Friend or Foe: Nineteenth Century Dickinson College Students’ Perception of Their Janitors

This student essay was written in summer 2019 just before the release of the Dickinson & Slavery report.

When the enslavement of black people was constitutional, when the bloodiest war in American history was fought over the human rights of African Americans, when the Reconstruction of the divided nation furthered racial barriers, the janitors of Dickinson College were African Americans and all the students until 1886 were white.[1] Many of those janitors were former slaves, while approximately half of the students hailed from the South. And yet, despite all the barriers between the two groups, the janitors left a lasting impression on the students they served. While by today’s terms, much of the treatment and perception of the janitors was racist, nineteenth century students had a much more complicated relationship with them than can be defined in just this term. Their relationship was marked by the students’ simultaneous racially-based condescension to and genuine friendship with their janitorial staff.

1846 petition for the “Application for John Jenkins.” Courtesy of the Dickinson College Archives and Special Collections.

As early as 1846, Dickinson students proved their respect for their janitors when they signed a petition Dickinson College to reinstate John Jenkins to his janitorial position. The petition does not explain why Jenkins might have been fired. However, in the short document, the students affirm Jenkins work ethic and convey respect for the janitor. They declared that Jenkins’s “deportment has been uniformly so correct, and, he has been so faithful, in the discharge of his duties, that we conceive it to be the interest of all parties to keep him.”[2] Even their diction in this sentence reveals their respect for Jenkins. According to the students, “his deportment,” or behavior, was not just decent, but was “so correct,” they could not find fault with it. Beyond his character, they argued that he was “so faithful” in completing all “his duties.” In both descriptions, the “so” emphasizes just how “correct” his behavior was and how “faithful” he was to his job. However, not only do they emphasize his character and work ethic, they continue by arguing that it is in “the interest of all parties to keep him.” This ending reveals that the students believe that “all parties,” meaning everyone, benefit from Jenkins’s role as a janitor. While we have yet to find any other documents regarding John Jenkins, the students’ belief that his presence was so beneficial to their lives as students and to the maintenance of Dickinson College that they would petition the school with such praising language and manage to gain 30 signatures, a surprisingly high number for such a small school, proves that they respected and even befriended their janitor.[3]

At the end of the century, The Dickinsonian printed an obituary for janitor Henry Spradley. The article, which appeared on the front page, was reverent and praising of Spradley. Giving a brief history of his life, it detailed his time in slavery, his service in the 24th United States Colored Troops, and his work for Dickinson College. According to the students, “Uncle Henry” was “thoroughly honest,” “was noted for the regularity with which he performed all his duties,” “and by, his death the college has lost the services of one whose fidelity to every good interest is rarely equalled.”[4] The reverence with which the students describe him reveal the prominent role he played in their lives as well as the respect he earned. In their opinion, not only was he good at his job and a good person, but his “fidelity” was incomparable to almost anyone else.[5]

The document that potentially best reveals the student’s ambivalence in caring and patronizing language is the Class of 1870’s reflection pamphlet that appeared in the 1903 Microcosm. Entitled “The Corps of Hygiene,” the five-page document includes pictures, information, and recollections of each of five janitors that served when they attended the school. The descriptions are simultaneously demeaning and well-meaning. In the introduction to the sketch, the students explained that “We were truly delighted to see these old friends again, with all of whom we were so closely associated and who were so much a part of our College life—the butt of many a merry joke and boisterous pranks—but always kindly and uncomplaining.”[6] This opening is one of the most complicated representations of the janitors because it is so demeaning and yet somehow caring of the janitors. Claiming to be “delighted” at the memory of their janitorial “old friends,” they remembered being “so closely associated” to them that they constituted an important “part of our College life.” And yet, despite the friendship with and importance of the janitors that they described, they also admitted to their maltreatments of their “old friends” when they said that the janitors were “the butt of many a merry joke and boisterous pranks.” While most likely not all these “jokes” and “pranks” were ill-intentioned, the fact that they took advantage of the janitors being “always kindly and uncomplaining” because it was their job to behave so, reveals the cruelty of the students’ behaviors.

“Judge” Watts in “The Corps of Hygiene.” Courtesy of the Dickinson College Archives and Special Collections.

While mostly descriptive, the recollections of the janitors in “The Corps of Hygiene” were both caring and incredibly patronizing. While the background on “Judge” Watts was mostly just a depiction of his appearance and clothing, the students quickly revealed their condescension when explaining how “Judge” got his nickname. They wrote that because he shared the last name of a prominent judge and lawyer in Carlisle, they nicknamed him “Judge.” However, they continued by saying “many of us never knew his Christian name, nor did it greatly matter.”[7] The fact that they did not think his name was important enough to “matter” that no one knew it reveals their condescension because not only did they rename him, but they also refused to learn his actual name.[8]

The description of Sam Watts, brother to “Judge” Watts was much more mocking. Beyond mocking him for his tobacco consumption, the writers of this pamphlet also mocked his cleanliness, diligence, intelligence, and pronunciation. The students included a recollection of Watts changing sheets in which “expansive silhouettes of his grimy fingers would appear on the sheets, and upon being taken to task, in terms of earnest remonstrance, he would quickly reverse the sheets and smoothing them into place would remark oracularly, ‘I allus advocates the keeping of things neat and clean,’ which naïve remark generally silenced all adverse criticism.”[9] This depiction of Watts not only describes him as “grimy” but also mocks his intelligence with the quote and reference to it as being naïve. The students continued by claiming that he would refuse to do any janitorial work in West College. Because Watts was assigned to East College, he was not responsible for cleaning West College. However, their portrayal of him implies that he was rejecting his janitorial duties by refusing not that he was by no means required to tend to West College.

Sam Watts in “The Corps of Hygiene.” Courtesy of the Dickinson College Archives and Special Collections.

Potentially the worst offense of the description of Watts was the claim that “among his own race, however, he was held in high esteem as a pulpit orator, and his efforts were said to be quite scholarly, due in large measure to the fact that many of the boys were regular contributors to his sermons, their erudition being painfully in evidence at times.”[10] This sentence alone mocks both Watts’s intelligence and the African American community’s intelligence. By claiming that he was only “scholarly” because the students assisted him in writing the sermons, in a “painfully” obvious way “at times,” these students revealed how condescending they were that they did not think Watts was capable of writing a good sermon on his own. However, the writers specifically included that “his race…held [him] in high esteem” despite him supposedly getting his sermons from the students. This fact reveals that the students viewed the African American community as a whole to be lesser than they because African Americans believed him to be a good orator despite his implied lack of intelligence and inability to write for himself. This then implies that there were no good African American orators who did not rely on white students who added “erudition” to their

Andrew Beals in “The Corps of Hygiene.” Courtesy of the Dickinson College Archives and Special Collections.

speeches.[11]

Despite how short the description of Andrew Beals is, the students seemed to both like him and like to mess with him. They claimed that “to lock him up so that he would be unable to ring the bell for recitations or to abstract the key from the bunch at his belt that we might be able to perpetrate that time-worn prank—the tolling of the bell at midnight—was a legitimate exercise of our energies.”[12] This admission reveals that the students enjoyed keeping Beals from his duties. However, despite the lack of respect these pranks convey, they claim that “he was thoroughly incorruptible” and “he held the respect of the boys, and we parted from him with sincere regret.”[13] By praising his character and claiming to respect and miss Beals, the students reveal that despite the pranks they played on him, they cared for the janitor.[14]

George Norris in “The Corps of Hygiene.” Courtesy of the Dickinson College Archives and Special Collections.

The students’ description of George Norris was friendly and caring. They praised the janitor for “being of kindly disposition and of unfailing good humor” that made him “deservedly popular” and “an especial favorite of the Class of ’70.”[15] Beyond this praise they even claimed that after “noticing the battered condition of his watch, they determined to present him with a new one, and to his great delight, and it will be noticed in the accompanying portrait that he proudly displays it.”[16] That the students were willing to pitch in to buy a watch for their janitor reveals that they clearly cared for him.[17]

The students depicted Robert Young almost lovingly and heroically. Unlike the other janitors, the students mapped out Young’s life, explaining his earlier life working for Dickinson College President Dashiell, his role when the class of ’70 was there, and his interactions with them upon their return for the 30^th reunion. This description also mentions pranks on him in the form of being “pelted with many a snow-ball and other convenient missiles.”[18] However, the students remarked that, “to the great delight of the boys,” he became “quite a fighter,” even helping “a member of ’72 in a melee down town so well that “Robert for the time was the hero of the hour.”[19] Beyond viewing him as a “hero,” the students praised his memory as “scarcely short

Robert Young in “The Corps of Hygiene.” Courtesy of the Dickinson College Archives and Special Collections.

of remarkable” because at their thirtieth reunion “he was able to recall most of us by name, in spite of the great changes the years have wrought.”[20] The combination of the students’ respect for Young and their enjoyment at pranking him reveals the students both cared for and mocked their janitors.[21]

The class of 1870 ended their pamphlet by stating “this quintette were all more or less characters in their way and were prime favorites with the boys of ’70, and our relations were always amicable and they returned our feeling in kind.”[22] Describing them as “favorites,” the writers claimed to be “always amicable” and friendly despite their previous admissions to mocking and pranking the janitors. However, even if their pranks were carried out amicably, their patronizing views of the janitors are evident in the next and last line of the pamphlet when they claimed “certainly no class of students could wish for more devoted friends or more ardent admirers of their poor talents than were this little body of lowly friends, and we bear witness to their worth.”[23] Every caring sentiment in this sentence seems to have a direct patronizing contradiction in it as well. Despite calling them “devoted friends,” they cockily claim the janitors were the students’ “ardent admirers” as if they served no other role than to admire the students. Continuing, they refer to them as “lowly” because of their position and race, yet simultaneously “bear witness to their worth.” These two sentences perfectly sum up the students’ attitudes toward their janitors during the nineteenth century because they are filled with friendship and respect yet condescension and patronization.[24]

Footnotes

[1] One of the janitors, Robert Young, petitioned the school to allow his son the opportunity to get an education at Dickinson College. The president of the relented and admitted his son into the college. For unknown reasons, Young’s son left after only one year at the school. Regardless, he was the first African American to attend Dickinson College.

[2] “Application for John Jenkins,” 1846, President’s Papers, Emory, RG 2-3 2.2.1, Dickinson College Archives and Special Collections.

[3] “Application for John Jenkins.”

[4] “Death of Henry W. Spradley,” The Dickinsonian, April 17, 1897, 1.

[5] “Death of Henry W. Spradley,” 1.

[6] “The Corps of Hygiene,” Microcosm, 1903, 26, Dickinson College Archives and Special Collections.

[7] “The Corps of Hygiene,” p 26.

[8] “The Corps of Hygiene,” p 26.

[9] “The Corps of Hygiene,” p 27.

[10] “The Corps of Hygiene,” p 27.

[11] “The Corps of Hygiene,” p 27.

[12] “The Corps of Hygiene,” p 28.

[13] “The Corps of Hygiene,” p 28.

[14] “The Corps of Hygiene,” p 28.

[15] “The Corps of Hygiene,” p 29.

[16] “The Corps of Hygiene,” p 29.

[17] “The Corps of Hygiene,” p 29.

[18] “The Corps of Hygiene,” p 30.

[19] “The Corps of Hygiene,” p 30.

[20] “The Corps of Hygiene,” p 30.

[21] “The Corps of Hygiene,” p 30.

[22] “The Corps of Hygiene,” p 30.

[23] “The Corps of Hygiene,” p 30.

[24] “The Corps of Hygiene,” p 30.