‘We’re not going to sugarcoat this.’ Students, faculty grapple with TCU’s racist past.
An auditorium full of students, faculty, staff and alumni listened to some of TCU’s racial history at the university’s second annual Reconciliation Day Wednesday.
The Confederacy was strongly present on TCU’s campus from 1895 to 1923, said Gregg Cantrell, history professor at TCU. The local stage production of the “The Clansman” and the film version, “Birth of Nation,” were advertised in the student newspaper. “You’ll never forget the Ku Klux,” the ad read.
“Black janitors, clothes dishwashers and groundskeepers kept the place running,” Cantrell said. Nine Black staff members lived on campus, and they were frequently the brunt of students’ jokes. They named a Black groundskeeper as student body president and laughed. In the student yearbook, photos of Black janitors were captioned saying they got their degrees from Mop and Broom university. The administration stayed silent knowing that this was happening, Cantrell said.
“We’re not going to sugarcoat this. We’re not going to dance around this,” said Frederick W. Gooding Jr., the Race and Reconciliation Initiative chair. “It might be embarrassing. It might be a dark chapter … but that actually positions us to change and influence the future.”
TCU formed the Race and Reconciliation Initiative in August in 2020, after the murder of George Floyd, which prompted TCU and many other universities to research their history with slavery. The group made seven recommendations in its first report, released in April 2021, such as creating an online platform of collected history and improving diversity among faculty and staff.
At Wednesday’s event, faculty and staff updated attendees on progress of each of the recommendations. They referenced an upcoming dedication for a life-size statue of James Cash, the TCU star who was the first Black basketball player to play in the Southwest Conference, a 6% increase in faculty of color, a 3% increase in students of color and a diversity and inclusion question on the admissions application. The university also started an oral history project, collecting stories from prominent alumni of color like Jennifer Giddings Brooks, who was TCU’s first Black homecoming queen.
A portion was dedicated to recognizing more than a dozen descendants of Charley Thorp, a lead security guard, landscaper and handyman at TCU in the late 1800s.
One of them is Loriessa Randle, who learned Thorp did a lot of free labor for TCU: disciplining students, working as a firemen and as a caregiver. An 1894 Grandbury News newspaper clipping said a resident was “improving — thanks to the careful nursing of [Charley] Thorp.”
“He was pretty much in charge of a lot of things … yet he couldn’t be educated as a Black man on that campus,” said Randle, who lives in Albuquerque.
But Randle said the experience has been bittersweet. As she’s reconciling the history of her ancestor, she said she’s enjoyed meeting more than a dozen new family members as a result of Wednesday’s event.
“I don’t feel like Charlie’s been vindicated, but I think that it’s important that they have acknowledged him for his accomplishments and the things and the work that he did for the university,” she said.
TCU has faced several lawsuits claiming discrimination in recent years. Five Black students and alumni reached an undisclosed settlement with TCU in November after they filed a lawsuit in January 2020. The latest suit was filed in March by a former Latina employee.
In 2016, students demanded diversity and inclusion from university leaders, citing a racist campus culture. A year later campus police investigated a series of white supremacist signs posted on campus, according to the initiative’s report last year.
Gooding said that the initiative’s second year of research work isn’t complete. He referenced they were behind in their findings of TCU’s history with Native American and Latino populations.
“We realize we’re not perfect, but we are indeed getting better,” Gooding said.
“As long as we’re governed by this idea of we want to be consistent in telling the truth, then I think we’re in a better position to move forward,” Gooding said.
Gooding said he was excited that the auditorium at Reconciliation Day was practically full, and that is a good sign that the work can be continued.
“The first time something happens, people are curious. … But the second year, that’s the test. Can you be consistent?” Gooding said.
