Rev. Theophus Smith ’69

By ELLA BRADY, LEELA GANDHI, LINA HUANG, TARAZ LINCOLN and AMY LUM

Staff Writers

An interview separate from this spotlight, by current Afro-Latinx Exonian Society President Nahla Owens, is available in Since 1878.

At Exeter and beyond, Rev. Theophus “Thee” Smith ’69 has been a pioneering defender of Black identity and inclusion. While at Exeter, he and his peers founded the Afro-Exonian Society, now known as the Afro-Latinx Exonian Society, an organization which has been at the forefront of the fight for racial justice at the Academy. In addition, he raised his voice in several Chapel (Assembly) talks that have now become essential to understanding the Academy and its history.

Smith is a Professor Emeritus of Religion at Emory University and a Priest Associate at the Cathedral of St. Philip in Atlanta, Georgia. Before this, his activism at Phillips Exeter was integral to furthering social justice at the Academy. His legacy remains an inspiration to all past and present Exonians.

One of Smith’s earlier acts of resistance was his Chapel (Assembly) speech, “I Am a Black First.” “I am the New Black,” he declared in the Assembly Hall. “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, or your pity, or your guilt, or your fear. I demand only that you respect me.” Smith’s demands to the Academy were an essential first step toward change. His speech announced the arrival of the Afro-Exonian Society, an organization that would define Exeter for many.

In the following months, Smith and his peers met frequently to make the Afro-Exonian Society an established presence on campus. He served as its first senior representative.

ALES’ mission, as described by Smith in a Letter to the Editor in The Exonian, was to enable “whites… to learn what Black culture is, and how normal Black people live when they are not forced to become whites.” 

“We will involve every member in experiences which we hope will educate [them] in the complexities of institutional and individual prejudice, and which will aid each person in understanding and identifying with the current shift of status of Blacks in America,” Smith wrote in a Proposal for Incorporation to the Academy, where he detailed ALES’s goals and commitments.

Grounding Black Exonians in their racial identity was another one of the Society’s objectives. Discussion groups with both students and faculty were formed to help increase knowledge of Black issues in America.

Smith and his co-founders recognized that, “after prejudice against Blacks is dead, there remains the immense task of helping two separate cultures, regardless of race, to communicate and identify with each other.” As Black Exonians constituted only “about five per cent of the total student body” in ALES’ founding year, Smith knew that Black students needed a space to share their views and allow community members to “filter out what students honestly want here and present their demands to the Faculty.”

As such, ALES became a group dedicated to “educat[ing] the Academy Community to the needs and values of Black America.”

Throughout their time in ALES, Smith and his co-founders raised the idea of a Black history course. The courses Race: A Global History and American Slavery, American Capitalism partially realized his vision just last year—discussions in the sixties laid fundamental groundwork for building curricular diversity at the Academy. According to the ALES Committee, Black students in the sixties “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.” 

Smith’s effort to create such a course was a part of his broader mission to help students understand Black culture, which manifested in his prolific speeches. “By and large, when I say that I am black, you picture one of two types of typical black men. But I refuse to be either; and if you listen as if I were one of them, you will never realize who and what I actually represent, and you will leave this place just as your fathers left,” he said in “I Am a Black First”. 

Smith’s views were influenced by the racism he experienced. “It[’s] hard for me to exaggerate any one incident, simply because there are so many,” he said in the Chapel talk “Humanity vs. Racism,” delivered during Summer School (Exeter Summer).

In the same talk, he recalled an instance where a white Exonian active in the Afro-American Society passed him by at the airport. “The incidents occurred because nearly all whites make a certain assumption whenever they ‘see’ a black in public, or whenever they are among a mass of blacks… The Exonian in LaGuardia [Airport] also assumed that he didn’t know any dark-skinned blacks—at least none whom it was worth recognizing—and so shut his mind as soon as he sensed a dark figure; marking me as non-existent.”

In a time where “color blindness [was defined as]... a virtue,” Smith taught students at Summer School, at the Academy and in the wider world that it was not enough to rationalize their supposed lack of racism. “[T]hey are no longer capable–if they have ever been capable–of recognizing the prejudice in their acts; when the presence of racism is pointed out to them, they are incredibly resourceful at finding some excuse–some rationalization–which they demand justifies their action,” he wrote.

Smith expressed the feeling of isolation and not being understood by others. “I realize that when the Precisions performed in Chapel the other day, many of you saw black boys singing, and dancing, and doing their typical thing in a white band; rather than a few whites in a black group, playing black music,” he said to the Exeter community during “I Am a Black First.”

“I notice, sometimes you sit with us and listen to our jokes, that more often you laugh at us, and rarely with us.”

Smith initiated and propelled a movement for the Black community at Exeter to take pride in their culture and fight back against pressure to assimilate. “Each black American, after entering any white society, learns how and when to give up his blackness and act white; not only to be racially tolerated, but to be understood,” Smith wrote in “Two Letters Describe Cultural Integration, Past and Present.”

“Blacks should not come to Exeter and stay away from each other, as they did last year. We no longer have to suck up to you; or listen to your music… We are going to sit together in the dining halls, and say hello to each other across the quad (which we felt was wrong last year), and act our natural, black selves, everywhere,” Smith added in “I Am a Black First.”

“We hope that you will overcome your sickness, and view our behavior not as degenerate, but less inhibited than yours…The fact that you sometimes stare at us and view our behavior as ‘showing our color’ or acting the typical [n-word], is part of your sickness” he continued. “We are at Exeter to obtain knowledge of and when we become leaders, we will derive our strength not from your friendship, or your brains, or your money; but from ourselves.”

In pointing out the ways in which Black students were isolated, Smith demanded all educational institutions like the Academy to do better. “I tried to talk about Exeter and the identity problem for all Blacks…  You, [the Academy,] 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,” Smith said.

“An educational institution which prepares individuals to enter tomorrow’s society–that society [which] exists today is dead,” Smith said. “This type of institution merely perpetuates the morals and goals that are already dominant in the society, and offers no efficient leadership for change. If a significant change is to come from students who enter American business and politics, these Leaders, as students, must be taught to fulfill roles more dynamic, and more responsible, than those held by individuals in establishments today.” 

Smith ended by calling for the Academy community to promote change that would better support students. “If I were here I would want those changes I have suggested and more. I want them now for you, especially for those of you whom I know. I want them for my brother, who may be here one day. I want them for those numerous Blacks who will come here in the future and get their minds screwed up, and perhaps spend ten years getting back together again,” he said. 

“All I know is that you are too intense here, that your laughter is rarely the pleasant kind of thing that implies that you are enjoying life here, and that some of you are being hurt in ways that you realize all too well but fail to do anything about. I hope that you will help make Exeter the kind of place to which I would one day be willing to send my son.”

Exeter’s efforts to become such an institution are grounded in the organization Thee Smith helped found.