A white-man’s school?: Early Black students and staff at the U of G

During the early 20th century, the institutions that would later form the U of G accepted Black students when others wouldn’t—but they also accepted racist language and stereotypes

Graham Burt | Archives Associate

Content warning: Please be advised that the following article examines racial stereotypes and contains racist language. 

In a 1937 article in the OAC Review, an early campus magazine published by and for Guelph students, an unnamed Macdonald Institute graduate was tasked with predicting what she thought life would be like a decade into the future for students of the Macdonald Institute, the Ontario Agricultural College (OAC), and the Ontario Veterinary College (OVC)—the three colleges that in 1964 would join to form the University of Guelph.

Besides predicting that students 10 years in the future would be promiscuous, lazy, and incessant cigarette smokers who struggled with even the most basic cooking lesson on boiling water, the writer also prophesied about what the dining hall on campus would look like:

“They still ate [lunch] at the dining hall, and while it appeared the same from [the] outside, inside it was vastly different. There were numerous small tables and two girls and two boys sat at each one. Negro waiters in tuxedos rushed around and saw that everyone was served with exactly what they wanted.”

Black servers were indeed employed at the university’s dining hall during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. However, as one can see in the excerpt, the writer uses racist language, which reflects not only her own intolerant attitudes, but also those of much of society at the time.

As Black History Month events take place at the University of Guelph, examining the experiences of early Black staff and students in accounts such as this one may help us gain a better understanding of what the Black experience was like on campus.

Black waiters on campus

The hiring of Black waiters in the dining hall was first considered in the spring of 1891.

“A step that is receiving the serious consideration of the [university] authorities,” a column in the May 1891 issue of the OAC Review reported, “is to have negro waiters in the dining hall.”

The reason given for this consideration? The “darkies,” unlike the white student waiters, would “leave off speaking to the girls” and stop causing trouble.

In February 1910, an article appeared in the OAC Review describing a minstrel show put on by OAC students. After the performance, guests were given “a display of what the negro waiter really should be” as “members of the dusky race flew around [the room], laden with sandwiches and coffee.” These Black waiters, employees of the university, were subjected to racist platitudes and construed as life-long servants.

Joe Vignale the pugilist

It is difficult to know with any certainty how many Black students attended the Macdonald Institute, the OAC, and the OVC during the early history of the institutions. With that said, Macdonald Institute appears to have had no Black students before 1930, and the OAC had only a few, at the most.

One of the students was Joseph Raphael Vignale who graduated from the OAC in 1923.

Born in about 1898 in Trinidad, he immigrated to Canada in 1914. His graduation bio, written in the yearbook by his peers, gives us some idea as to his character and personality:

“Joe is a pugilist [boxer] of note, and a well-developed athlete. His chief difficulty seems to be to convince the fellows that he is not always joking. A remarkable habit of slipping away to Toronto and forgetting to return is one of his noted characteristics. A Canadian winter is, like too much study, one of his pet aversions.”

It is difficult to surmise how someone was treated or accepted on campus based on a mere paragraph in a yearbook. Nonetheless, it is striking to see the contrast of the light-hearted yearbook bio on one hand and the subjugation of Black waiters and the harmful and bigoted remarks written by staff and students in the OAC Review during the same period on the other.

A plethora of appallingly racist comments, ‘jokes,’ depictions, and anecdotes are sprinkled throughout the student-published OAC Review.

Professor T. D. Jarvis argued in a 1912 article that African Blacks were unintelligent and “one of the most uncontrollable beings in civilization.” In the fall of 1918—right before Joe Vignale enrolled at the OAC—an editor of the OAC Review, describing an initiative to revamp the magazine, wrote: “We have set a high mark and mean to attain it, being just as determined as the negro who was bent on changing his color by drinking buttermilk, who said, ‘I am resolved to bleach or bust!’”

D. McCoy, F. D. Booker, and the OVC

Between 1900 and 1930, at least 10 Black students attended the OVC.

Two of the earliest Black students to enroll at the college were Wesley Deer McCoy and Felix Delno Booker.

According to Randal Jelks in African Americans in the Furniture City (2005) and Scott Gelber in Courtrooms and Classrooms: A Legal History of College Access, 1860-1960 (2016), McCoy and Booker had attended the Kansas State Agricultural College together before enrolling in a two-year program in the Veterinary Department of the Grand Rapids Medical College (GRMC) in Michigan in 1907.

Both McCoy and Booker successfully completed their freshman year at GRMC. Upon returning to the college in the fall of 1908 to register for their second year, they were denied admittance, apparently in an effort to appease a number of their white peers who had dropped out in protest to McCoy and Booker’s presence on campus. To prevent more students from leaving, and to protect the “peaceful decorum” and “financial viability” of the college, GRMC turned McCoy and Booker away, reported Jelks and Gelber.

McCoy and Booker hired an attorney who successfully argued in a circuit court that it was illegal for GRMC, a quasi-public institution, to discriminate on the basis of race. A few days after the ruling, dozens of McCoy and Booker’s white classmates marched out of their classes, burned effigies of McCoy and Booker in the street, and, according to Jelks and Gelber, viciously chanted, “This is a white man’s school” and “Lynch ‘em if they don’t keep out.”

GRMC appealed the circuit court decision and the case was brought before the Michigan Supreme Court, where the verdict was overturned. The court ruled that the college was a private institution and could therefore discriminate as it pleased. McCoy and Booker were permanently barred from the GRMC campus by order of the court solely because of the colour of their skin.

In early October 1910, McCoy and Booker travelled to Toronto (where the OVC was located until it moved to Guelph in 1922). How they were accepted and treated at the OVC and in the community is not definitively known. Dr. Booker graduated in 1912, and Dr. McCoy graduated the following year. Dr. McCoy’s yearbook bio, written by his peers, describes him as being “a capable, energetic student.”

Given what we know about anti-Black racism at that time, we can assume that they experienced some level of injustice, discrimination, and prejudice. Their graduation from the OAC and OVC was a testament to their courage and perseverance.

This Black History Month, let us reflect on the stories of Black students and staff—past and present—at the University of Guelph. Let us acknowledge the fact that while the university’s founding institutions did accept Black students when many American schools would not, they simultaneously allowed and participated in the promulgation of racial bigotry. And by looking at the injustices of the past, let us continue to strive for justice and equality for all.