Timeline
1910 to 1920
By ANDREA LUO and ANYA TANG
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 article is part 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 series 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.
“Until the Jew, the d-go, and the n-gro are allowed on an equal standing with the rest of us… true fellowship cannot be acquired,” guest lecturer Charles Zueblin declared in 1915. The second decade of the twentieth century marked a growing enthusiasm for equality at the Academy. However, prejudicial language, attitudes and perspectives persisted within The Exonian’s coverage and campus dialogue.
Coverage
Race as Entertainment
In 1915, students at the Academy discussed race and prejudice in a meeting of the Golden Branch, a predecessor to the Daniel Webster Debate Society. “The programme was opened by an interesting reading of the ‘Trial of Ben Thomas’ by A. Hauptii. The story was about the trial of Ben Thomas for murder,” The Exonian wrote. “The trial took place in a small town where the people were prejudiced against the n-gro and for this reason it was thought certain that Ben Thomas would be convicted on the scanty amount of available evidence.”
Despite the increase in awareness about racial issues, the Academy continued to offer evening entertainment featuring “n-gro personalities” done by a comedian. “The ‘making up’ for the character songs, musical readings and n-gro personalities is all done by [the comedian] in full view of the audience, thereby making the impersonations doubly interesting,” The Exonian reported.
The same comedian returned that month to provide more “entertainment” to the Academy: The Exonian wrote that “[the comedian] entertained the audience with an impersonation of a n-gro, rendering several songs and jokes.”
On Nov. 1, 1915, the now-closed Ioka Theater of downtown Exeter opened with a showing of Birth of a Nation. The film was highly controversial, adapted from a story, originally entitled The Clansman, that presented the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan as a heroic force. The debut was advertised in Exeter by having two men ride through the town streets in white Klansmen gowns. According to The Exeter Historical Society, in the following years “the Klan saw a resurgence in membership, and Klan rallies were held on Hampton Beach.”
In 1916, the Glee Club performed a “n-gro lullaby,” which drew wide crowds. Additionally, Exeter High School performed a minstrel show at the Ioka Theater in town, featuring the sketch “Miss Civilization” by Richard Harding Davis.
Later in the year, The Exonian announced “a colored orchestra from Boston… has been secured by President J. C. Walker, ’l8, for the Southern Club dance on Nov. 11.”
In 1919, the Academy began the year with a vaudeville featuring an “old-fashioned minstrel show” as the final act. The proceeds from the performance went toward funding for musical clubs.
As a new decade began, The Exonian’s coverage on minstrel shows continued. The Exonian covered a performance by the Harmony Trio of Boston, who “sang N-gro jubilee songs and read plantation selections.” The Academy also hosted another vaudeville show featuring a “n-gro monologue.”
Spirituals
Two years prior, in 1917, The Exonian reported on a series of lectures by University of Texas professor John Lomax, who spoke at Exeter on “n-gro spirituals.” In Jan., Lomax spoke for the first time at the Academy. “Genuine n-gro songs are divided naturally into two classes: first, secular songs of the cotton fields and the old steamboat days, these being songs of the ‘worldly [n-word]’ and second, religious songs of the camp meeting and ‘spiritual’ type,” The Exonian quoted. “A source of genuine, though naive, balladry, in which humor and pathos are ever intermingled, lies in the songs of the American n-gro.”
An article from early Jan. described one of Lomax’s lectures and used racist and reductive statements to characterize Black culture. “As a n-gro sings always of the fundamentals of his existence, many of his songs deal naturally with food and ‘his woman,’” The Exonian wrote. “One of the strange characteristics of the n-gro, which his songs reveal, is a constant feeling of regret at being a ‘[n-word]’ a feeling very rarely expressed by him in conversation.”
Lomax continued to give guest lectures at the Academy, returning twice in the year. He received an enthusiastic welcome from students and staff, the paper reported.
Published Jan. 17, 1917.
A quartet from the Hampton Institute, a historically-Black university in Virginia, arrived at the Academy that Jan. as well. Their performance included an introductory speech by Frank A. Whipple, field-secretary of the Hampton Institute. “Since the only literature that the n-gro slaves had was the Bible, it was only natural for their songs to be about Bible characters. The best folk songs are produced through persecution and trouble, and slavery has had this effect on the n-gro’s song,” The Exonian reported Whipple saying. “Mr. Whipple said that these songs ought to be preserved and the n-groes ought to be made to feel proud of them, as they are some of the best folk songs that have ever been produced.”
The quartet then performed three songs associated with slavery, paired with an explanation of the meaning of each song. “The first [song], was often sung when the slaves were going to steal away to a camp-meeting, or when one of them was going to steal away to liberty,” The Exonian reported. “In order to understand ‘My Lord is Riding all the Time,’ Mr. Whipple said that one would have to imagine the old plantation days with the overseer riding around and seeing all that was going on. The n-groes imagined that the Lord rode all over the world like an overseer.”
The Hampton quartet went on to perform at other schools in the Northeast, and The Exonian ran numerous other articles detailing their performances.
In 1918, The Exonian again reported on a performance by the Hampton Institute quartet that was followed by a speech by Whipple. Whipple spoke about how the Hampton Institute had allowed “opportunities of the N-gro children [that] are practically as numerous as those of the white children.”
“[Whipple] gave many interesting examples of the work now being done there by the N-gro population, and stated that they are constantly loyal to this country, and that they will always support her during this great war,” The Exonian wrote.
In 1920, the Academy hosted a performance by the Hampton quartet, followed by a speech from an individual surnamed Shrewsbury the next day. “Mr. Shrewsbury spoke for a few minutes on the true meaning of the N-gro spirituals of the sort sung by the Hampton quartet last Saturday night,” The Exonian reported. “He said that while to us they may seem amusing, they are to the N-gro intensely serious and deeply religious.”
Most notably, Shrewsbury talked about American music. “This N-gro music, is the only purely American music we have, for the socalled [sic] American composers received their musical training abroad, and so really are foreign composers,” Shrewbury said.
In the next month, the Hampton quartet returned, singing “a group of old plantation melodies and comic n-gro songs” to thank the Academy’s Christian Fraternity, which later merged with Student Council, for giving them an annual $100 scholarship.
In the same month, Shrewsbury performed “N-gro Spirituals” at an organ recital from “a selection of music from American composers.”
Guest Lecturers
In December of 1915, the Academy featured a speaker who praised Black thinker and intellectual Booker T. Washington. “[Washington was] the foremost man of the n-gro race, who died November 14… Mr. Washington has done many things for his race which can hardly be realized, so that everyone, both Black and white, North and South, must respect his greatness,” The Exonian quoted. “Thousands attended his funeral, and thousands were the feelings of sorrow and regret which were poured out at the death of this leader of the n-gro race.”
Washington’s son, Booker T. Washington, Jr., studied at the Academy in the 1900s but withdrew. Washington Jr. said his departure was a result of racial prejudice; then-Principal Harlan P. Amen denied the charge.
Three years later, another guest speaker spoke about race at a national level. “That there will be no democracy as long as lynching and harsh treatment of the colored race lasts,” guest lecturer Butler Wilson said, noting that 2,900 Black people had been lynched in 1917. The Exonian wrote, “[Wilson] told that the n-gro is not the shiftless idle person that he is made out to be. Most of them are ambitious and are desirous of getting a good education.”
In 1919, The Exonian reported on a sermon delivered by Rev. F. Boyd Edwards, who cited from the fifth chapter of John. “There are two kinds of people who look at life from opposite viewpoints: first, the pessimist who knows that things are wrong, who depresses the spirits of all around him, who is always complaining and peevish, and says that if he were running things, he would make the world go better than before; and second, the optimist, who, though he sees that things are wrong, aspires to make them right,” Edwards read.
Further into the sermon, Edwards introduced Samuel C. Armstrong as an optimist as mentioned above. “When [Armstrong] came back, he went to the Hampton Institute, Va., to do something which seemed impossible after the Civil War, to help develop and educate the n-gro. It was his faith that brought him success,” Edwards said. “At the time of the Civil War, when Lincoln was asked to accept the presidency for the second time, he thought a great deal before he made his decision. It was his belief that something must be done. Lincoln said, ‘This is a war of faith.’”
Notable Figures and Alumni
In 1915, The Exonian wrote a brief history about Exeter’s founder, John Phillips, including descriptions of 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.
Two years later, The Exonian reported on the passing of a notable white alum from the Academy, Franklin B. Sanborn. “Franklin B. Sanborn—widely known as the ‘Sage of Concord’ — author, editor, historian, abolitionist, sociologist and reformer, died last Saturday at Westfield, N.J… Mr. Sanborn graduated from the Academy in 1851, and was always one of its most loyal and distinguished alumni,” The Exonian wrote.
Most notable is the paper’s reporting on Sanborn’s role in the trial of abolitionist John Brown. “When Brown was captured in Virginia and executed[,] several letters from Sanborn were found in his possession, and immediately a plan was formed by the champions of slavery to get hold of Sanborn as a witness,” The Exonian wrote.
The Exonian reported that a summons was later issued for Sanborn, which he refused. Shortly after, an order of arrest was issued. During the night, a U.S. Marshall, along with “four assistants,” broke into Sanborn’s house using fraudulent charity papers, where they arrested and handcuffed Sanborn. His sister and a domestic servant, who also resided in the house, rang the town bell to raise the alarm. The following day, a writ of habeas corpus was issued; a judge ruled that Sanborn had been unlawfully detained.
Student Events
In 1919, the Academy hosted the Andover Society of Inquiry in an exchange of delegations. “[Andover’s] first speaker of this year was A. L. Jackson, the first N-gro ever to attend Andover. He gave a speech on the race riots, explaining to them many difficult matters and giving them new views on the subject,” The Exonian reported.
At the end of 1919, The Exonian celebrated the Christian Fraternity’s goal to raise $3,000 for organizations they perceived as advancing racial justice. The Christian Fraternity planned to gift $100 to the Tuskegee Institute, affiliated with historically-Black college Tuskegee University, “for American n-groes and one of the agencies through which we can help to settle the n-gro problem, now confronting our country.” Similarly, the Fraternity also planned to give $100 to the Hampton Institute, which, The Exonian stated, “not only educates n-groes, but also Indians, thus also accomplishing work which is invaluable to the peace and prosperity of America.”
The Exonian stated that the donations were solicited on the grounds that “only by the wise education of the n-gro shall we be able to avert trouble with them.”
While The Exonian’s reporting shifted from the 1910s, much of the prevailing racism reported in prior decades remained.