1878 to 1890

By MOKSHA AKIL, JEANNIE EOM and MAXINE PARK

Staff Writers

Content Warning: Articles in this series depict specific instances of racial violence and aggression against Black and other non-white people. Racial epithets, though censored, are included.

This is the first article of the multi-part series Since 1878, a project undertaken by the 142nd Board of The Exonian. The principal objective of this series is to examine the paper’s coverage of racism at the Academy and, by extension, in the country as a whole. This article, and the articles following, will not provide a complete overview of racist events over the years in question. Additionally, research draws heavily from The Exonian’s archives, which present a biased depiction of racial dynamics at the Academy. Instead, the articles will offer a portrait of The Exonian, the Academy and the nation, decade by decade, by highlighting pieces published in the paper.

In Since 1878, The Exonian will follow the National Association for Black Journalists’ recommendations, referring to the n-word as [n-word], censoring n-gro in most contexts and capitalizing Black, in line with our updated style guide.

Regarding privacy, there are individuals named in these articles who are still alive today. Their statements represent their views as minors in the middle of their education. Most high schoolers do not write for publications like The Exonian, which archives every issue. The editors of the paper understand this unique situation and that views often change over time, particularly those held during high school. Additionally, every article represents more than its writer. Pieces in The Exonian go through editors and advisers, reflecting an institutional history.

However, Since 1878 uses their names to ground itself in the tangible and proximate. In Since 1878, the editors choose full transparency over perpetuating ambiguity and obscuring our history of racism.

Since 1878 must begin by acknowledging the original occupants of the land Phillips Exeter stands on today. The following statement was written by Exeter Summer Intern Isabella Shey Robbins, who worked with English Instructor Mercy Carbonell: “We would like to acknowledge the Squamscott/Penacook peoples who were the first peoples of this land. We would like to honor their ancestors, descendants and future generations for caring for this area and allowing us to be here today.”

“A n-gro afforded considerable amusement last Thursday night by giving people shots at his head the rate being three for a nickel,” The Exonian wrote on May 5, 1883, in a brief summary of weekly events at the Academy entitled “P.E.A. Nuts.” “His enterprise was attended with great success.” 

This two-sentence summary, jammed between a promotional Exeter photograph and a joke about gas, was the only mention of the event in the paper. This seemingly-commonplace event provides a snapshot of the Academy’s racism in the 1880s. 

Context

In its early years, The Exonian wrote a brief history about Phillips Exeter Academy’s founder, John Phillips. The article described Black enslaved people in the Phillips family during John Phillips’ childhood. “Mr. [Samuel] Phillips having his n-gro man at his right hand, and Madame Phillips her n-gro maid-servant on her left hand,” The Exonian reported. “In this curious procession the future founder of this Academy would have been second behind his father and mother, and the n-gro servants, as he was the second son.” Later in life, John Phillips claimed three enslaved people as property. He received them after marrying his first wife, Sarah Gilman, who inherited them from her deceased husband. This was the racial context from which the Academy evolved.

The Academy was also founded within a context of exclusion. In the Deed of Gift by John Phillips, from which Academy mantras still draw, John Phillips stipulated that “Protestants only shall ever be concerned in the trust of instruction of this Seminary.”

It was not until 77 years after its establishment that, in 1858, the Academy accepted its first Black student: Moses Uriah Hall. Hall, described by Epping, New Hampshire, town historian Madelyn Williamson as a “young man eager to learn,” was granted acceptance as his employer’s sons were also Academy students at the time. While Exeter offered acceptance to several Black students after Hall, the Academy, consisting almost entirely of white men and boys, maintained a culture of prejudice that managed to simultaneously contradict and align with the “youth from every quarter” mission it proudly espoused.

Coverage

Integration

While little is known about the experiences of the first Black students who entered the Academy, student contributors to The Exonian left behind a record of racism and insensitivity. The following entry concerned the acceptance of a young black man at Columbia University. “Nothing,” wrote The Exonian in Oct. 1882, “can exceed the impudence of that colored man in thus imposing upon that highly respectable institution, and forcing himself into the company of its highly aristocratic young men. For how can such a respectable body count among its number such a one as him in its revels, larks and in having a good time generally? Or how can he be invited to a friendly game of cards, a punch-bowl, or to doing the town? It is simply preposterous… Columbia wants no students—but gentlemen.” 

Long after Hall’s arrival at Exeter, practices such as blackface remained commonplace. “The n-gro impersonation by Sam Bernard was very good, but the rest of the performance was not worth much,” The Exonian reported on Oct. 30, 1886, covering a performance at the Town Hall.

Minstrel Shows

Throughout the 1880s, students lobbied to hold minstrel shows at the Academy. These shows, a popular form of entertainment at the time, featured white actors in blackface performing derogatory caricatures of African American people. 

Minstrelsy appeared in the first issue of The Exonian on April 6, 1878. “Students who remained in Exeter during vacation were cheered in their loneliness by three fires, a minstrel show and high winds,” the paper wrote, describing spring break. 

In the Dec. 8, 1883 edition of The Exonian, students raised the notion of a minstrel show in “P.E.A. Nuts.” “What has become of the idea of having a minstrel show? Why not have one for the benefit, say, of the townspeople?” a student asked. 

By Feb. 1885, minstrel shows were officially approved. “Some have the idea that [the show we are to hold] is to be a n-gro minstrel affair, and that ‘grinds’ upon the Faculty are to constitute the larger part of the programme; but in this they are most sadly mistaken,” The Exonian recorded. “The Faculty have consented to the giving of the entertainment upon condition that no burnt cork is used, and that no ‘grinds’ or jokes of a personal kind are given.” Burnt cork was a type of makeup used for blackface.

In Jan. 1886, The Exonian documented the beginnings of a minstrel group, “An attempt was made to form a minstrel club or association to be composed of members of the Academy, and it was proposed to give entertainments in Exeter and perhaps in neighboring towns.” However, the project fell through due to “insufficient interest, not only by the school at large, but by the members of the proposed association themselves,” they wrote. 

The Exonian also reported on minstrel shows at a collegiate level. On Feb. 20, 1886, the paper reported Dartmouth College’s ban of “n-gro minstrel entertainment” at the discretion of a fund. “Great dissatisfaction prevails,” the paper wrote. 

Additionally, on March 13, 1886, the paper praised Dartmouth students who protested the college’s ban of “singing in public as n-gro minstrels” by whitening their faces. This move, the paper claimed, was “ingenious.”

The Academy continued to showcase minstrel shows staged by other organizations throughout the remainder of the 1880s. “The first minstrel entertainment of the season will be given next Thursday evening by Hi Henry’s organization, twenty-five strong,” The Exonian wrote on Dec. 17, 1887. “It will introduce new features and such specialists as Orke, Mexican juggler; Donnelly, comedian, and Rossell, burlesque soprano. Hi Henry’s company will be remembered by everyone for their extraordinary performance here year before last.” At this point, minstrel shows were a staple of Academy life.

Chinese Educational Mission

In 1872, Exeter admitted its first Asian students. Thirty boys were sent from China as part of the Chinese Educational Mission, an effort by reformists in the Qing government to offer an American education to young Chinese men.

The students were recalled to China by the Qing government, worried that they had become “Americanized,” in 1881. “The Chinese boys... made a very favorable impression as well by their refinement and courtesy as by their diligent application, and we have no doubt, any information concerning them will be received with interest by the school,” The Exonian read on Dec. 3, 1881. 

In describing the boys’ treatment upon their return, The Exonian condescendingly portrayed China as primitive. “[They] were escorted to a deserted college, reputed as haunted, in the city of Shanghai, and there locked up under guard, and were still there at the time of writing,” the paper read. “This seems to us barbarous treatment, as it undoubtedly is, and it has evidently stung home within the boys the fact that they are the sons of a nation, as yet, only half civilized.”

Imperialism and Exclusion

The Golden Branch Society, the predecessor to the Daniel Webster Debate Society, also discussed Chinese people in its debates. “The question was: Resolved, That the immigration of Chinese to this country should be prohibited. The vote was affirmative 14, negative 4 on the merits of the question; and on the merits of the debate, affirmative 18, negative 3,” The Exonian reported on Oct. 10, 1888.

The paper continued, “For the meeting on Oct. 27, this question was chosen: Resolved, That statesmanship has a more civilizing effect than Christianity.”

The Golden Branch’s debates often reflected broader imperialist sentiments on campus. For example, on Dec. 4, 1887, Instructor J. T. Perry delivered a speech before the Christian Fraternity, which later merged with Student Council, that The Exonian described as “extremely entertaining.” Entitled “The Things That Remain,” Perry’s speech “showed that nations were not evolutionary; that is, a savage tribe could not, without the help of some outside force, evolve itself from a state of barbarism to one of civilization,” described The Exonian the week after. 

“He quoted, as an example, the tribes of interior Africa which, although far surpassing both physically and intellectually the coast tribes, were in a much lower state of civilization than those with which the traders had had intercourse,” the paper wrote.

Language

The Exonian routinely used the n-word in this decade, referring to minstrel shows as “[n-word] shows” on multiple occasions. Referring to one such show on Nov. 19, 1881, The Exonian wrote, “Few students are left who participated in that never-to-be-forgotten [n-word] show, but that is no reason why one cannot be put through this winter, if the fellows, who think themselves competent, will only lay aside their modesty and step forward.”

In addition, The Exonian wrote frequently about African Americans in a derogatory manner. “The n-gro tr-mp who was to have delivered a lecture in the town hall last Thursday evening did not put in an appearance. He is an ignorant imposter and is totally unworthy of the attention he attracts,” “P.E.A. Nuts” read on Feb. 21, 1880. “Several of the students demonstrated clearly that his knowledge of twenty languages was but a myth.” 

This denigration applied to descriptions of Africa. Describing Class Day activities, The Exonian reported on June 25, 1881, the prophecies of an unnamed “Class Prophet.” “Some he finds still lingering about the institution, notably the ‘Professor,’ while others have wandered even to the heathen of Africa,” the paper read. 

Even The Exonian’s poetry systematically degraded Black people, as embodied by a poem it published on Oct. 27, 1883: 

Though use of the n-word dwindled over time, racial prejudice in The Exonian, and the Academy at-large, continued through the decades.

Click here for the next decade of Since 1878.