All of us at Rice are mourning the loss of historian and professor emeritus Ira Gruber, who died last week. I joined with many of my colleagues in remembering him for Rice News. May his memory be a blessing.

It was a good mail day. The book is here! And the cover design may well be the best part.

A brilliantly red vermillion flycatcher appeared briefly on campus this morning! Feeling lucky to have gotten a good look. Also glad to see the student birding club enjoying the aforementioned screech owls.

For class today, I’m cuing up Christia Adair’s account of her attempt to register to vote in Kingsville, Texas, in 1918, from the Black Women Oral History Project at Harvard. I wish the site were easier to navigate: This passage is in the third “Adair” link from the bottom on Reel 2.

Tomorrow I’m teaching Liette Gidlow’s great article, “The Sequel,” in my voting rights history class, so it’s time to revisit the video I hastily made to accompany it in March 2020, just as the pandemic was shuttering classes—and before it was known that hand sanitizer alone would not save us.

Updated some notes in my open research notebook: Houston Fire Festival, Juneteenth.

The two great-horned owls who live in the front of campus were out on the same limb this morning, a rare treat.

My day started by finding a very well-camouflaged screech owl in a tree on campus. I should probably quit while I’m ahead.

Well, that’s one way to measure … (From Flake’s Bulletin (Galveston, TX), June 1, 1866.)

Updated some notes in my open research notebook: Houston Evening Star, Juneteenth, Telegraph and Texas Register.

New semester vibes.

The Second Foundings conference in Houston is fast approaching, October 10-13, 2025. Registration & hotel rooms are still available! Come for keynotes by Ruth J. Simmons and Crystal R. Sanders, plus more than 25 sessions on slavery, universities, and struggles for justice. More info …

This month my beloved and I are celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary on the same day our firstborn heads off to college. Life comes at you fast!

Stephen H. Daniel (1950-2025): https://updates.wcaleb.org/2025/08/08/stephen-h-daniel.html

Today while waiting for my coffee at Rice Coffeehouse, I noticed that the endpapers of the 2024 Campanile yearbook contain artists' interpretations of the redesigned academic quad. Before (in the front): After (in the back): ... https://updates.wcaleb.org/2025/08/06/today-while-waiting-for-my.html

Fifty years ago today, President Gerald Ford signed the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act in the White House Rose Garden—one day after signing a resolution to restore citizenship to Confederate general Robert E. Lee at Arlington House. (Original NYT coverage here and here.)

Found an inscription by my late colleague Thomas Haskell to another of my dear colleagues on the library’s free books cart today, inside this volume. It asks a good question!

Essie Hart Lawrence and the National Park Service at Arlington House in Virginia, 1975: https://updates.wcaleb.org/2025/07/30/essie-hart-lawrence-and-the.html

I’ve spent much of today trying to identify the woman leaning against an Arlington House pillar in this photo, which shows President Gerald R. Ford signing a bill to restore the citizenship of Robert E. Lee in 1975. I’m ending the day with some working theories, but no firm answers yet.

Registration is now open for “Second Foundings: Universities, Slavery, and Struggles for Justice in Texas and Beyond.” The conference will take place October 10-13, 2025, in Houston and features keynote lectures by Ruth J. Simmons and Crystal R. Sanders! More info …

Updated some notes in my open research notebook: Elias Dibble, Juneteenth, Telegraph and Texas Register.

“Tell me you’re a historian without telling me you’re a historian.” Opens photos app …

Recently I posted about a seldom recalled source about the first celebration of Juneteenth as a holiday, in Houston. That post was about a transcription of the source. Today, I looked at the original! More soon as I process what I found.

Great morning with K-12 teachers and fellow presenters Lisa Tetrault and Ashley Farmer at the LBJ library’s workshop on teaching voting rights history. I’m leaving with more ideas than I brought!

I’m looking forward to speaking to teachers in Austin on Thursday as part of More than a Ballot, a Voice!.

Going through final proofs of the index for the Rice book. It makes me very happy that there is an entry for Bubbha Thomas and the Lightmen.

Thanks to Kellie Carter Jackson for mentioning my research about Henrietta Wood in a new special journal issue about slavery and emancipation in Kentucky. The whole issue looks great, and the last article by James Prichard sheds some new light on Zebulon Ward, Wood’s kidnapper.

Every page-proofing adventure uncovers some surprising (to me) update to the Chicago Manual of Style guide: This time, it was in the section on colons.

On June 25 at 11 am Eastern, I’ll be joining my colleagues Randal Hall and Bethany Johnson for a panel discussion on academic publishing with the Grad Council of the Southern Historical Association. RSVP is here.

I love when the prior owner of a record has annotated the sleeve. This one notes that Richard Williams was born in Galveston. Does this mean I can count crate digging as archival research? Hmm …

For the “A.I. is Changing Reading Forever” crowd, may I suggest my 2005 essay about why technologists should read some historians of reading?

Glad to learn that my 2019 interview about Henrietta Wood, reparations, and Sweet Taste of Liberty re-aired yesterday on KPFA in the Bay Area.

Updated some notes in my open research notebook: WPA Files at HHRC.

FBISD posted some photos of yesterday’s event in Sugar Land, including this one of me standing between two heroic historian-advocates. On my left is Marilyn Moore, president of the Friends of the Sugar Land 95, and on my right is Debra Blacklock-Sloan.

Reason 5,794 why I love universities: My family has been enjoying watching a mockingbird nest in a tree right outside our second-story window, with both bird parents caring for three (noisy and hungry!) chicks. It got me t... https://updates.wcaleb.org/2025/06/20/reason-why-i-love-universities.html

I was glad to be in Sugar Land, TX, today for the unveiling of a new historical marker about the Sugar Land 95, at the site where their unmarked graves were uncovered in 2018. An impressive group of high school students also presented their digital archive about the site.

For Juneteenth, I published some newly (re)discovered evidence about the very first celebration of the holiday in 1866. Read more …

I updated my post on the first Juneteenth with a footnote to Mary Louise Passey’s masters thesis from 1993. Going back through my notes, I recalled that Passey tipped me off to the Maresh collection. Revisiting her thesis now, I see that she also found the Evening Star article, 30 years ago.

For Juneteenth, I published some newly (re)discovered evidence about the very first celebration of the holiday in 1866. Read more …

Three times today a piece of software or website I regularly use has interrupted what I was doing to ask if I want help from their new “AI Assistant.” Did we learn nothing from Clippy?

Updated some notes in my open research notebook: Juneteenth.

Now that I got that off my chest, it’s back to correcting page proofs. By hand, as God intended.

About that New York Times Article on "A.I." and History: https://updates.wcaleb.org/2025/06/17/about-that-new-york-times.html

I’ve started a tag on my Pinboard for examples of authentically new historical knowledge that no “A.I.” chatbot could possibly have generated.

Page proofs for the book have arrived.

My colleague Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan and I wrote an op-ed for the Houston Chronicle, out today. Read for more about the creep of “A.I. slop” into Houston’s K-12 curricula, amid a Texas state takeover of the city’s public schools.

Updated some notes in my open research notebook: J. H. Townsend.

Just located the records of the 1843 New York State Colored Convention in ProQuest’s Black Abolitionist Papers database and submitted them to the Colored Conventions Project, which has been looking for these!

Great Zoom meeting this morning with members of the Texas Consortium of Universities and Colleges Studying Slavery and Race to talk about this October’s Universities Studying Slavery conference at Rice: Second Foundings. We’re looking for proposals, due June 11.

Grades are in! 😎