Now You See Me, Now You Don't: A brief history of Duke international students

In the Beginning Were the Missionaries

Historical Background:

The earliest record of foreign students studying in the U.S. colleges dates back to the late eighteenth century when the legendary Venezuelan revolutionist Francisco de Miranda enrolled in Yale University in 1784 (Bevis &Lucas, 41). At a time in which overseas travel remained inconvenient and U.S. colleges still coming of age, such a choice is probably purely out of his adventurous spirit.

Students selected for the Chinese Educational Mission were all sent to the New England area and later enter American colleges. This photo was taken in 1872 when the first six students arrived in America. Courtesy of Wikipedia.

By the middle and late nineteenth century, as science and technology innovation took place during the second industrial revolution, a western education has become something not only desirable but superior in the eyes of the Orientals. In the 1870s, small groups of Chinese students were sent by the Qing government to study sciences and engineering in the U.S. through the Chinese Educational Mission; there were at the same period, enrollments from Japan as well. (Bevis &Lucas, 43-58).

Possibly due to its secluded location in the south and the religious nature of the education it offered, Trinity College was not among the destinations of the first Asian foreign students. But it would soon welcome its first international student as well.

Charles Soong portrait

Courtesy of Wikipedia

The Story of A “missionary special”

The young Charles Jones Song arrived in the U.S. in the summer of 1880 with his uncle. He soon ran away from his uncle and came to North Carolina. In 1881, under the sponsorship of Durham industrialist and Methodist layman Julian S. Carr, Soong enrolled in Trinity College, where he studied for about one year before transferring to Vanderbilt University to finish his degree in theology. In 1886, Soong returned to his hometown as a missionary.

His life after returning to China was legendary. After doing missionary work for a few years and making a great fortune from printing business, he helped finance the Chinese revolution. All his six children received education in the U.S., and two of his daughters married the two most powerful leaders in China.

The remarkable deeds of Trinity’s first international students became the long-lasting obsession of the institution as well as the local community despite the fact that he only studied here for a year. Like all first comers who left a remark in history, Soong’s story was frequently repeated, mystified, and even exploited to confirm the superiority of western ideology.

Historical literature of the early 20^th century emphasized his Christianity and framed Soong’s incredible achievements attributed to “the Divine grace which flooded his soul" and of the education he received in Trinity. This foreign student’s individual autonomy was diminished, for he is considered but a human embodiment of “the blessing”.

“A Gift That Blessed A Nation”, written by a bishop in the 1940s, narrates the story of Charles Soong and Julian Carr.

In "A Gift That Blessed A Nation", Julian Carr was credited for influencing the destiny of China and the political situation in the Far East by his sponsorship of Soong and in the end, everything was attributed to God’s grace.

The 1942 Duke Divinity School Bulletin presents a similar narrative, saying that “it is not claiming too much” to assert that Soong’s conversion into Christianity, was significant in the history of modern China.

The church in which Charles Soong's conversion took place commemorated him but also claimed "Probably not since apostolic days have the reward and romance of the gospel-power been more fruitfully witnessed to".

Photo from 1932 Alumni Register. Six Trinity Alumni doing missionary work in Japan.

Zensuke Hinohara graduated from Trinity College in 1905. He went back to Kobe, Japan and served in Kobe Central Methodist Church. He was also Professor of Homeletics at a local Theological Seminary.

Tokio Kugimiya graduated from Trinity College in 1903 and went back to Japan to devout himself to the southern Methodist cause. The 1930 Alumni Register describes him as "Whitefield of Japan" and "one of the best and most tireless evangelists in the Empire today"

The Japanese Missionaries

Ironically, at the same time Trinity College had its first foreign student from China, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the Immigration Act were imposed by Congress, restricting the entrance of many potential foreign students. Not until 1899 did Trinity College have its second foreign student coming from Japan.

The annual bulletins from the archive reveal that from 1899 to 1925, about 45 foreign students attended Trinity. Nearly all of them were from either Japan or China, with only a few exceptions who came from Korea and one from Brazil.

Like Charles Soong, many of the Japanese students studied at Trinity in order to become pastors and missionaries. Looking through the Alumni Register of those years, one could see that many Japanese students sent back messages across the Atlantic, describing their successful missionary work at home.

Although the archive doesn’t have much to offer in terms of the local community’s perception of and attitudes towards these early foreign students, it was certain that discrimination based on race and origins were present: one article from the 1930 Alumni Register mentions an incident of Japanese student Tokio Kugimiya fighting with an American classmate because the latter called him “a Chink” and “Jap” while slapping him on the chest in a baseball game. For American students at that time, foreign students were viewed as “the other”, while for the Trinity College, on the other hand, these foreign students were probably viewed more as a medium that it could transmit the religious knowledge to rather than individuals that could contribute to the diversity of this predominantly white and Caucasian southern institution.

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