A History To Remember: TCU in Purple, White, & Black

"The legacy of slavery at TCU has thus manifested itself through this need or desire to secure the proximity of Black domestic employees at the expense of their children’s education. Their speedy availability to perform manual tasks previously assigned to enslaved workers is indeed reminiscent of antebellum norms. For instance, in the 1920s, a budget report indicated that some workers resided on campus in a facility called the “Servant House.” While no staff was listed in the campus directory until 1948, a 1920 census details that nine Black Americans resided on TCU properThey were listed as “Lodgers” of Philosophy Professor Errett McDiarmid (head of household), who lived there with his wife and four children. While all but one were reported to be literate, the census report omits the actual level of education for these individuals only. The Servant House remained on campus until the 1930s, according to map and blueprint records.
The lack of access to education for Black employees’ children was therefore the direct consequence of three factors: 1) the restrictive system of segregation that forbade Black children access to campus educational resources, 2) the absence of Black schools near campus, 3) and the very fact that these children’s parents worked for TCU."
-S. Greensword
A History To Remember: TCU in Purple, White, & Black

Before Texas Christian University would come to Fort Worth, The Clark brothers settled their institution in both Waco and Thorp Springs, Texas first. See below two photos of Randolph and Addison's AddRan College before it became known as Texas Christian University. To learn more about what the authors of A History To Remember: TCU in Purple, White, & Black had to say about the two original locations, click the link below to order your copy!
https://www.amazon.com/History-Remember-Purple-White-Black/dp/0875658458/ref=asc_df_0875658458/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=652501111877&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=15686563852399639670&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9027255&hvtargid=pla-2013385519808&psc=1&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI-veNnLnkgAMV7jfUAR1fOwvfEAQYASABEgLZxPD_BwE

Foreword:

Reflection, Recovery, and Remembrance as a Path to Racial Healing

In 1869, just four years after the end of the Civil War, Addison and Randolph Clark began envisioning the establishment of a coeducational school in rural northeast Texas where students could earn degrees and cultivate character. That higher education institution would eventually be known as Texas Christian University (TCU). On the current “Mission & History” page of TCU’s website, the Clark brothers are lauded as “Fort Worth-based minister-teachers.”One must click the “Diversity, Equity & Inclusion” (DEI) tab to find the more complex history of the institution’s founders: the Clark brothers, members of a slaveholding family and veterans of the Confederate army, created a college for young white men and women in 1873.

TCU’s DEI webpage also offers insights into the institution’s Black history through the “Race and Reconciliation Initiative Names Chair; Hosts First Town Hall” link where in the “First Year Survey Report,” one can learn of the Black wage workers who were employed at the institution by the early 1900s, of the early twentieth-century initiatives that allowed limited enrollment of Black students in special programs, and of the trustees’ 1964 decision to desegregate the institution.The Race and Reconciliation Initiative was established in 2020, the same year that the murders of African Americans, including Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia, Breonna Taylor in Kentucky, and George Floyd in Minnesota, sparked global protests and calls for accountability and justice. As TCU began examining its history of racism, enslavement, and the Confederacy, a global pandemic was killing millions of people and shutting down nearly everything everywhere, a conflux of recurring racism and significant suffering that offered the public time to reflect and then remember or recover the things they or others had wanted them to forget or never know. In that historic moment of reflection and resolve, TCU’s administration publicly acknowledged that the institution’s narrative is incomplete, and that racial healing is essential for the development of an inclusive campus community.

This volume of essays invites readers into that historical space of incompleteness through a meticulous documentation of TCU’s evolution from a small Reconstruction-era conservative Christian coed school for white students, supported by the labor of Black wage workers, to a twenty-first century predominately white higher education institution committed to reconciliation and racial healing. It centers the Black experience in this approach in a state where the history of Black people is often hidden—such as the recently recovered Sugar Land 95 burial ground where convicted laborers leased to work for the state on a plantation were interred in unmarked graves. Contributions to this volume are recovering Black TCU history in a state where the stories of Black life can be distorted—such as the characterization of enslaved Africans forcibly transported to America in the belly of slave ships as “immigrants” and “workers” in a textbook used in the Texas school system. Before racial healing can occur, however, the institution must engage in truth-telling that includes an acknowledgment of the psychological, socioeconomic, and spiritual impact of practices and policies that have caused harm to Black Americans at TCU, in the local community, and in the nation throughout history.

Through an engagement in the public accounting of its complex history, TCU joins a global network of higher education institutions that are recovering, remembering, and recreating narratives informed by multiperspectivity. This methodology is grounded in the belief that history is most effectively learned through an embrace of a multivocal approach that values voices that have been overlooked or marginalized in traditional narratives. Listening to the voices that emerge in A History to Remember: TCU in Purple, White, and Black shifts the experiences of Black people in the institution’s history from the shadows to the forefront. In so doing, it makes the path to reconciliation and racial healing possible…



Dr. RHONDDA ROBINSON THOMAS

Calhoun Lemon Professor of Literature
Clemson University
Author of Call My Name, Clemson:
Documenting the Black Experience in an American University Community

TCU’s 150th Told in Purple, White and Black Frederick W. Gooding Jr. – with colleagues Sylviane Ngandu-Kalenga Greensword and Marcellis Perkins – are the authors of A History to Remember: TCU in Purple, White, and Black, timed with TCU’s Sesquicentennial.

We had a successful event at The Dock Bookshop & Dock Community for our first author book talk! We had a great turn out and sold out of all physical copies for the signing.

You can still grab your copy online from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, The Dock Bookshop or Reading in Riches online store:

https://www.thedockbookshop.com/book/9780875658452.

Join us for our 1st official book talk at The Dock Bookshop on June 15th. We are excited to share our findings with the community!

Order your copy now! Available at Black Owned Bookstores The Dock Bookshop and Riches in Readings both can ship your copy anywhere in the US. As well as major retailers such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Walmart.

“The first of its kind, this book chronicles and contextualizes the underexplored history of African American memory at TCU. It focuses specifically upon the understudied role of Black Americans within TCU lore from many perspectives: students, staff, faculty, administrators, and alumni. TCU in Purple, White, and Black explores the academic, athletic, artistic, and cultural impact of a group of people that was not formally included in the university for nearly the first century of its existence, and is an honest look at the history of segregation, integration, and inclusion of Black Americans at TCU. Anyone interested in race relations, the function of memory, and North Texas history will find the text and its layered analytical approach appealing.”

Links you can secure your copy from:

Riches in Reading:
https://www.richesinreading.com/product/a-history-to-remember-tcu-in-purple-white-and-black-by-frederick-w-gooding-jr-sylviane-ngandu-kalenga-greensword-marcellis-perkins/907?cp=true&sa=false&sbp=false&q=true

The Dock Bookshop:
https://www.thedockbookshop.com/book/9780875658452

Barnes & Noble:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/a-history-to-remember-frederick-w-gooding-jr/1142714972

Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/History-Remember-Purple-White-Black/dp/0875658458