SZM
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It's amazing what digitized sources make possible sometimes, like the ability to put names and stories to unnamed photographs. What if we told the history of desegregating schools not only with the names of those who integrated them, but the names of those initially excluded?
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What were the consequences of segregation for people like Pilot & London? What were the consequences for Rice? For the educational system of Houston?
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These are the kinds of questions we grapple with every week on Doc Talks, hosted by the Rice Task Force on Slavery, Segregation, and Racial Injustice. Join the conversation each Friday, noon central, on Zoom: taskforce.rice.edu/doctalks/webinars
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Subscribe to the Doc Talks Podcast and listen to past webinars, along with debriefings that take a second look at the sources, available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or here: taskforce.rice.edu/doctalks/podcasts