History of Black Labor

As the decades passed, things at Woodberry started to slowly shift, though slowly is the right word. For most of the school's history, Black workers had been kept in the same roles: the kitchen, the dining hall, the grounds, the farm, and housekeeping. The hierarchy was clear and deliberately maintained. Black workers were essential to the institution's daily life, but leadership remained out of reach. As one person who spent decades at Woodberry and witnessed this firsthand observed: 'There were never people in leadership. Even though certain departments were predominantly Black, there was never a Black person in leadership. There were always whites in leadership of various departments.'

The reality of this era was hard. Racist slurs were written on bathroom walls, and Black housekeeping staff quietly washed them off so Black students wouldn't have to see them. Black male workers were told by those who came before them not to look white women in the eyes when passing in the hallway, a rule passed down as a matter of survival. A longtime food service worker shared what an earlier worker had told him: 'If they walk down the hallway and see a white woman walking down the hallway at the same time, the men couldn't look at the white woman. They had to turn their head or look down while passing by.' These weren't old stories from a history book. They were living memories carried by people who still walked these halls.

Change came slowly, and often through small moments that meant more than they should have. For years, Black workers weren't invited to the school's main Christmas party, held upstairs with food and a band, while white staff celebrated above them. When a headmaster finally opened that event to everyone, it meant something real. As one Black worker reflected: 'Opening up that big event to everybody was, I think, a significant gesture. We don't just value you because of your work. We value you.' That some white staff stopped attending once Black workers were included says everything about how fragile that progress was.

Within the kitchen, the dining hall, and the hallways of this school, Black workers had been building something powerful all along, not through titles, but through presence. A housekeeping staff member who stood in the hallways and greeted students by name every single day became a fixture of campus life, someone students looked forward to seeing, someone who made Woodberry feel like a place that knew them. Dining hall workers who quietly recognized students, remembered faces, and made people feel seen created a warmth that no official program could manufacture. Workers in food service became so woven into the fabric of student life that students and alumni recognized and openly celebrated them. That kind of relationship, built over years of showing up, is its own form of leadership.

By the late 1990s and into the 2000s, Black staff members began moving into administrative and leadership roles for the first time. Black administrators began shaping admissions, student life, and the school's direction in ways that had never been possible before. One administrator used their position to deliberately bring more Black students to campus, knowing that when Black students arrived and excelled academically and athletically, it changed what was possible for everyone who came after. Others created unofficial but deeply necessary spaces where students of color could process their experiences on a predominantly white campus, track grades, absorb hard moments, and make sure students had somewhere to land. That kind of care was never in any job description. It was given freely. As one Black staff member who did this work described it: 'I want to be remembered as somebody who cared enough to do something about that and create a home away from home for the boys.'

And through it all, the long tradition of Black labor in the dining hall and kitchen continued, carried by workers who had given decades of service and represented a direct connection to an earlier era. One by one, the people they had worked beside retired, moved on, or passed away, until those who remained were the last ones left who remembered how it used to be. As one dining hall worker who gave over 40 years to Woodberry put it: 'I'm the last of the African American ones for the kitchen at this time frame.' That is not just a personal reflection. That is a historical marker, the end of one chapter and the beginning of another.