By JEANNIE EOM, NOAH JAMES, STEPHEN MCNULTY and ANYA TANG

Editors and 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.

“I will do everything I can to exclude the Afro-Exonian Society from the school if it becomes an exclusively Black institution,” Dean Robert W. Kesler said in a special edition of The Exonian on The New Black at Exeter, published May 22, 1968. “I would do the same to any organization which excluded Blacks from its membership.” 

The 1960s saw the creation of several new clubs and organizations amid a flurry of activism on-campus. No such group caused anywhere near the controversy—nor made anywhere near the impact to this day—as the Afro-Latinx Exonian Society, then the Afro-Exonian Society.   

Coverage

Liberal Activism Clubs

Throughout the decade, several new student groups formed at the Academy around liberal policies. For instance, in the fall following the March on Washington in 1963, The Exonian reported on the establishment of a new “Civil Rights group” on campus, organized by then-senior Nat Stillman ’64, a white student. According to The Exonian’s Oct. 2 1963 issue, “the principal aim of the organization [would] be to help interested Exonians participate in the civil rights ‘Revolution.’”

In that same issue, Stillman and Whit Smith ’64 wrote two letters to the editor. In Stillman’s letter, he laid out five goals for the club. Among them, Stillman hoped that his club would “perhaps serve as a forum for civil and ‘anti-civil’ rights discussions—for instance, public accomodations [sic] versus private property, or the KKK vs. the NAACP.” 

The group, which sought to bring speakers to campus and to raise money for organizations like the Congress of Racial Equality and Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, also “might not be restricted to the ‘N-gro Problem’ alone but as well to other matters of civil rights: church-state separation, Federal aid to parochial or any other schools, states rights, right to birth control information, et cetera.”  

Stillman’s was not the only club on campus during the 1960s to advocate for what at the time were liberal policies. For instance, Exeter was host to a chapter of United World Federalists, a group devoted to strengthening the United Nations. The group sought primarily to bring guests to speak on their cause.

Another such club was the Peace Group, which advocated for a pacifistic foreign policy. In May 1964, during a “highly informal” board turnover meeting, Peace Group decided to rename itself the “Student Liberal Union.” According to The Exonian’s May 6, 1964 issue, Peace Club “hope[d] that other ‘liberal’ organizations, such as the Civil Rights Group and the World Federalists, [would] join to form one large liberal forum.”

These clubs are today, by and large, extinct. The Exonian’s last mention of the Civil Rights Group, for instance—apart from a 1976 op-ed about extinct clubs—was ten years earlier, in 1966. The “Student Federalists,” a probable successor to the World Federalists, was mentioned in the same article. The Student Liberal Union, for its part, was last referenced in 1971. 

The Afro-Exonian Society

Founding

In the fall of 1967, the Precisions, a majority-Black group performing soul music, was established on campus as a precursor to and inspiration for the Afro-Exonian Society (AES). Since 1878 was unable to determine from searchable archives whether the Precisions became the current step group Precision.

When the idea of AES was only just being formulated, the singing group was one of the first organizations where “Black students with a common interest and common talent should meet and do something together. It is doubtful that Blacks would have attempted to so openly associate with each other last year for fear of being regarded as segregationists.” The Exonian regarded the formation of the Precisions, which was made up of Black singers and a band consisting of Black and white students, as a significant change in Exeter’s atmosphere, a shift in which Black students felt comfortable gathering with one another in pursuit of shared interests. 

In the following months, Black students developed the concept of the AES. The organization was first mentioned in The Exonian as the Afro-American Society. “The Afro-American Society, the outgrowth of an ABC reunion at Dartmouth two weeks ago, held its first organizational meeting last night,” The Exonian reported on Dec. 9, 1967. “A formal proposal for creation of the Society will be presented to the Student Council by seniors Richard Butler, Peter Watson, and Stephen Thomas.”

According to The Exonian, the organization was conceived during a reunion of A Better Chance participants attending Exeter, Dartmouth University, Phillips Academy Andover, the Northfield School for Girls (which merged with the Mount Hermon School for Boys). “The Afro-American Society adopted the idea, which junior Nathan Gadsen called ‘a club to educate the whites of Exeter about the N-gro culture,’ a concept that was conceived by other students who attended the Dartmouth reunion,” The Exonian reported. “The organizational meeting was attended by five Exeter students who had earlier participated at Dartmouth in the program ‘A Better Chance,’ which seeks to place students from culturally deprived areas into prep schools.” Similar organizations had already been founded at Dartmoth, Andover and Northfield, to great success.

Organizers were careful to avoid appearing radical. “The club does stress, however, that it is not ‘a black power movement,’ but ‘a ground for discussion among the students of the problems of the N-gro,’” The Exonian reported. “As Junior Donald Bass put it, ‘We don’t want to segregate ourselves from the rest of the school; we only want to express our thoughts.’”

The organization, now called the Afro-Exonian Society, next appeared in a Letter to the Editor from then-upper Thee Smith ’69, published on Jan. 31, 1968. At the time of printing, the AES was awaiting Academy approval. Smith hoped to use the letter to explain the goals and usefulness of such an organization. 

“The Faculty’s sanction of the Afro-Exonians as an official student organization will be insured if the Faculty is made to believe that this group will benefit the entire student body,” Smith wrote. “This prerequisite is exactly what motivates the formation of the Afro-Exonians, but the overall proposition of educating the Academy concerning Black Culture had come to suggest two functions of the organization as a part of the Academy; the most beneficial perhaps being a limited one.”

Smith began his letter by rejecting the traditional model of activism clubs at the Academy. “The Afro-Exonians have planned and argued about the more obvious methods of achieving its goal: presentation to the student body of plays, films, lectures, writings, etc.,” he wrote. “This program of showing the Academy what it is to be black is good, but it ignores the ideal situation of blacks working and congregating with whites as groups and individuals to produce ultimately, a number of whites who know how to act black.” 

“The Afro-Exonians will present, in addition to plays and films and the like, a society whose majority is black. It is when blacks form in a group that they are no longer faced with the necessity of acting white; so that in this organization, a limited number of whites would be offered the opportunity to learn how to act black,” Smith continued.

The Afro-Exonian Society was chartered on Feb. 6, 1968. Its Charter of Incorporation was the product of a five person committee, including Smith. The Charter laid out the goal of the Society: “To educate the Academy Community to the needs and the values of Black America.” Beyond that, AES’ founders believed “more important perhaps than the above program will be the mere existence of the Afro-Exonians. The organization is conceived in an effort to create a situation where Blacks will be in the majority,” The Exonian found. 

“We identify our Organization not with established organizations or current movements, but rather with the overall problem of constructively directing the Black Revolution,” The Exonian wrote. 

Outreach

Exeter’s newly-formed Afro-Exonian Society got to work in March of 1968, welcoming a speaker to campus, hosting two all-Black services at Phillips Church and organizing a fundraiser for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

The Exonian published the AES Charter three months later, on May 22, 1968. By the time of printing, AES had already held several meetings. One such meeting featured William Bolden, who would become Exeter’s first Black faculty member and an adviser to the AES. In that same May issue, The Exonian described Bolden as an English teacher “in the ghetto school in Washington.” 

The Society reached out to similar organizations across New England, eventually holding a conference with the Afro-American Society of the Northfield School on May 18, 1968. Co-Chairman Andrew Jones’ statement concerning the purpose of the conference was published in the May 22 issue of The Exonian, along with the AES Charter. “The purpose of the meeting is for our Afro-Exonians to meet with their group for a day and exchange notes and viewpoints about certain topics, primarily the racial situation,” he said. According to Co-Chairman Marion Humphrey, the consolidation of the region’s Afro-American Societies into one body was also discussed, but never acted upon. 

The conference began with a discussion of Black history courses at Exeter and other schools across New England. While some advocated for such a course, others argued that Black history should be the foundation of any American history curriculum, and therefore, a course specifically concerning Black history should be unnecessary. 

In the May 22 issue, The Exonian reported, “They felt that they are, and have always been, an active and influential part of America and should be treated as such, not as a separate and lesser group.” 

Attendees also spoke at length about tokenism in Hollywood and the limited number and specific nature of the roles given to Black actors, as well as the burden of representation placed upon them. Prep James Snead ’72 also noted that, “in general, most N-gro actors are simply in movies because they are colored, not because their color on their part is pertinent.”

In its early years, AES members were also heavily involved in exposing racism at Exeter and in the broader Seacoast community. The Society would often go on speaking tours of local schools to speak about racism to the predominantly white communities. 

“The program of speaking tours, designed to combat that situation, began two years ago when a New Hampshire high school asked if any black students from the Academy would be willing to speak on their ideas about racism,” The Exonian reported. “Since then black students have held highly successful discussions in high schools throughout the state. The Academy now has more requests than it can handle, and it has asked St. Paul’s.”

The New Black at Exeter

Much of the preceding coverage appeared in The New Black at Exeter, an extensive issue of The Exonian published on May 22, 1968. Reporter Eric Gronningsater conducted interviews with over twenty of Exeter’s thirty-eight Black students to investigate the Afro-Exonian Society. 

The New Black at Exeter provided one of the most in-depth pictures available into campus dialogue during the first year of the AES’ existence. At the heart of the issue, however, lay a deep tension—while the issue contained vital information, it undoubtedly invoked racist stereotypes, fearmongering and the demonization of Black students at the Academy. At the same time, it also provided direct accounts, quotes and even full-length pieces from crucial voices in the formation of the AES and Black activism at Exeter. 

In the article's introduction, The Exonian denounced AES as unproductive, saying that it had “in some way managed to separate itself from the mainstream of Academy activity, while accomplishing very little of any importance.” 

The article then proceeded to question why the Society was formed in 1968, concluding that its creation could primarily be attributed to the doubling of the number Black students that year, as well as their increasingly “militant” attitude. “One must also comprehend how the Black students who have been at Exeter before this year have altered their thinking since they originally came here,” The Exonian wrote. “They have been influenced by the more militant mood of the Blacks in the major urban centers and by a greater sense of Black unity—of Black brotherhood in the country as expressed through Black Power.”

Commenting on the formation of AES, upper Joe Smith said, “One reason the Afro-Exonian Society was formed this year is because there are more guys here this year... who refuse to give up their Blackness simply because they’re at Exeter.”

Smith felt that the Afro-Exonian Society, less than a year old, had already given him the tools to be a better activist. “It helped me realize that I am going to have to do something when I finish Exeter. I didn’t know what Black power meant before I went to the meetings... I had been living in my own little shell,” Smith said. “Because of the Afro-Exonian Society, Exeter will not just be an educational experience, but an experience of getting to know myself.”  

Black students at the Academy further noted that AES was a needed refuge within this overwhelmingly white institution. "This is an awful place for a N-gro to be because all it does is prepare them to be nice middle class Whites,” Curt Anderson said. “I get the feeling that most of the Black people here were brought up in communities where daily life was a hell of a lot more interesting, where the atmosphere was a lot freer; that's part of Black Culture. They feel the need to get together with other people of this Black Culture to put some life into the dull atmosphere around here."

The Exonian reported, however, that the Afro-Exonian Society had to cope with class differences. The following is an excerpt from “The Struggle to Retain ‘Blackness’ at Exeter” in The New Black at Exeter:

The entire question of Black Unity has been contended at AES meetings, with the result that there is a deep division among the members over whether every Black person in America must “identify with the ghetto N-gro.” There are those Black students who believe that the unification of the Black students at Exeter should be a function of the AES, and that such a drive for unification among the members was implicit in the founding of the organization.

‘One reason we started the Society was because we now find it necessary for the N-gro to have more of a sense of unity than in the past,’ asserted Joel Motley, a two-year lower. He then described the role of the Black student in the past as one of blending smoothly into the Exeter atmosphere, and concluded, ‘The result [in the country] has been that the middle class N-gro here tended to break off every sense of relation with the N-gro in the ghettos of this country.’

However, some Black students never considered the formation of the Afro-Exonian Society as an attempt at Black unification. To many, unification of the Black students at Exeter is a secondary goal, or completely undesirable. They view the AES, as it has functioned this year, as a psychological boost to new Black students who, as Blacks, are having difficulties adjusting to Exeter life.

Many Blacks said they came to Exeter to escape their old school, and to be able to get into a good college. However, on arriving at Exeter, few Black students are ever fully equipped to begin a new life in an all White environment, particularly if they have come from an all-Black community. An Afro-American Society was considered by many Black students as a place where there would be other people with whom they had something in common—their ‘Blackness.’”

The New Black at Exeter’s title was taken from Thee Smith’s Chapel talk, “I Am a Black First,” which took place on March 4, 1968. Before the school, Smith stated, “I AM THE NEW BLACK. I will neither babble about how much I love Jesus, nor entertain you with sparkling, racial comedy. I will not eat with my fingers, nor go out of my way to sit down at a dining hall table with you. I will not flunk out of this place, but neither will I participate in the childish fanaticism of raving with you about your Math test, or your Physics lab, or your grade in English. I want neither to be your enemy, nor your friend. I don’t want your love, nor your pity, nor your guilt, nor your fear. I demand only that you respect me.”

According to The Exonian, Black students’ opinions of Smith’s address varied. Some agreed wholeheartedly with his depiction of the Black experience at Exeter, while others argued that they were mischaracterized. Some stated that his views were not the official platform of the AES and went as far as to say, according to and in the words of The Exonian, that “Smith was obviously laboring under an incurable inferiority complex.” The Exonian did not provide a direct quote by Black students on this topic.

In a Letter to the Editor, James Wormley III ’69 criticized Smith’s Chapel talk, “I Am a Black First.” The Letter was published on March 9, 1968. Wormley stated: 

I am not a ‘New Black.’ While I respect Thee Smith’s desire to free our race of its stereotypes, I must protest his seeming attempt to force me into his new mold. I resent being spoken for. My very presence in the Academy indicates my acceptance of the values of White American society. This does not mean that I consider things to be as they should be, but much more can be accomplished by reform than by revolt.

Smith’s talk may have left the impression that his views represent those of the Afro-Exonian Society or of a majority of the N-groes in this school. I do not know how many sincerely agree with him, but the organization has been unable to present an official viewpoint, possibly because of poor leadership.

Much of Thee’s attitude is understandable. While I do not demand the White man’s love, I will demand that he respect me, or at least fake it. I will socialize with my soul brothers to any extent that I please, but I will continue to look upon racists, White and Black, with equal disgust.

In an interview two weeks after his address, Smith clarified his intentions. “I tried to talk about Exeter and the identity problem for all Blacks. I wanted to show how screwed-up your school had made me as I tried to accept your Puritan values your outlook on sex, your definition of our place in society,” he said. “You should be horrified that you should produce such an individual in trying to make him lose his identity; in trying to get him into your society.”

Criticisms of the Afro-Exonian Society

The New Black at Exeter also solicited reactions to, and often criticisms of, the Afro-Exonian Society. Several faculty members, in particular, described the organization as “separatist” and “militant.” Others did not see the need for a student group like the AES.

Among these faculty members was Director of Studies Herrick M. Macomber. “I regret very much a Black separatist movement. The Afro-Exonian Society says it is open to Whites, but I wouldn’t say Whites are encouraged to join,” Macomber said. 

Macomber also noted to The Exonian that the supposed militancy of AES would hurt college matriculation. “What worries me is that the militant action may backfire in regard to college acceptances, for one thing. I wish we could have the situation we had here a few years ago,” Macomber said.

Dean Robert Kesler shared some of Macomber’s concerns. “The school cannot tolerate an exclusive organization, Black or White. If the Afro-Exonian Society’s object is education, as it says it is, then it must share it with the Whites,” Kesler said. “But it has become a symbol of solidarity. Though it has not excluded White students, there are none in its leadership or any of its major activities… Separatism is not appropriate in a school which has been integrated for over 100 years.

For his part, Principal Richard Day expressed cautious support for the Society’s establishment. “The actions of the Black students have been healthy for the school. They have added immensely to the strength and value of the Exeter education,” Day said. “The exchange of ideas, both formally and informally, in Chapel and in various publications, has contributed to the vitality of the school.” 

“It is unfortunate however,” Day continued, “when Blacks exclude any friendly moves from Whites. I haven’t seen any of this, and what I have seen in that Blacks have been generally constructive in what they have said and done. I have not found any hostility, but if there is any, it is wrong-headed, and I can’t approve of it.”

“Nevertheless, we must lean over backwards in our tolerance and compassion,” Day said.

The 1960s demonstrated the power—and the resilience—of Black Exonians, on campus and beyond. But all of their activism fit against the backdrop of a tumultuous world. A War on Drugs that resulted in the mass-incarceration of Black people and a War in Vietnam that disproportionately affected Black Americans loom over all coverage from this time period and are explored in subsequent Since 1878 articles.

Click here to read the next decade in Since 1878.