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).

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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).

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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.

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