Anchors Aweigh, Time for Class: The First Naval ROTC Units on College Campuses, 1926–1941

• In Event: Friday Roundtable Session 11:25 am
  In Roundtable Session: Activism, Education, and Integration: The Historical Roots and Continued Persistence of Segregation (Table 21)

Abstract

Historians have studied higher education’s role in the two world wars and the Vietnam War, little attention has been paid to the crucial period between the two world wars. No history of the Navy, the NROTC, or colleges and universities can be complete without showing the ways educational and military opportunities were strictly limited by race, which then shut the pipeline to military leadership positions for Black college students and naval officers, slowing necessary progress for decades. Finally, it is important to study how the same subject matter was taught in different ways at universities and at the Naval Academy, and how a synthesis of the two approaches, as seen in Chester Nimitz’s example at Berkeley, made for excellent results.

Author

• William C. Purdy, University of California - Los Angeles