Grinnell's Other Lake: Nyanza

Have you ever wondered why Grinnell's "other lake"—Nyanza—bears such an unusual name? Nyanza Gulf (also known as Winam or Kavirondo Gulf) is a shallow body of water in the northeastern corner of Lake Victoria on the western border of Kenya. How did that name cross the ocean and the equator to reach Grinnell? Unfortunately, no one knows for sure. 

However it gained its name, Grinnell's Lake Nyanza has been part of the Grinnell story for a long time—certainly longer than Arbor Lake. Today's post takes Lake Nyanza as its subject, and examines the numerous ways in which this body of water affected life in the growing town of Grinnell.

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I could find no record that established firmly when Nyanza appeared in Grinnell. A look backward in a 1916 Grinnell Herald article proposes that "it was about 1880...that the Iowa Central excavated Lake Nyanza" (January 28, 1916), and Dorothy Pinder accepts that date, reporting that Iowa Central Railroad probably dug the lake in 1880 or 1881 to provide water for the railroad's steam engines (In Old Grinnell, [Grinnell: Herald-Register Publishing, 1995]. p. 34). If we take this evidence for the lake's founding, then Nyanza is about twenty years older than its neighbor, Arbor Lake, which only came into existence in 1903. 

1911 Sanborn Map of Grinnell, Iowa

From the beginning, Nyanza stood on the southeastern fringe of town, and therefore does not appear in early maps. As the Grinnell Herald pointed out in 1888, even then one could reach Nyanza only by walking down the railroad tracks; there was no road to the lake. As Nyanza became an increasingly popular site for recreation, the newspaper urged the city to open a street that would reach the lake (August 31, 1888), and gradually the town stretched into the lake's neighborhood.

Despite the difficulty of reaching Nyanza in the early years, Grinnell citizens certainly knew the lake as newspapers of the day frequently referenced it. When boasting of the many attractions that Grinnell offered to prospective businesses or residents, the newspaper did not fail to mention Nyanza, along with Iowa College, excellent public schools, and "cultured society" (ibid., June 8, 1888). In fact, Nyanza gave residents of Grinnell numerous avenues by which to enjoy themselves.

No later than 1888 the lake was already home to "a fleet of fine boats," and was fast "becoming quite a popular place of amusement," the Grinnell Herald observed (August 31, 1888; ibid., July 17, 1891). When the Herald's reporter left town on the railroad in 1891, he waxed poetic: 

lovely lake Nyanza with its cool and placid waters..., the sailboat resting upon its bosom, numerous small boats that line the shore tell the pleasure and enjoyment that the lake may give (ibid., September 25, 1891).

In winter Nyanza, like Arbor Lake later, attracted ice-skaters (ibid., November 20, 1888; Scarlet and Black, November 14, 1896). In January 1889 the Grinnell Herald observed that "skating on Lake Nyanza...was excellent...and the lake was continually crowded during the glassy period" when it was frozen (January 25, 1889). The following winter, too, Nyanza proved an ideal skating site: "the surface is smooth, the evenings brilliant, and the air just bracing enough so that furs can be left at home. Every night the lake is covered with gay crowds of skaters" (ibid., January 10, 1890). Apparently a local man also made Nyanza part of his toboggan slide when winter weather accommodated (ibid., December 14, 1888).

A 1972 (?) Roger McMullin photograph of sailboats on Lake Nyanza
(https://digital.grinnell.edu/islandora/object/grinnell:5929)

In summer Nyanza attracted anglers, some of whom managed to catch sizable fish. I don't know when it began, but no later than 1902 authorities sponsored the addition of fish to the lake. That autumn, for example, the newspaper reported that "200 large mouthed black bass and 200 Mississippi catfish" fingerlings were added to Nyanza (Grinnell Herald, October 17, 1902). With the founding of the town's Outing Club, local fishermen found additional support for stocking Nyanza. In November 1917, for instance, the club sponsored the addition to the lake of "several thousand" pike, pickerel, bass, and croppies (ibid., November 6, 1917). Five years later the Iowa Fish and Game department dumped a half million [sic!] baby pike into Nyanza (ibid., May 15, 1922). In 1925 the state hatchery contributed "twenty cans" [?] of blue gills, bass, and croppies to both Nyanza and Arbor Lake (ibid., October 13, 1925).

Grinnell Herald, June 25, 1895

Periodically the newspaper told readers of exceptional catches. For example, in July 1917 Ed Dwyer, in Grinnell to work on the college dormitories then under construction, hooked a twenty-one inch pickerel that weighed five pounds (ibid., July 13, 1917).  In 1921 Frank Wells (1895-1982) landed a thirty-eight inch pickerel that weighed ten-and-a-half pounds—a fish so big that it broke Wells's bamboo pole, obliging the man to wade in after the fish and catch it with his hands (ibid., August 19, 1921). In mid-August 1922 Andrew Appleby (1868-1956) took a four-pound walleye at Nyanza (ibid., August 14, 1922).

Advertisement in Grinnell Herald, May 12, 1921

Stories like these encouraged local merchants like Harry Ritter (1872-1952) to sponsor competitions intended to assist sales. A 1921 advertisement, for example, promised a free Winchester Steel fishing rod to the person who caught the largest fish between May 15 and June 15 at either of Grinnell's lakes (ibid., May 12, 1921). 

Photograph of a Horned Grebe
(https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Horned_Grebe/id#)

From its earliest days Nyanza attracted birds, a fact we know mainly because the engineer whom the railroad assigned to manage the lake's pumping station was a birder. Mr. Will Berry (1860-1954) not only paid attention to the lake's avian guests, some of which gained mention in the newspaper, but he also made a hobby of preserving those birds he captured, like the horned grebe he found during its migration in spring 1888 (Grinnell Herald, May 1, 1888). Berry collected so many birds that he showed a case full of his taxidermy art at the fairgrounds, the newspaper reporting that "the birds were all captured within gun shot of the lake" (September 18, 1888). 

As would later also be true of Arbor Lake, the water level in Nyanza sometimes fell drastically, endangering the lake's usefulness to the railroad as well as to those looking for fun. In late 1890 workers of the Iowa Central Railroad dug a well, intending to use the water to refresh the lake, which had gone quite dry; 80 feet down there was still no water to share with Nyanza (Grinnell Herald, October 28, 1890; ibid., November 18, 1890; ibid., December 2, 1890). Soon, however, the newspaper was reporting that there was too much water in the lake. The Herald told readers in 1892 that recent heavy rains had pushed the lake north as far as Washington Avenue and east as far as East Street (May 20, 1892). By late June observers declared that "Lake Nyanza has never been so full as now," the water threatening the railroad tracks that ran along the lake's western shore (ibid., June 28, 1892).

City streets were also under threat because of the lake's expansion to the north. A writer for the Herald wondered if the city ought not plan a bridge at Washington Avenue and also at the south end of High Street (ibid., August 12, 1892). Town fathers responded promptly to this suggestion; within a few days the newspaper told readers that grading was already underway on Washington Street, although the railroad expressed no interest in a bridge over the north arm of Nyanza (ibid., August 16, 1892). Whether because of this publicity or because officers of the railroad proved civic-minded, within a month the railroad agreed to construct a bridge over the northern branch of Nyanza (ibid., September 27, 1892), but progress was slow. In late June of the following year the "unsightly appearance of the half-finished bridge across the north end of Nyanza" generated criticism in the local press (ibid., June 27, 1893). Evidently the bridge then was more than half-finished, because by August 1st the Herald reported that "the new bridge...has been brought into good play all ready" (ibid., August 1, 1893).

An absence or superabundance of water was not, however, the most serious offense against the city's good will. Probably because the trains had to stop at Nyanza in order to take on water for the steam engines, hoboes began to use the area around Lake Nyanza as a temporary home. According to a report in the Herald, citizens who lived near Nyanza were "greatly annoyed" by the visiting tramps who, the newspaper maintained,

congregate in the little grove south of Lake Nyanza until the scene resembles a democratic convention. The grove...makes delightful snoozing quarters for these professional tourists (ibid., May 18, 1891).

On this occasion a policeman, aided by railroad workers, raided the "snoozing quarters" and managed to capture thirteen vagrants. From their cell, the newspaper continued, the arrested men 

claimed [that] they had been looking over the town with a view to a permanent location. They had found the moist breezes from Lake Nyanza very beneficial and after becoming more accustomed to water they fully intended to take a bath [!] (ibid). 

Freed on condition that they abandon town, the thirteen were put on a night train leaving Grinnell, thereby temporarily relieving the city of some of its unwanted visitors. However, as Everett Armstrong's recollections confirm, thirty years later when Armstrong was a boy the city was still doing battle with hoboes who set up camp around Nyanza.

Netta C. Anderson and Johan August Udden, A Preliminary List of Fossil Mastodon and Mammoth Remains in Illinois and Iowa (Rock Island, IL: Augustana College, 1905), p. 34.

A different Nyanza visitor surfaced in autumn 1890 when workmen who were excavating a water tank at the lake "unearthed portions of the skeleton of a prehistoric monster imbedded in the sandy clay...." Exposed to the air, most of the bones immediately crumbled, "a knee joint and thigh bone alone remaining whole...." A "large tooth was [also] uncovered, about 8 by 3 inches on the crown, with roots four or five inches in length" (Cedar Rapids Gazette, October 13, 1890). The Nyanza find did not amaze townsfolk who only a few years earlier had learned of the discovery of a mammoth skeleton when workers were excavating for H. C. Spencer's building at the corner of 4th and Main (Grinnell Herald, June 27, 1884). There investigators rescued a seven-foot tusk, along with some teeth and a few other bones, all of which apparently resided for some years in the Iowa College Museum of Natural History (Scarlet and Black, March 20, 1909; ibid., May 27, 1916; ibid., September 30, 1931). Nevertheless, the 1890 discovery at Nyanza of the remains of a second mammoth generated lots of conversation (Erwin H. Barbour, "Remains of the Primitive Elephant Found in Grinnell Iowa," Science 16, no. 4 [November 7, 1890]:263; my thanks to John Whittaker for sharing this article with me).

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Winter 1935 Photograph of Water Tower near Lake Nyanza
that Served Minneapolis and St. Louis Railroad
(Scarlet and Black, March 12, 1999)
 

Grinnell seems to have paid little attention to the lake in the years that followed. So long as steam engines continued to stop in town and refuel, the lake served an important function for the railroad—the Minneapolis and St. Louis Railroad having succeeded the Iowa Central. But with the advent of the so-called "diesel" engines after World War II, Lake Nyanza lost its commercial purpose. From this point onward, the lake served only the aims of recreation.

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Headline of Grinnell Herald-Register, September 27, 1954

In 1954 the Grinnell Herald-Register initiated discussions with the railroad to purchase the seventeen acres that included the lake, and also got the city to agree to take possession once the park was developed. That autumn the Grinnell Jaycees enthusiastically adopted the project as their own, and, assisted by a donation and planning advice from local businessman, Claude Ahrens (1912-2000), imagined a project that would stretch over several years. Among the facilities proposed was a playground area and docks to extend out into the lake to encourage fishing (Grinnell Herald-Register, September 27, 1954).

Aerial View of Nyanza (Grinnell Herald-Register, April 21, 1955)

Fishing docks attracted one of the first donations—$500 from the Herald-Register (ibid., January 6, 1955)—but the docks were not the first evidence of the coming park. Fittingly, the Jaycees chose Arbor Day 1955 (April 22) to initiate park development by planting the first tree (ibid., April 18, 1955), a birch placed near the point that separated the two arms of the lake (ibid., April 25, 1955). At the same time some 1500 shrubs–mostly multiflora roses–went in around the perimeter and another dozen trees found new homes on the grounds. Members of the Chester Royal Grange joined the Jaycees, who also had help from local businessmen, park board members, and other volunteers (ibid., April 21, 1955).

The Almost Completed Nyanza Dock (Grinnell Herald-Register, July 13, 1955)

Work on a "T-shaped" dock began around Memorial Day. Planned to stretch 48 feet out into the lake to give anglers deeper water to fish, the tip of the "T" would be 24 feet across, providing plenty of space for numerous fishermen. In the absence of life guards, those who chose to fish from the dock were advised to do so at their own risk; swimming was forbidden. At the time the park had no entrance as such, and a storm sewer to direct East Street runoff into the lake remained on the "to do" list (ibid., May 26, 1955).

The Jaycees did not abandon their efforts in winter. With the support of the city Youth Council and assistance from the Goodyear Shoe Repair who offered to exchange or repair skates, the Jaycees set up a skating rink at the northern end of Nyanza where the lake was only 18 inches deep; a fence to the south kept skaters from venturing onto ice over greater lake depths. Volunteers flooded the skating surface to make it smooth and DeKalb Agricultural Association provided flood lights to make possible night-time skating—until 9:30 PM weeknights and 10:30 PM on weekends. Jaycees also brought in logs for seating and firewood to help warm skaters (ibid., December 22, 1955).

Frank Lagrange (1911-1979) and Sam Mullins (1939-1969) warm up at Nyanza Skating Rink
(Grinnell Herald-Register, December 22, 1955)

After this burst of activity, the Jaycees turned the park over to the city, and directed their attention to other projects, with the result that progress on the park at Nyanza stalled. Newspaper articles confirmed that the Jaycees regularly committed to numerous worthy projects. Meanwhile, Nyanza and its adjacent territory, now part of the city's park system, languished.

In 1961, thanks largely to the initiative of city councilman James Miller (1918-2012), the city revived the idea of developing the park that the Jaycees had imagined years earlier (ibid., September 4, 1961). An editorial in the local newspaper commended this plan and all those involved in creating a new park that would serve residents of the southern part of Grinnell (ibid., September 7, 1961). With the support of numerous businesses and volunteers, a baseball diamond was laid out as well as picnic facilities that would eventually include a concrete block shelter house fitted with rest rooms. 

1968 Photograph of the Nyanza Park Shelter
(Grinnell Herald-Register, April 22, 1968)
 

Playground equipment came mainly from local entrepreneur Claude Ahrens (1912-2000), who agreed to donate $1000 worth of equipment if the city purchased an additional $1400 worth of playground products. Local banks, supermarkets and merchants kicked in to permit acquisition of four rocky rodeo ponies, three swing sets, a mustang whirl, a merry flyer, a slide, a teeter-totter and similar diversions (ibid., April 30, 1962; ibid., June 7, 1962). As a consequence of these improvements, in 1986 the Grinnell City Council voted to name the park at Lake Nyanza the James H. Miller Park (Grinnell Herald-Register, May 2, 1986).

Jim Miller Relatives Pose with Mayor Gordon Canfield With Stone Marking Park Entrance
(Grinnell Herald-Register, November 3, 2014)

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Despite the spurts of activity in the 1950s and 1960s, Nyanza and the park that surrounded it suffered from inattention again in the 1970s. Critics began to describe Nyanza as having "more pollutants than any industrial factory could ever hope to produce" (Scarlet and Black, October 1, 1971). A 1975 article in the Des Moines Register described an oil slick on the lake, the result of a leak at a nearby bulk fuel oil storage tank (May 10, 1975). 

Photograph of Fertilizer Factory Near Lake Nyanza
(Grinnell Herald-Register, January 18, 1961)

I did not find an official explanation for the environmental problems at Nyanza, but nearby industries—including a fertilizer factory, a cement mix company and a bulk fuel oil outfit—stood quite close to the lake's western shore, adjacent to the railroad tracks. In an era of minimal environmental regulation, these industries almost certainly contributed to the deterioration of the lake's water quality. A college student writing in the campus newspaper in the 1970s cast doubt upon claims in a new book about good fishing and picnicking at Nyanza; "This must undoubtedly have been taken from Grinnell promotional literature because the sole fish surviving in Lake Nyanza was last seen spitting up mud," the review contended (Scarlet and Black, February 18, 1972).

Local organizations, like the Poweshiek County chapter of the Izaak Walton League, from time to time attempted to improve the lake's water quality and multiply fishing prospects. In early summer 1993, for example, League representatives announced a plan to restock Nyanza and develop a management program to improve fish habitats (Cedar Rapids Gazette, June 18, 1993). In 2010, thanks to the initiative of several citizens, the park gained a "Disc Golf Course," an 18-hole course of more than 5000 feet that stretched all around the park (Grinnell Herald-Register, April 5, 2010). But after an early buzz of activity, the Disc Golf Course, like the fishing dock and baseball diamond before it, fell into disuse. Improvements of the recent past—like the shelter and playground equipment—showed their age and discouraged visitors.

Grinnell Tourism, Grinnell College, and other funders have also contributed to recent efforts to revive and improve Miller Park. In 2014, for instance, the city planted thirty trees in the park, including twenty crabapples to bring springtime color to Nyanza (Grinnell Herald-Register, November 3, 2014). In 2015 the Park Board replaced most of the play equipment, installing a new tire swing, a Jackpack climbing apparatus, and several other items (ibid., October 5, 2015).

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The Shelter at Lake Nyanza (2022 Photo)

Despite these efforts the joy that attended the early days of Lake Nyanza has not returned. Although the large rock inscribed with the name of James Miller, after whom the park is named, remains at the entrance, elsewhere the park and lake betray Miller's hopes. The boarded-up restrooms on the shelter house and the sun-bleached play equipment hardly invite visits, and the silted lake has made fishing and all forms of lake recreation unappetizing. No boats ply Nyanza's waters anymore, and no winter ice-skating invites poetic notice in the local newspaper.

A few trains continue to pass Nyanza each day, but they no longer require the lake's water, and no rail passengers rhapsodize over Grinnell's good fortune to possess such a lake. Instead, as I write these words, several hundred Canada geese inhabit the lake. If rare migratory birds pass through, as horned grebes once did, the geese pay them no mind, nor do they wonder at the lake's name, borrowed from a much larger body of water half a world away.

When Grinnell College and the Hampton Institute Exchanged Students

In 1947 Grinnell College, then 100% white, embarked upon an exchange program with Hampton Institute, whose student body was 100% Black. Each school aimed to send each year two of its students to the other school for one semester. Those students would study, eat, socialize, and live with students of the host institution. Inasmuch as post-World War II America had not yet contended with all the implications of racial segregation that prevailed by law in the South and by habit in many other parts of the country, the exchange attracted attention, raising eyebrows in some quarters and raising hopes elsewhere that America could find a way to integrate peacefully and honorably. Today's post looks at the brief history of the Hampton exchange and tries to assess what it meant for the participants and for Grinnell College.

Photograph of the 1949 Hampton Institute Wrestling Team, Including Grinnell College Student, Don McInnes '51 (McInnes is kneeling, first row, 3rd from right) (Courtesy of Don McInnes)

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Since I could find no administrative records of the program at Grinnell, determining the origins of the student exchange between Grinnell College and what was then called Hampton Institute is difficult. Nevertheless, someone had to have proposed the idea. In a 2004 article Grinnell College archivist Catherine Rod attributed the beginnings of the Grinnell program to a friendship between Grinnell's John Scott Everton (1908-2003), then dean of the chapel, and Hampton's Edward Miller, chair of the Department of Applied Religion at Hampton (Grinnell Magazine, winter 2004, p. 6). Stuart Yeager's 1982 study of Blacks at Grinnell says the same, pointing out that Everton and Miller were long-time friends (p. 115). I have not so far located a document to confirm this idea, but an informal arrangement negotiated between two friends may well explain the lack of an official record. A Washington Post article maintained that Hampton began the Grinnell exchange alongside a similar exchange with Hiram College, both of which were said to be "an experiment...for this semester only" (January 27, 1947), but other sources allege that the Hiram program preceded Grinnell's (Des Moines Tribune, January 24, 1947). 

Dr. John Scott Everton, Dean of the Chapel (1949 Cyclone, p. 17)

Other institutions initiated similar exchanges around this time, indicating perhaps a common hope that educational institutions might lead the way to America-wide integration. Oberlin's exchange with Hampton, for example, began at about the same time as Grinnell's (Oberlin Review, December 16, 1949). Similarly, the 1958 Denison University catalog alerted students "of high academic standing" to the opportunity to spend one semester at Hampton, Howard University, or Fisk University" (Denison University Bulletin, v. 59, no. 4 [November 1958], p. 63). In these years Antioch College also operated an exchange with Hampton, and so did Willimantic State Teachers College (now Eastern Connecticut State University).

The Grinnell program began in January 1947 when two students were chosen to leave for Hampton almost immediately. As Grinnell College trustee minutes confirm, the first exchange occurred before trustees, after having heard "many points of view," approved the plan the following June ("Board of Trustees Minutes," June 6, 1947, Grinnell College Library Special Collections, US-IaGG Archives/RG-TR-1-2; my thanks to Allison Haack for sharing this record with me). In subsequent years a college committee solicited applications in November, thereby giving students and the participating institutions more time to prepare for the exchange that took place early in the following year. The first selections seem to have depended upon only two Grinnell officials: Dean of Women Evelyn Gardner (1897-1990) and Dean of the Chapel John Scott Everton. Soon Grinnell sociologist John Burma (1913-2006) joined the committee, as did Dean of Men, Les Duke (1902-1986). And when Everton left Grinnell to assume the presidency of Kalamazoo College, his successor, Rev. Winston King (1907-2000), took his place on the selection committee. A few other faculty were sometimes part of the committee, but this group constituted the core. The Grinnell Board of Religion provided modest financial support for the program, allotting a portion of chapel donations to help finance the Hampton students at Grinnell (Scarlet and Black, ibid., May 18, 1951).

Evelyn Gardner, Dean of Women (1950 Cyclone, p. 19)

Original advertisements asked only for "letters of application" from those interested in "an opportunity to promote inter-racial understanding and to share in a significant social experiment" (Scarlet and Black, November 5, 1948). Later solicitations, however, required evidence of parents' permission, reflecting the fact that some Grinnell parents objected to the plan (ibid., November 17, 1950). Katherine (Buehrer) Baxter, for example, reports that when she excitedly told her "ardent lefty" parents about her plan to attend Hampton in 1949, her mom and dad, long-time opponents of racism, were unhappy about the idea (In the Shadow of the Hanging Tree [2020], pp. 10-11). According to another exchange participant, Chicago-area parents of Stuart Oskamp drove to Grinnell in a desperate but unsuccessful effort to dissuade their son from taking part. Not all college alums were thrilled with the plan either. Then college president, Samuel Stevens, told reporters that news of the exchange had generated criticism among alumni; the president said that some college alums thought that "White students will gain nothing from their experience as part of a Negro student body" (Des Moines Register, May 25, 1947).

All the same, a total of fifteen Grinnell students took advantage of the chance to live and study at Hampton, and an equal number of Hampton students came to Grinnell in the years between 1947 and 1954 (Yeager, Blacks at Grinnell, p. 113,  counts seventeen each, but I could not find that many). How many more were interested but denied the chance to participate is unknown. Evidently interest in the "opportunity for Negro and white students to understand each other better through the...social experience of living in educational institutions made up primarily of those of another race" diminished over time. A 1955 newspaper article observed that "no Grinnell students have participated in this program in the last three years," evidently sounding the death knell for the exchange (Scarlet and Black, November 18, 1955). Charles Clark '55 in spring semester 1953 was the final Grinnell student to attend Hampton (ibid., December 19, 1952). Since the college normally sent two students, Clark must have been the sole qualified applicant; the next year there were none. One Hampton student came to Grinnell for the spring semester 1953, and the last Hampton student, Betty Jean Johnson, enrolled at Grinnell in January 1954 (ibid., January 22, 1954).

Who Were the Grinnell Students Who Went to Hampton?

Nine of the fifteen Grinnell students who attended Hampton were women, and most of them came from the Midwest—especially from the greater Chicago area. By and large their parents were white-collar professionals.

Margaret Thompson '48 (1948 Cyclone, p. 36)

Margaret Thompson (1927-2014), for instance, who was one-half of the first pair to study at Hampton, had been born in Kansas City, and grew up in Des Moines where she attended Roosevelt High School. Jan (Janet) Reinke (1931-2018) came to Grinnell from Faribault, Minnesota where both parents taught high school. William (Bill) R. Clark (1928?-2003) was born and grew up in Milwaukee, graduating from Shorewood High School. Mary Catherine (Cathy) Hampton (1932- ) joined the family of Wallace and Mary Hampton in Des Moines in 1932. Her father was an education specialist at the Wallace Homestead in Des Moines and later worked as a statistician for the US Department of Agriculture. Dorothy Janet (Jan) Laurie (1932- ) spent her earliest years in Cedar Falls, Iowa where her dad was a minister, but she came to Grinnell from a Buffalo, New York high school. Stuart Oskamp (1931-2022) grew up in the family of an insurance broker in the Chicago suburb of Glen Ellyn.

Stuart Oskamp '51 (1951 Cyclone, p. 30)

Other midwesterners came from blue-collar families. Don McInnes, for example, whose father was an installation foreman for the telephone company, grew up in Homewood, a "very white" community outside Chicago. Because Homewood did not have its own high school, Don attended the much more racially diverse Chicago Heights High. Nick Piediscalzi (1931- ) grew up not far away in the mostly white South Irving Park neighborhood of Chicago, his father a milkman. Connie (Cornelia) Lockhart (1933-2014) resided in Downers Grove in the western Chicago suburbs. Her father owned and drove his own truck and her mother was a schoolteacher. Betty Armbrust (1925-2019) grew up in another Chicago suburb, Wheaton, where her father was a plumbing contractor.

Katherine Buehrer (ca. 1947)
(1947 Oak Park High School Yearbook)

A few of the Grinnell students who went to Hampton reached Iowa from more distant points. Katherine Buehrer, for instance, was born in New Jersey where her father was pastor of a Congregational church. By the time she reached Grinnell, her family had settled in the Chicago suburbs, and Katherine graduated from Oak Park High School. Another New Jersey student was Robert Holloway who grew up and graduated from high school in Teaneck, New Jersey. Mari Howard found Grinnell from her home in Albuquerque, New Mexico, although she had spent her first eleven years in Washington, D.C.  Phyllis Hook (1925-2006), whose father was also a minister, was born in Henderson, North Carolina, attended high school in Ohio, but came to Grinnell from Seattle, Washington. 

Phyllis Hook (ca. 1943)
(1943 Troy, Ohio High School Yearbook)

Who Were the Hampton Students Who Came to Grinnell?

Women also predominated among the fifteen Hampton students who came to Grinnell; only three men ventured onto the Iowa plains for a semester's education. Most of the exchange students were either easterners or southerners, and almost all the Hampton exchangees lived in cities with large African American populations.

Marie Brito and Mae Winfield
(Scarlet and Black, June 7, 1947)

Mae Winfield (1927-2019), who was one of the first Hampton students to study at Grinnell, hailed from Tuskegee, Alabama, although she had been born in Sapulpa, Oklahoma, not far from Tulsa. Census records say that her father worked as a "truck packer" for a Frisco shop in Sapulpa, but most of the folk in their Black neighborhood worked as maids, butlers, cooks, and porters in private (presumably white) homes. Yolanda Hargrave reached Hampton from Knoxville, Tennessee, whose 1940 population exceeded 111,000. Hargrave's parents were both professionals—her father was a minister and her mother a schoolteacher. Lillian Nell (1929-2011), who studied at  Grinnell in the spring of 1950, had been born in Charleston, South Carolina. Her father was a barber, a not uncommon trade among African Americans in mid-twentieth century America; her mother, Marie, worked in the public library. In 1940 Charleston counted more than 70,000 residents, a great percentage of whom were Black. As was common throughout the American South, Jim Crow laws and open racism flourished here, and the 1919 Charleston race riot left some ugly memories. Montgomery, Alabama, another site of racial strife in the post-war era, was home to Caldoria Lewis (1933-2019), who enrolled at Grinnell in 1951. At that time about 105,000 people lived in Montgomery, among them Rosa Parks who in 1955 refused to give up her seat on a city bus, thereby beginning one of the most widely-publicized civil rights campaigns in American history. Grace Edmondson (1933-2018) grew up in Halifax, a small town in south-central Virginia. The 1940 census found only 536 people living there, and although whites predominated, African Americans here accounted for as much as a third of the population. Both Grace's parents were schoolteachers in Virginia's segregated public schools.

Lillian Nell, Van Calloway, and Lillian Robinson
(Scarlet and Black, February 10, 1950)

Alfred Van Calloway (1929-2002), one of the few Hampton men to study at Grinnell, hailed from Louisville, Kentucky. In 1950 when Van enrolled at Grinnell, the population of Louisville was more than 360,000, about fifteen percent of which was Black. Van's dad worked as a mailman. Central High School, from which Van graduated as an honor student in 1947, remained segregated until 1956. Another of the male Hampton students was Andrew Billingsley (1926- ), who reached Grinnell in 1949. Older than most students—he had served two years in the US Army during World War II—Billingsley grew up in Marion, Alabama, a small city with a 1940 population of about 2600, mostly Black Americans. As elsewhere in the South, however, white justice prevailed in Marion, most famously in 1958 when a local, all-white jury convicted Jimmy Wilson, a Black man, of having stolen $1.95 from a white woman for which crime the jury sentenced Wilson to death. 

Wyvetter Hoover, Andy Billingsley, and Dean Earl Strong
(Scarlet and Black, February 11, 1949)

Several of the Hampton students at Grinnell came from large eastern cities. Lillian Robinson (1932-2010), for example, grew up in Pittsburgh where she attended an integrated high school. Her parents, however, had been born in Georgia where Jim Crow still ruled. Nevertheless, in Pittsburgh the family lived among other African Americans on Milwaukee Street. Lillian's dad worked as a linotype operator for a newspaper and her mother bussed tables in a restaurant. Bessie Williams (1932-2021) was also a Pennsylvanian, having grown up in a part of Philadelphia that was overwhelmingly Black. Her father worked as a brick-layer's helper in one of the city's oil refineries.

Norma Mitchner and Cal Lewis
(Scarlet and Black, April 13, 1951)

Norma Mitchner grew up in an extended-family household in a Black section of Baltimore. Her grandfather was a metal worker in a steel plant and her dad worked in a copper factory. Her grandmother and mother also worked, the former as a laundress for a private family and the latter as a household servant. Although today Baltimore is primarily Black, in 1940 African Americans accounted for only about twenty percent of the city's population, then registering approximately 859,000. Marie Brito (1927?-2014), who came to Grinnell in 1947, grew up in Summit, New Jersey. The 1940 US Census found Marie living with her mother, who, as head of household, worked as a laundress for a private family. At that time Summit was a town of about 16,000, the great majority of whom were white, but everyone who lived near the Britos on Summit Avenue was black. Wyvetter Hoover (1930-2008) grew up in—and spent most of her life in—East St. Louis, Illinois, a predominantly Black community. Her father sold insurance and owned properties in town, so her family was better off than many others there. But East St. Louis also had a troubled history of racial conflict, including the dreadful 1917 riot, a prequel to the 1921 Tulsa massacre. Joy Schulterbrandt (1934-2004), next to last of the Hampton students to study at Grinnell, traveled the furthest to reach Iowa. Joy was born in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, where her father was a businessman, operating a liquor store in St. Thomas where nearly everyone was Black.

What Was It Like For Students at Their Exchange Institutions?

Dorothy Laurie '53 at Pottery Class at Hampton 1951
(Ebony, vol. 6, no. 12 [October 1951]:16)

No comprehensive record of students' reactions to their semester away survives, and evidently no one ever requested one. At least that is how Katherine (Buehrer) Baxter '51 remembers it:

I've never known why Grinnell College took part in the exchange program. The three of us who participated [spring 1949] were given no support while we were at Hampton, and there was barely any follow-up when we returned. One evening we talked about our experiences to a small group of students and faculty, but there was nothing more. I felt tremendously let down (In the Shadow of the Hanging Tree, p. 29).

But the program's beginning did not escape the attention of the press. The Washington Post, for example, described the exchange as "an experiment in race relations" (January 28, 1947).

New York Times, March 16, 1947

Even the New York Times took note, reporting in a brief article that "This is the first time that any white student has enrolled as a full-fledged student in a Negro college in Virginia" (March 16, 1947). Iowa City's Daily Iowan published a photograph of the Grinnell women at Hampton, headlining it "Student Exchange Aims at Racial Tolerance" (March 7, 1947).

Header of Article in Des Moines Register, May 25, 1947

In a surprisingly long article the Des Moines Register interviewed the first four participants, who, the article's headline affirmed, are "Convinced [that] Races Can Mingle Freely." The fact that one of the Grinnell women on the exchange, Margaret Thompson, came from Des Moines may explain why the paper attended to the project, but the piece emphasizes the experience of all four women, Black and white. Thompson told the interviewer that 

our experience at Hampton has brought us not so much a change of attitude but a broadening of understanding of person and group problems of the American Negro...and has been a big step...in furthering understanding between the races (Des Moines Register, May 25, 1947).

The two Hampton women, exchanging the mainly Black environment of Hampton for mainly white Grinnell, reported similarly powerful impact. Although the city of Grinnell had "but four Negro families and only one other Negro student in the college," "we found everyone friendly—at the college and in town," said Marie Brito. She and Mae Winfield, the other Hampton student in Grinnell that year, "encountered no discrimination in Grinnell" and reported that "fellow students...included them in all activities" (Des Moines Register, May 25, 1947). 

The Grinnell College campus newspaper regularly reported on the experiences of the exchange participants, including various talks that students gave at chapel or before other campus groups. At the end of the first semester of the exchange, for instance, the Scarlet and Black interviewed the four women participants. Grinnell's Phyllis Hook '48, the newspaper said, thought that "The exchange project is definitely worthy of continuance—as evidence to doubters and sceptics [sic] that races can live together happily" (June 7, 1947). 

Betty Armbrust '49 (1949 Cyclone, p. 103)

When two more Grinnellians studied at Hampton in 1948, the S & B published another interview, emphasizing the friendliness and active social life at Hampton. However, the newspaper did quote William Frank '50, who observed that in the South "prejudice is deep in the hearts of many, and it seems that even the churches are filled with it." Frank and his exchange partner, Betty Armbrust '49, thought that exchanges like theirs were "one of the best means for [interracial] understanding" (ibid., April 23, 1948). 

Back in Grinnell the following autumn the duo authored a Scarlet and Black guest editorial which related some of their experiences in dealing with the segregated world outside the Hampton campus. They concluded somewhat uncertainly, affirming how glad they were to be back "at Grinnell where racial intolerance and discrimination, to all outward appearances [emphasis mine—dk], do not exist" (ibid., September 24, 1948). The following February Armbrust was one of two respondents to an S & B "Pro and Con" that asked, "Are we making a substantial contribution to the solution of problems of Negro-White relations?" Armbrust seemed to doubt that progress, pointing out that Grinnell has "no Negroes on our faculty and very few in our student body. This indicates that the administration, alumni, and student body have a race attitude that is not satisfactory" (ibid., February 11, 1949). Another student, Janet Stephens '51, offered a more affirming view, endorsing the contributions of the college, but denying that they were "substantial." Stephens, who herself did not go to Hampton, nonetheless endorsed the exchange which she called a "valuable opportunity...to become intimately acquainted with members of another race...." But she thought that courses on race relations and a chapter of the NAACP on campus would extend this good beginning (ibid.).

Andrew Billingsley (front, far left) With Other Residents of Smith Hall (1951 Cyclone, p. 73)

The same issue of the newspaper published an interview with the two Hampton students then in Grinnell. Andy Billingsley, who later transferred to Grinnell, graduating in 1951, thought that 

The two-sided prejudice that exists in the South, and in the North, too, must be broken down...This exchange is a move toward inter-racial understanding at the level where least resistance is met. I think it's good and I'd like to see it made much larger (ibid.).

With their semester at Grinnell ending, Billingsley and Wyvetter Hoover contributed a report to the end-of-year edition of the campus newspaper, contending that the exchange of students between Grinnell and Hampton was "definitely a success" in increasing understanding between the races. "It might attain a greater degree of success," they continued, "if the students of Grinnell made a greater effort to get to know the exchange students as persons, and not merely as representatives" (ibid., June 3, 1949).

When Stu Oskamp '51, Don McInnes '51, and Kathy Buehrer '51 returned to Grinnell from Hampton that autumn, the local chapter of NAACP—only founded the preceding year—hosted a meeting devoted to the Hampton exchange, inviting last spring's participants to talk with the group (ibid., October 14, 1949). Six weeks later Jan Reinke '52 told an S & B reporter that, as she prepared for a semester at Hampton, she had applied because she "wanted a chance to find out first hand about the Negroes." Her parents, she said, were "very enthusiastic about it." Nick Piediscalzi '52, also preparing for Hampton, explained that, because of his interest in the "race problem," he wanted "to know what it feels like to live in a minority group" (ibid., November 25, 1949). 

1952 Cyclone, p. 38

When Piediscalzi returned to Grinnell after his Hampton semester he spoke at fall convocation, telling the audience that his experience at Hampton had been transformative. 

I shall never forget that most warm reception [we received at Hampton]. It put me at ease. But at the same time I could not help marveling that I was being received so cordially. Here was a persecuted minority, repressed and maligned by my own race, justified, I felt, to snub me, to subject me to social embarrassment. Yet they did not. They welcomed me with open hearts as if they had long learned to shun the arrogant injustice of judging a man by the color of his skin (ibid., September 29, 1950).

Having grown up in a "segregated part of Chicago, having attended an all-white church, an all-white school, and a college where only three Negroes were enrolled," Piediscalzi realized that he had "permitted the subtle propaganda of those who were prejudice[d] to influence...[his] sub-conscious thoughts...." Therefore, he continued, 

we do not become free [of racism] until we have lived in an unsegregated group. No matter how sincerely we believe that we have no prejudices, as long as we live in segregated cities, as long as we attend white churches, as long as we attend segregated schools,...we shall....pre-judge those whom we segregated (Nicholas Piediscalzi '52, "The Truth Made Me Free" [Grinnell College Special Collections, US-IaGG Pamphlet/006.0-06.3 - 06.8-06.8 p1P; Nick also kindly provided me a copy of his chapel talk)

Norma Mitchner, who spent spring semester 1951 in Grinnell, told the Hampton Institute newspaper, The Script, that "the exchange experience has been the greatest source of maturity in all her college career" and that it "was doing a wonderful job in race relations" (Scarlet and Black, November 2, 1951). 

Mari Howard '52 (1952 Cyclone, p. 36)

Mari Howard '52 (who later went to graduate school at Fisk University, in 1954 becoming "the first white student to get a Fisk [University] degree since the 1890s") and Dorothy Laurie '52 told readers of the S & B that "they  completely lost color consciousness within a week of their arrival at Hampton" (ibid., September 28, 1951). The Scarlet and Black reported that Bessie Williams, a Hampton student studying at Grinnell, could imagine nothing "that could afford me greater intellectual growth than living, studying, and associating with students having a cultural background different from my own" (ibid., February 8, 1952).

###

The critical comments of students like Betty Armbrust and the generally warm recollections of Hampton students about their experience at Grinnell leave one wondering how prejudiced the Grinnell community may have been. A 1945 campus survey on racial prejudice conducted by students in one of John Burma's sociology classes queried one hundred college women (evidently no men took part). Unsurprisingly, the overwhelming majority of respondents denied having any racial bias, but thirty percent of the women admitted to prejudice. A quarter of those inventoried opposed admitting "Negroes" to Grinnell, and twenty percent told interviewers that "they would not be willing to sit next to a Negro student in class." Half of all respondents "would not like to have Negro blood plasma administered" (ibid., May 4, 1945).

Professor John Burma Teaching a Sociology Class in ARH (1950)
(https://digital.grinnell.edu/islandora/object/grinnell%3A19862)

That autumn John Scott Everton, who later helped found the Hampton exchange with Grinnell, addressed issues raised by the survey in a chapel address. Subsequent discussions, organized and spontaneous, found an outlet in an S & B editorial that took college administrators to task for failure to enroll African Americans at Grinnell. In these circumstances, the editorial asked,

Can we keep our tongues in our cheeks as we bewail the conditions that Negroes in American endure? And if we decide that segregation is the best policy, that we can learn all we need to know about the Negro in a semester course in race relations, that we are incapable of seeing a man's worth regardless of his color, then let's quit all this hypocritical bellowing by students and administration about the Grinnell spirit of democracy and equality (ibid., December 14, 1945).

Almost simultaneous to the founding of the exchange with Hampton was the establishment of a local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) at Grinnell. The connection to the exchange was visible in the chapter's membership: John Burma, who had overseen the exchange, was one of the founders and early faculty adviser, and veterans of the Hampton exchange—Robert Holloway, Don McInnes and Andrew Billingsley—were among the first presidents of the chapter, and Betty Armbrust, Stu Oskamp, William Frank, and Cal Lewis were among its members. Sponsoring speakers, presenting films, and encouraging discussion about "race problems," the Grinnell chapter of the NAACP attempted to develop community awareness of racial inequities and encourage interracial understanding, in that way paralleling the exchange with Hampton.

1952 Cyclone, p. 141

However, just as the Hampton Exchange was expiring at Grinnell, so, too, did the local chapter of the NAACP. 

At the end of the school year in June 1952, the [Grinnell] chapter [of the NAACP] disbanded, turning over its entire budget of $5.17 to the national office. Thus ended a four-year experiment on a primarily white college campus (Outside In: African-American History in Iowa, 1838-2000, eds. Bill Silag, et al. [Des Moines: State Historical Society of Iowa, 2001],  p. 333).

###

What, then, was the outcome of the college's experiment with Hampton Institute? There can be little doubt that for the students who participated, the exchange left an enduring impression. Obituaries of Margaret Thompson Halsey, William Frank and others recall the experience, despite the fact that the five months at Hampton accounted for but a small proportion of their lives. Other participants, like Nicole Buhrer Baxter who devoted large parts of her life to racial justice and education, reflected the life-long influence of their collegiate encounter with African Americans at Hampton.

Less well-known, perhaps, but no less important, are the career arcs of the Hampton visitors to Grinnell. Wyvetter Hoover Younge, for example, went on to become an attorney and a prominent member of the Illinois House of Representatives, representing her home district around East St. Louis for over thirty years. Grace Edmonson Harris, originally rejected for admission to graduate school at Virginia Commonwealth University because of race, later became the highest-ranking African American and highest-ranking woman in the history of Virginia Commonwealth University. Andrew Billingsley, who transferred to Grinnell and later won an Alumni Award in 1971, had a sterling academic career as a sociologist and held a series of important administrative posts, including appointment as provost of Howard University and then as the eighth president of Morgan State University.

But did the exchange, as its early announcements had hoped, "promote interracial understanding?" One must assume that the exchange did undermine prejudice and contribute to interracial understanding. But the fact that the exchange expired in 1955 from lack of interest obliges us to think that the immediate impact on campus views of race was not great. Indeed, throughout the 1950s the college annually enrolled only a handful of Blacks in what remained an overwhelmingly white institution. Of course, Grinnell College was hardly unique in that respect; 1950s America and its institutions of higher education required more than the exchange of a few students a year to disable racism, as subsequent decades proved. Nevertheless, the Grinnell student exchange with Hampton Institute remains a marker of changing times whose influence may not have reached far but certainly reached deep among the participants, Black and white, and therefore especially deserves a place in institutional memory.

.

Queen For a Day...in Grinnell

When I was a boy and American television was still in its childhood, one of TV's most popular daytime shows was "Queen for a Day." Having begun as a network radio show, in 1956 the program migrated to television where it proved a ratings powerhouse for almost a decade. 

1956 Queen For a Day, Wilhelmina Van Son with Host, Jack Bailey
(https://timeline.com/queen-for-a-day-tv-sexism-9bd594f509d9)

In those Eisenhower-America years, queens were everywhere. High schools and colleges had them, and so did fire departments, shopping malls, and much more. "Crowning" select women as "queens" and putting them upon pedestals was an idea that fit handily into 1950s understandings of gender. 

Readers of this blog, familiar with today's Grinnell College, might be surprised to learn that in the 1950s and 1960s, Grinnell College also identified and celebrated queens. There were Cyclone Queens, Military Ball Queens, track meet queens, Mardi Gras queens, and of course Homecoming queens. There was also briefly a Miss Grinnell College contest, the winner of which advanced to participate in the Miss Grinnell competition, a local link to the Miss America Pageant.

However, in the late 1960s, when so many other happenings rocked traditions and upset conventional narratives of social organization, the idea of celebrating campus queens lost its attraction to Grinnell College students, and in 1969 Grinnell abandoned all the beauty contests on campus. Today's post tells that story.

###

As early as the 1920s—the same decade in which the Miss America pageant got off the ground—Grinnell College initiated what the college newspaper called its "first beauty contest" under the auspices of the 1927 Cyclone. "Things of beauty are to be joys forever," said the yearbook editor. Having students choose the most beautiful Grinnell woman "gave every co-ed on the Grinnell campus...a chance at the privilege of having her portrait handed down to posterity...in the pages of this spring's annual," he continued. Conceived as a  means to sell copies of the book, the beauty contest offered to every purchaser of the 1927 Cyclone "five votes, which may be used [to vote] for any girl on campus." Finalists would have their portraits taken and sent to "experts in the beauty-choosing profession" (by which they seem to  have meant Hollywood stars) to judge the most beautiful. Each portrait would be "exquisitely printed in a special section of the book [i.e., Cyclone], an everlasting tribute to the lucky girls" (Scarlet and Black, October 10, 1925). 

Headline from Scarlet and Black, October 10, 1925

The next year the system did not depend upon purchasing yearbooks: "Every student [emphasis mine—dk] of Grinnell College will be eligible to vote...and every woman who is a student at Grinnell College will be considered a participant," the announcement said. Students were invited to nominate "the most beautiful girls on campus" by placing the names of their nominee on paper that they then deposited in a ballot box in ARH. The top ten were listed on a published ballot for a January election by the entire student body (ibid., December 26, 1926). Photographs would be sent to a "judge prominent in theatrical circles" who would choose "Miss Grinnell" and three runners-up.  

What was notable in the early history of the college's beauty contests was the participation of all students, male and female. When the Cyclone staff revived the competition a few years later, new rules separated the decision by gender: men picked "beautiful" women and women picked "handsome" men. For example, the Scarlet and Black reported in 1933 that male students had nominated thirty-nine co-eds as "most beautiful" and that women students had advanced "fifty handsome males" in a contest sponsored by the yearbook (February 10, 1933). At the Cyclone Ball February 24, Walter Straley '33 and Katherine Lewis '35 succeeded to the titles of King and Queen of the ball (ibid., March 1, 1933). 

By the time Grinnell students celebrated the third Cyclone Ball in 1935, the contest embraced more enthusiastically gendered stereotypes. For this competition nineteen "representative men" each submitted a list of four names of "ideal women," a phrase that anticipates the Miss America song of a later time. The results named Betty Compton '35, Sabeth Mix '36, Catherine Webster '37, and Janith Wyle '38 as ideal women of their respective classes. In this way four women reigned over the ball, each judged "ideal" by men (ibid., March 6, 1935).

###

America seems to have discovered "homecoming" in the early twentieth century when American colleges and universities organized special occasions—complete with football games, parades, and dances—to summon alumni "home"—back to campus. According to a 1955 Scarlet and Black article, Grinnell College celebrated its first homecoming in 1916, but without a queen (October 28, 1955); only after World War II did Grinnell name its first homecoming queen.

Scarlet and Black, October 4, 1946

In early October 1946 the Scarlet and Black initiated efforts to choose a "Girl of the Century" to commemorate the college's centennial. The campus newspaper urged students to 

Look round about you...! Who is your candidate for "Girl of the Century?" Should she be tall, short, dark or blonde? Name her, and she will reign as the Centennial Homecoming Queen... (October 4, 1946).

The newspaper printed ballots on page one, and encouraged students—all students—to cut the ballot from the paper, and, having written on the ballot the name of the woman they nominated, deposit the ballot in a special box in the campus bookstore. "Final announcement of the identity of the queen and her court," the paper promised, "will be kept secret until the Homecoming weekend" (ibid.). Student nominations resulted in a slate of six women from among whom the male athletes of Honor G (rather than the "professional judges of beauty" of the former Cyclone competition) chose the queen (ibid., October 11, 1946). The first Grinnell College woman to receive the crown of Homecoming Queen was Doris Crowl (1926-2022), a speech and drama major from Council Bluffs, Iowa.

Doris Crowl, Grinnell College's First Homecoming Queen (1946)
(Scarlet and Black, October 18, 1946)

The following year saw a change in the process, affirming the principle of having men determine the homecoming queen. In 1947 (and for some years afterward) each of the men's halls of north campus—rather than students from the entire campus—chose a nominee. As before, Honor G—an honor society for male athletes—then selected and crowned the queen (ibid., October 10, 1947). Lilian Crawford, who was that year the nominee of both Clark and Dibble, reigned over the 1947 homecoming festivities (ibid., October 24, 1947).

Photograph of Carol Lynn Fleck '60, Miss Iowa, at 1957 Miss America Pageant, Atlantic City
(https///www.stewartfh.com/obituaries/Carol-Couchenour/#!/TributeWall)

When Grinnell College students turned their minds toward Homecoming in autumn 1957, they confronted an unusual circumstance. Only a month before announcement of the nominees for Homecoming Queen, one college woman had already competed in the televised Miss America contest as Miss Iowa. That July Carol Lynn Fleck '60 (1938-2018)—who had earlier been named Miss Oskaloosa and Miss Southeast Iowa—had emerged from the state-wide competition in Clear Lake as Miss Iowa, sending her to Atlantic City, New Jersey. In late September the Scarlet and Black published an interview with Fleck, thereby alerting students to the presence on campus of a publicly-recognized beauty queen (September 27, 1957). Surprisingly, when the nine semi-finalists for that year's homecoming queen were announced, Fleck was not among them (ibid., October 18, 1957). Instead, Kathy Davis '60 reigned as Homecoming Queen that year (ibid., November 1, 1957).

Homecoming in 1958 brought another change in the procedure for selecting the queen without altering its gender values. If previously each hall of north campus—at the time only men lived on north campus and only women lived on south campus—had nominated a woman to be queen and Honor G had made the final selection, henceforth Honor G would nominate five candidates, and all North campus men would vote to establish the winner (ibid., October 3, 1958). The student newspaper approved of the revision, suggesting that the old system was little more than a "popularity contest among the girls dating [men] in a hall" (ibid., October 24, 1958). But giving Honor G the right to narrow the field by deciding upon the nominees and giving all North campus men the power to choose the queen retained the same gender stereotypes as had prevailed previously with Honor G and its male athletes controlling the process. 

###

Carol Fleck did ascend the Grinnell College Homecoming throne, but not until 1958 when the Oskaloosa native and speech correction major was only one of several queens who reigned at the college that year. In March 1959 Mary Kate Prangley '59, a sociology major from Winnetka, Illinois, took the title of Cyclone Queen; Janet Catherine Schaab '59 (1937-2021), a music major from St. Louis, won the inaugural competition for Miss Grinnell College; and Jacqueline Jean Baker '62 (1940-1978), a sophomore from Glasgow, Montana, reigned as Queen of the Military Ball. The 1959 Cyclone sported full-page photographs of all four queens, fulfilling the promises of posterity dangled before contestants in the Cyclone beauty contests of the 1920s (pp. 170-173).

Four Grinnell College Queens of 1958-59 (1959 Cyclone, pp. 170-73)

Exactly what stimulated the founding in 1959 of a competition for Miss Grinnell College is unclear, but perhaps nothing more than the country's fascination with Miss America explains the idea. As in the Miss America contest, all eighteen women contestants participated in a bathing suit competition, demonstrated some talent (each performance no longer than three minutes), and participated in an evening gown contest. 

Photo of Contestants in Bathing Suits as part of 1959 Miss Grinnell College Competition
(1959 Cyclone)

In addition, a panel of faculty judges (four men and one woman) interviewed all the contestants, assessing "their intellect, personality, and poise." The judges then chose a winner ("Miss Grinnell College"), who, along with two runners-up, qualified for the Miss Grinnell contest which was sponsored by the Grinnell Jaycees; whoever won the title of Miss Grinnell would take home some locally-provided gifts and, more importantly, qualify to compete for the Miss Iowa contest (Scarlet and Black, April 10, 1959). In 1959 Jacque Baker, Montana native and first runner-up in the Miss Grinnell College competition, succeeded to the title of Miss Grinnell, and in Clear Lake that summer won the title of Miss Iowa (ibid., May 1, 1959; Daily Gate City, September 9, 1959), making her the second Grinnell College student in three years to represent Iowa at the Miss America Pageant.

Jacqueline Baker '62 being crowned Miss Grinnell
(Scarlet and Black, June 5, 1959)

Over the next several years Grinnell College women won the local Miss Grinnell contest: Ruby Jo Ponce '63 in 1960, Gail Parish '63 in 1961, and Susan Faunce in 1962. But local interest in the beauty pageant seems to have flagged. Only five women participated in the 1963 contest, and when only three voiced interest in 1964 the Jaycees decided to cancel the event.

Grinnell Herald-Register, June 11, 1964
(Thanks to Gary Meyer for sharing this scan with me)

Competition for the Military Ball Queen (also named "honorary colonel") continued.  Marge Lahue '60 was named "honorary colonel" in 1960, Sharon Hasekamp '62 in 1961, Sharon Miller '63 in 1962, and Nancy Cooke '64 in 1963. With the unpopular Vietnam war in the news, students and faculty grew increasingly critical of the military presence in Grinnell. At an April 1969 faculty meeting some 100 students gathered to protest against ROTC and giving academic credit for ROTC classes. The immediate consequence was a faculty resolution ending academic credit for ROTC (Scarlet and Black, April 11, 1969). Trustees, however, opted to retain academic credit for ROTC courses until such time as the Air Force completed phasing out the Grinnell unit by September 1972 (ibid., September 13, 1969). Events—including the 1970 campus shutdown and finally a 1972 student occupation of the ROTC building—intervened. The military ball was no more.

Except for Homecoming, other campus queen competitions also disappeared. Barbara Anne Beale '64, a speech and drama major from Minneapolis, seems to have been the last Cyclone Queen, taking her title in 1964 (1964 Cyclone, p. 188). The final Snow Queen election took place in January 1966. Perhaps the most notable feature of this election was the presence of an African American woman, Sandy Bates '68, among the five nominees, although she did not receive the crown (Scarlet and Black, January 28, 1966).

Nominees for 1966 Snow Queen
(Scarlet and Black, January 28, 1966)

###

The tradition of electing a Homecoming Queen proved more resistant to change. In 1959 Joan Christensen '61, a political science major from Fremont, Nebraska, reigned over Homecoming, and the tradition continued through most of the 1960s.

Kathleen Abbott from the class of 1971 was the last woman elected Homecoming Queen, but she was not the last Grinnell College Homecoming Queen. Reflecting the growing criticism of college queens and the gender stereotypes that they implied, Dick "the Kid" Mellman '71, a second-year student from University City, Missouri, decided to throw his hat into the ring. In a story that drew the attention of the major wire services, Mellman told reporters that he had invited the five women nominees for Grinnell's Homecoming Queen to withdraw; when he received no reply, the slim 18-year-old began to campaign against the "Establishment." Correctly pointing out that until his campaign, only men had decided the college's Homecoming Queens, and that athletes had exerted outsize influence (Burlington Hawk Eye, October 20, 1968), Mellman claimed to have received a "mandate" from a special election open to men and women students (Iowa City Press-Citizen, October 19, 1968). With the aid of followers, Mellman staged a "protest coronation" immediately after the crowning of Kathleen Abbott. "Sitting in a red car and wearing a robe," Mellman, with two students dressed in military uniforms beside him, entered the football stadium to the strains of "Pomp and Circumstance." Receiving a tissue paper crown while supporters shouted "the queen belongs to the people," Mellman became the very last Grinnell College Homecoming Queen (Cedar Rapids Gazette, October 20, 1968).

Richard Mellman '71, the Last Grinnell College Homecoming Queen
(https://digital.grinnell.edu/islandora/object/grinnell%3A5656.tiff)

It is tempting to regard Mellman's moment in the homecoming sun as little more than a prank. In fact, however, student objections to the entire idea of selecting "queens" grew noisy in the late 'sixties. In a lengthy letter to the editor of the Scarlet and Black, Sally Hamann '70, who had taken part in a February demonstration against Playboy magazine (Scarlet and Black, February 7, 1969), criticized the tradition of Homecoming Queen for perpetuating "the image of a woman as a 'Barbie' doll who is only expected to be good-looking." Accusing the tradition of exploiting women, Hamann observed that the entire process degraded women, making them into lap-dogs, and reinforced the idea that women should "concentrate on aspects of figure, face, hair, and clothes instead of the more important human qualities." Moreover, by having only men select the queen, Hamann continued, the institution perpetuated claims of male superiority, and implied that "every woman should want to be a queen, judged only on her physical attraction" (Scarlet and Black, October 10, 1969). A few days earlier the student Senate, at the urging of the Grinnell Women's Liberation group, "officially recommended to the Student Affairs Committee and President Leggett abolishment of the institution of Homecoming Queen at Grinnell College" (ibid., October 17, 1969).

1970 Photograph of Women's Liberation Group Discussion
(https://digital.grinnell.edu/islandora/object/grinnell%3A5695.tiff)

The campus newspaper advised readers that nostalgic alumni then converging on campus for Homecoming in 1969 might "be relieved to learn that, unlike last year, Grinnell College will not have a male homecoming queen." However, the newspaper continued, "traditionalists" might be "disappointed when they discover that, in fact, Grinnell will have no homecoming queen at all this year"[emphasis mine—dk]. The article went on to report that students had voted by more than two-to-one against having a homecoming queen (ibid.). Neither the athletic department nor the college president offered any resistance, and so the tradition of a Grinnell College Homecoming Queen, born in an era that depended upon different understandings of gender, succumbed to the values of a new age.

###

For many years, the conclusion of the Miss America Pageant had its host, Bert Parks (1914-1992), sing the Miss America song as the newly-crowned beauty queen walked the runway among the audience:

            There she is, Miss America! 

            There she is, your ideal....

The 1960s destroyed the facile assumptions of the Miss America Pageant about what constituted an ideal. What had been simmering discontent broke into the open in 1968, when protestors staged an embarrassing demonstration on the Atlantic City Boardwalk. Throwing into a trash can "bras, girdles, curlers, false eyelashes, wigs, and representative issues of Cosmopolitan, Ladies Home Journal, Family Circle, etc.," demonstrators rejected the objectification of women and their implied subservience to men's fantasies. The Pageant went on, but its once glowing image was tarnished, and ever since the Pageant has struggled, even if it has not gone totally defunct like the "Queen for a Day" television program. Post-war gender stereotypes had been exposed. 

Beauty pageants, especially in their embrace of swimsuit competitions, resembled too closely the evaluation of livestock, as the Atlantic City protestors had maintained. This same critique emerged in Grinnell. Re-reading recently news clips about her participation in the Miss Grinnell competition, one Grinnell alumna reported being horrified to recall that newspapers reported "my measurements as if I was a horse at the fair." A local story described one Miss Grinnell candidate as having "near perfect" measurements: 36 1/2 - 24 1/2 -35 (Grinnell Herald Register, July 20, 1961). In an age when bust, waist and hip measurements of Hollywood starlets were regularly published in the press, the gendered process of choosing campus queens undoubtedly saw women through similarly calibrated eyes.

1960 Homecoming Platform; Mickie Clark '63 (center left) and Nancy Welch '61 (center right ), Queen
(https://digital.grinnell.edu/islandora/object/grinnell%3A5661)

Grinnell College's tradition of naming campus queens also felt the influence of emergent revaluations of race. Like the Miss America Pageant itself, which, until 1971 had no contestant of color and until 1983 had never crowned an African American queen, Grinnell's queens were all white. Over the twenty years when Grinnell men selected Homecoming Queens only once did an African American woman—Michele (Mickie) Clark '63 (1943-1972) in 1960—make it onto the platform with the queen. And only once was an African American woman among the semi-finalists for the other queens chosen at Grinnell. If, in the age of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the public battles for racial equality, Black women at Grinnell College did not qualify for beauty competitions, then the traditions of campus queens were understandably doomed.

Photograph of Grinnell College Cheerleaders
(1956 Cyclone, p. 37)

In the days before passage of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (that prohibited sex-discrimination in any school or any other education program that received funding from the federal government), women at the college clearly occupied second-class status. Not only did the college offer no intercollegiate varsity sports for women (another issue that broke into the open on campus in the '60s), but many organizations open to women functioned primarily as supporters of men's athletics. Cheerleaders from the sidelines (both actual and metaphorical) encouraged the college's male athletes, and even organizations like Women's Honor G, which were meant to look the same as their male counterparts, performed outside the spotlight and mainly in service to men's sports. 

Yearbook Description of Women's Honor G
(1956 Cyclone, p. 91).

Like the rest of the country, post-war Grinnell saw gender as a simple binary. No doubt there were students (and faculty) on campus who struggled with this simple division, but none of those struggles made it into the public sphere. Before the shocks of war, race, and gender revolution, the tradition of crowning an "ideal" woman as Queen, putting a crown on her head and roses in her arms, lived peaceably with the rest of the post-war world.

And then it all changed.