Byrd looks back

Alexander Byrd ’90, associate professor of history at Rice, spoke before a standing room-only crowd Feb. 16 in the reading room of the African American Library at the Gregory School. Byrd’s talk, “What I Learned at Rice and Yates,” covered his time at Yates High School in Houston and the lessons he learned as an undergraduate at Rice during the late 1980s.

Byrd was introduced by Jan West ’73, assistant director of multicultural community relations in the Office of Public Affairs, and Monique Shankle ’86, chair of the Association of Rice University Black Alumni, who distributed copies of “Young, Gifted and Black,” an 80-minute film exploring the lives of 15 distinguished black alumni produced by Rice in honor of the university’s Centennial Celebration in 2012. (Photo by Katharine Shilcutt)