A Preface from the Editors

1878 marks the first year The Exonian reported on the Academy. On April 6, 1878, the founding editors—E. H. Mariett, E. B. Bauch and W. N. Needles—charted the paper’s direction. The Exonian’s purpose, they decided, was to celebrate the Academy’s culture and roots. “The Academy prides itself, and rightly, on the high standing of its graduates,” they wrote.

The 142nd Board of The Exonian contests this direction. By reflecting on our past and present, we realize that The Exonian has failed to report holistically on the Exeter community. The 142nd Board sees a paper, and an institution, inextricably tied to white supremacy. 

In 1878, the editors projected that the The Exonian would “favor no class, no clique, no personal interests to the exclusion of matters touching the welfare of the students as a whole.” In November of 2020, the 142nd Board recognizes that race was not included in this proclamation. We understand that the paper did not live up to its promise.

Even now, The Exonian reflects the paper’s and the Academy’s racist roots. On the Instagram account @BlackatExeter, anonymous Black students shared their experiences of overt racism in The Exonian, with incidents as recent as the spring of the 142nd Board’s tenure. 

Since 1878 is the 142nd Board’s reaction to these posts, a summer of national activism and the leadership of the Black members of the Exeter community. 

The 142nd Board felt we could help put Exeter today into its proper historical context. Our archives provide an easily-accessible record of life at Exeter, stretching all the way back to the late 1800s. They reflect, to some extent, the daily lives of Exonians—their classes, their social lives, their clubs and in other spaces. To this end, our hope was to use the privilege of such an archive to help tell as honest a story as we can about race at the Academy.  

The staff of The Exonian reexamined the paper’s archives, decade by decade. We charted the presence of minstrel shows, the Klu Klux Klan and racial discrimination at Exeter—and their evolution over time. Learning about this racism is a vital step towards understanding the role of racial discrimination in Exeter’s history, but it is not the only step. Exeter’s story is not just one of racial discrimination, but one of resistance as well. We also hope to share the stories of the Black activists who have transformed our school and fought to create lasting change. We have included some of their stories in our timeline, and we spotlight some of them in a series of profiles as well. We also reached out to Black alumni to hear their stories, gather their thoughts and raise their voices.

Our hope is that, by bringing forth pieces of our Academy’s long history with race and racism since 1878, The Exonian can help set the record straight. 

The editors of The Exonian recognize that some of the content in Since 1878 may cause distress. The Academy’s long and painful history of hurting Black and non-white members of the Exeter community is hard to read and harder to live with. 

The Exonian will follow the National Association of Black Journalists’ recommendations and use “n-gro” and “[n-word]”. Additionally, as has been our editorial policy for the past term, The Exonian will capitalize the word “Black.”

At this time, we would also like to recognize the contributions of those not on our staff. We would like to thank Nikole Hannah-Jones of The New York Times for her 1619 Project, a record of America’s history with slavery and race. Jones’ work is a major inspiration for Since 1878 and The Exonian’s journalistic ambitions. We would also like to thank Head of Archives and Special Collections Magee Lawhorn and her colleagues at the Academy Library for their support on this project. Lastly, we thank alumni Ciatta Baysah ’97, Joshua Bloodworth ’93, Claudia Cruz ’96, Kelvin Green ’17, Judith Howard ’73, Thee Smith ’69 and the current Afro-Latinx Exonian Society Board for their assistance, interviews or write-ins.

As a predominantly-white institution, both today and throughout its history, it is impossible for The Exonian, and especially its archives, to provide a full or unbiased portrait of the Academy. Since 1878 was completed by a majority non-Black staff, with three white advisers. What we have found may be flawed and will certainly be incomplete. Still, we hope that Since 1878 will further for some of our readers an understanding of how we got to where we are today.  

The 142nd Board of The Exonian believes that the only way to imagine a more just Academy is to understand its unjust past. We hope this independent reportage provides a qualitative portrait of race and the Black experience at Exeter. From here, history is in all of our hands. 

Sincerely,

Anne Brandes, Felix Yeung, Jeffrey Cui, Philip Horrigan, Noah James, Dennis Kostakoglu Aydin, Stephen McNulty, Dillon Mims and Daniel Zhang