When John E. Pomfret became president of the College of William and Mary in 1942, he intended to create an “environment of learning and to subordinate all other activities to it.” To achieve this goal, he said, the College must recruit and maintain a superb faculty and encourage its scholarly productivity, attain preeminence in appropriate research fields, help all qualified Virginia high school graduates obtain a liberal arts education, and improve the physical plant to serve the educational program.^[1] World War II prevented Pomfret’s pursuing his plans; but when the war ended in September 1945, the scholarly president renewed his mission of transforming William and Mary into a first-rate liberal arts college, comparable to Williams, Dartmouth, Oberlin, Amherst, and Bowdoin.^[2] Like his predecessor John Stewart Bryan, Pomfret would strengthen the liberal arts programs and minimize professional and vocational training. Pomfret’s methods of carrying out his ambitious program and the difficulties he encountered are the story of the College in the postwar era.

The Changing Shape of the Postwar College

With the return of peace, Pomfret and the faculty hoped for the return of academic stability; but large numbers of military veterans, taking advantage of recently enacted laws granting them educational benefits, dashed those hopes.^[3] Veterans swelled William and Mary’s enrollment from a prewar 1,300 to 2,047 by the fall of 1948, and thousands more attended the College’s Richmond and Norfolk Divisions and its St. Helena Extension, established in 1946 especially for veterans.^[4] To accommodate and educate the returning servicemen, the College liberally granted credits for military service and educational programs and gave veterans admissions preference. It continued its wartime February graduation, expanded course offerings, provided counseling services, and hired additional faculty.^[5] Classrooms and dormitories were packed. To handle the overflow, Pomfret leased a nearby temporary wartime housing project and obtained surplus military buildings and warehouses.^[6] Because of their seriousness, maturity, and determination, the veterans starred in academics and in extracurricular activities; they dominated student government, athletics, and campus organizations.^[7] The federal government’s educational benefits paid to all qualified veterans heralded a new era when a college education was no longer for only the privileged—a view that Pomfret shared.^[8] Like other colleges across the country, William and Mary played its part in educating veterans.

Simultaneously, Pomfret had to consider the rest of the student body, which he hoped to strengthen, but the wartime and early postwar years saw little progress in attracting more able students. Virginia males comprised the majority of students. After the war the Board of Visitors insisted on a quick return to a 60 percent male predominance, and the influx of veterans more than met this requirement.^[9] Nearly all women admitted were Virginians, and state residents made up 60 to 70 percent of the entire student body. When the veterans’ wave receded, additional out-of-state students were admitted.^[10]

As the student body returned to a more normal composition by the late 1940s, College administrators tried to recruit better-qualified male students. One inducement was financial aid. The work-study program, begun during the war, provided students with jobs on campus or in Williamsburg to help defray educational expenses. The program’s success made it a permanent form of student aid.^[11] Pomfret had always advocated liberal scholarships, and by 1948 William and Mary had added 100 more partial scholarships, bringing the total to 240. The next year the College offered 25 competitive scholarships in natural sciences and soon doubled that number.^[12] By combining work-study and scholarship benefits, ambitious students could attend college at little expense to their families, and the College’s pool of potential scholars broadened.

The fraternities, which had been suspended during the war, attracted other potential students. Enrollment soared but more students required more living accommodations. The high cost of postwar construction prevented the College from building additional dormitories, so Pomfret advocated constructing eleven identical fraternity lodges. Although fraternity leaders wanted to acquire houses, Pomfret believed that College-owned lodges would eliminate competition for elaborate, unaffordable houses.^[13] In the fall of 1946, the Fraternity Association’s leaders rebelled against the lodge plan, staged a twenty-four-hour nonactivity movement, and demanded a meeting with the Board of Visitors. With Virginia Governor William M. Tuck’s support, Pomfret held firm, and soon the association accepted the president’s proposal to construct lodges near the stadium.^[14] The lodges, built by the College with private endowment funds, were ready by the fall of 1948 and were immediately popular. Pomfret believed that William and Mary’s shift from a house to a lodge system was the first of its kind in the country.^[15]

As the fraternity lodge disturbance abated, still another means of attracting male students began. Pomfret arranged with the United States Army to establish a Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) field artillery unit at William and Mary. The ROTC program began in September 1947 with 46 students, under the command of Colonel Giles R. Carpenter.^[16] Pay and allowances for upperclassmen, free uniforms, commissions as second lieutenants, and potential draft deferments enhanced the program’s appeal, and by the fall of 1950, 277 young men had enrolled.^[17]

While the College tried to lure more and better-qualified male students, admissions requirements remained stable. Applicants must have graduated in the upper half of their classes at accredited high schools and have presented sixteen acceptable academic units.^[18] Although William and Mary was a member of the College Entrance Examination Board, the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) was not required for admission.^[19] Nevertheless, the caliber of undergraduates slowly improved. Near the end of the war, the faculty had forlornly adopted rules that freshmen and sophomores must earn a minimum number of quality points and show some interest in academics. In 1946, with veterans swelling the enrollment, freshman test scores equaled those of any students ever admitted. Three years later the dean of students and registrar, J. Wilfred Lambert, reported that the entering class was the best yet.^[20]

This upward trend continued, and the College could measure its rising academic standards by the growing number of students going to graduate and professional schools such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Medical College of Virginia, Harvard, Princeton, and the University of North Carolina. Although Pomfret attributed the rising caliber of students only to the strengthened scholarship program which enabled the College to compete for top-ranked high school graduates, all the combined enticements offered by the College contributed to the improving intellectual climate.^[21]

As the quality of students began to rise, the College’s curriculum remained relatively stable.^[22] The curricular revisions in 1935 had oriented William and Mary toward liberal arts and away from the teacher-training emphasis of earlier years and from the vocationalism of its Richmond Professional Institute.^[23] Reflecting the national trend away from a purely elective system, strict distribution requirements continued to be the cornerstone of a broad, general education.^[24]

To scrutinize course offerings, degree requirements, planning methods, and research, Pomfret established a divisional organization of the faculty. In December 1943 the faculty approved his plan for four divisions: humanities, social sciences, mathematics and science, and teacher training. Discussion and interaction then correlated the work of the departments, and the College was better able to offer a “truly liberal arts education.”^[25]

In another move to raise academic standards by curricular modifications, William and Mary discontinued several nonacademic majors and programs. Home economics, an attraction when women first came to the College in 1918, ended as a major in 1949. Similarly, the College withdrew its library science program and discontinued the secretarial science and women’s physical education majors.^[26] Begun in 1919 by J. A. C. Chandler, the popular extension courses, primarily in Education, continued throughout the Peninsula. To broaden its educational opportunities to an international scale, William and Mary began a program with Exeter College in England in 1946 providing for the annual exchange of one William and Mary student and one British student.^[27]

Concurrently, in 1948 William and Mary devised an innovative taxation program combining the resources of several departments—jurisprudence, business administration, economics, and government. The interdisciplinary approach offered tax specialization for law students, tax training for future accountants, and a master’s degree in taxation for economics and business administration majors.^[28] At the same time, the jurisprudence department began issuing the William and Mary Review of Virginia Law.

Although the administration vigorously resisted expanding into large-scale graduate studies, it responded to pressing state needs for administrators, supervisors, and counselors with master’s degrees for the public schools. In 1948 the College began a graduate program leading to either the master of Education degree or the master of arts with specialization in Education degree. A small number of graduate courses had long been given in other departments. Even with these additional offerings, two years later there were but twenty-nine graduate students at the College.^[29]

The only new department added during the postwar years was the Department of Military Science and Tactics with its ROTC program. Otherwise, curricular changes primarily consisted of modifying existing departmental offerings.^[30] Through their objectives and actions, the administration and faculty moved closer to a clearly liberal arts curriculum.

Another prime requirement in turning William and Mary into a first-rate college was a good library. Under the guidance of Robert Hunt Land, the librarian, the library increased its holdings and status.^[31] Yearly allocations for purchases rose; and between 1945 and 1951, the number of books, documents, and periodicals grew from 295,421 to 395,893; of manuscripts, from 376,852 to over 450,000.^[32] Land was hard pressed to find space to house the growing resources, and Pomfret’s earlier hopes of a new building did not materialize.^[33] Nevertheless, Pomfret could soon boast that William and Mary’s library ranked eighth among southern colleges.^[34] To instruct a student body swelled by the veterans’ wave, the College had an immediate need for more teachers. Although Pomfret, like Bryan, wanted to improve the qualifications of the teaching staff, the College had to hire younger, less experienced people who did not meet prewar standards. Forty-nine new teachers joined the staff in 1946–47, and only 40.6 percent of the entire faculty held earned doctorates or the equivalent. Two years later 48.7 percent of the faculty of 125 held the highest academic degrees. This percentage remained steady throughout Pomfret’s administration.^[35]

To attract and retain a strong faculty, Pomfret acted to raise salaries and benefits. In 1942 the average salary for a full professor was $3,530; for an instructor, $1,741. Five years later Pomfret spearheaded the movement for more state funds for salaries, and a new scale brought William and Mary faculty pay to the level that Pomfret considered competitive. By 1951 another increase gave full professors an average of $5,700; instructors, $3,240. Rising retirement pay and health care benefits augmented salaries. Pomfret also tried, unsuccessfully, to establish sabbatical leaves for the faculty.^[36] Although these financial gains helped the faculty during the inflationary postwar years, Pomfret used still another inducement. In 1943 Chancellor John Stewart Bryan had established the Chancellor’s Fund to provide monetary incentives to outstanding teachers. Pomfret subsequently named William G. Guy, chemistry; Charles F. Marsh, business administration; James W. Miller, philosophy; Albion G. Taylor, economics; and Dudley W. Woodbridge, jurisprudence—all departmental heads—to the new rank of Chancellor Professor.^[37]

Pomfret generally worked well with his faculty and was accessible to it.^[38] On one matter, however, Pomfret firmly opposed it: reducing the teaching load from fifteen to twelve hours. A special faculty committee recommended the reduction to stimulate research and better teaching and to enhance the College’s reputation, and the full faculty passed a resolution supporting the change. Pomfret argued against it because of the cost and because the policy of the College and of most other state institutions mandated the fifteen-hour load. The Board of Visitors upheld him.^[39] Individual faculty research was not a high priority or a requirement for promotion at William and Mary. In 1948 the Carnegie Foundation granted the College $20,000, to be spread over five years; so with additional College funds, there was about $10,000 a year available for faculty research. The average grant was $430, with the biology department making the most requests. William and Mary, however, remained primarily a teaching, not a research, institution.^[40] It would have been difficult for the faculty, with its heavy teaching loads and no sabbaticals, to have accomplished much research. Pomfret, then, only modestly encouraged individual scholarly productivity. Pomfret realized that a college must have good physical facilities and attractive buildings to appeal to the better faculty and students. Before the war ended, the College had arranged for Colonial Williamsburg to maintain the buildings and landscaping of the ancient campus for $750 a year.^[41] The College then concentrated its resources on the newer part of the campus; and soon interior and exterior painting and redecorating, landscaping, new roads and sidewalks, enlarged athletic fields, and a new heat distribution system improved the campus.^[42] Earlier, Pomfret had advocated constructing a new classroom building, a new library, fraternity lodges, more dormitories, and establishing a housing program for faculty and employees.^[43] Pomfret’ s hopes for a return of prewar prices and his desire to avoid large capital outlays until the College’s debts were paid held in abeyance any major building program.^[44] The only additions actually made during Pomfret’ s administration were the temporary dormitories and warehouses to accommodate the veterans’ needs and the eleven fraternity lodges. The College did benefit from the amphitheater built in 1947 on College property by the Jamestown Corporation as the site of an open-air historical drama, The Common Glory.^[45] Pomfret abhorred debt, and reduction of the College’s debt was one of his paramount goals. His administration had inherited a total indebtedness of $690,000, mostly incurred during the building program of the Chandler era; and the president wanted to reduce that amount by $100,000 a year.^[46] Consequently, the College’s debt was lowered to $159,000 by the fall of 1950, largely because of careful budget balancing by the bursar, Charles J. Duke, Jr., and because the College avoided expensive new buildings and academic programs.^[47]

Simultaneously, the College’s total endowment grew from $1.3 million to $2.1 million.^[48] Pomfret had set a $100,000 annual fund-raising goal and far surpassed it every year. Gifts, grants, bequests, and Society of the Alumni fund drives swelled the College’s coffers; and income from the endowment fund helped finance scholarships, Chancellor Professorships, and faculty research.^[49] With the exceptions of a Rockefeller Foundation grant of $31,500 in 1945 and a Carnegie Foundation grant of $20,000 in 1948, all large donations were individual rather than corporate.^[50]

While Pomfret oversaw William and Mary’s finances, he sought still other ways to keep the College on course in its drive toward academic improvement. Such an opportunity arose in 1947, when a state report on higher education pointed to the divergent goals and programs of William and Mary and its Richmond and Norfolk Divisions and suggested that the College relinquish control of its branches.^[51] Although enrollment at the Richmond Professional Institute (RPI) in 1950–51 totalled 2,569 full- and part-time students and at the Norfolk Division, 2,028, attendant financial and administrative problems always had made the divisions burdensome to the parent institution.^[52] The Richmond Professional Institute was primarily a vocational school; the Norfolk Division, a two-year college. Differences in character and clientele had ended the divisions’ earlier usefulness as feeders for William and Mary, and Pomfret acted on growing public sentiment to separate the divisions from William and Mary.^[53]

Henry H. Hibbs, Jr., dean of RPI since 1938, approved Pomfret’s suggestion that the Richmond Division become an independent vocational college governed by the State Board of Education, and Pomfret lost no time in bringing the matter before the Board of Visitors.^[54] After a special committee study, the full Board authorized Pomfret to take the necessary steps to separate the two institutions; but this division’s autonomy did not materialize during the Pomfret presidency.^[55]

Separation of the Norfolk Division was an old idea that had occurred even before irregularities there had caused William and Mary to lose its accreditation in 1941.^[56] During the postwar years, Norfolk business and civic leaders actively lobbied for a four-year college.^[57] Finally, Lewis W. Webb, director of the Norfolk Division since 1946, formally requested William and Mary either to release its control or to develop the division into a four-year college. Reluctant to oversee Norfolk’s expansion, Pomfret recommended separation of the division, along with the Richmond Professional Institute.^[58] However, the Board of Visitors’ special committee and the Board itself took no action, and the troublesome problem remained.^[59]

New Directions: Cooperative Research

As the College grew during the postwar period, it also began expanding its horizons in new ways. Pomfret’s own scholarly interests propelled him into encouraging the College’s participation in appropriate research areas. Tidewater marine biology, Peninsula social and economic problems, and early American history and culture offered opportunities for using the College’s research capabilities to meet the needs of the community, the state, and the nation.^[60]

A marine biology program had already been established in 1940 at Yorktown. The Virginia Fisheries Laboratory, jointly administered by William and Mary and the Virginia Commission of Fisheries, conducted research and educational programs to conserve and develop Tidewater fishery resources.^[61] In 1947 Nelson Marshall, professor of biology at William and Mary, replaced controversial Curtis L. Newcombe as director of the Fisheries Laboratory; and, under his leadership, studies on oysters, blue crabs, shad and croaker, and hydrographics prospered. Educational benefits included graduate studies in aquatic biology, summer programs for teachers and researchers, and a mobile unit taken to area schools. Through its programs, the Fisheries Laboratory aroused public awareness and encouraged commercial production of one of the state’s most abundant resources. Soon the laboratory widened its scope and took part in the Chesapeake Bay Institute, a cooperative venture for hydrographic studies.^[62] So attractive did these activities become that Pomfret had to fend off an attempt by the state to seize control of the Fisheries Laboratory by reducing the College’s representation on the governing administrative board.^[63]

The Fisheries Laboratory had long outgrown its primitive Yorktown facilities, and Marshall led the drive to acquire land at Gloucester Point for a new laboratory. Plans for the building were nearly complete when Marshall left his director’s post to become dean of the College, but he continued to supervise construction of the laboratory, which opened in October 1950.^[64] John L. McHugh, professor of marine biology, replaced Marshall as director.^[65]

Another locally oriented research endeavor was the Hampton Roads-Peninsula war studies project. The idea of using College faculty to evaluate the war’s impact on the area evolved from the civic and educational liaison between the Williamsburg War Board and the Williamsburg Cooperative Study Committee.^[66] Organized in October 1942, the study committee consisted of faculty members who would assess the war’s effects on Williamsburg. The next year the newly formed Division of Social Sciences at William and Mary authorized an expansion of the study to include the entire Peninsula and appointed a business administration professor, Charles F. Marsh, as chairman of the committee on the Hampton Roads-Peninsula war studies project.^[67] The College soon received a three-year grant of $31,500 from the Rockefeller Foundation to pursue the work.^[68]

Using meticulous case studies, Marsh and his committee spent the next few years evaluating the war’s economic, political, and social effects on the whole Peninsula. They presented their findings in The Hampton Roods Communities in World War II.^[69] The book would, the authors believed, help the region make long-term plans and show how war affects communities nationwide.^[70] The work demonstrated the College’s policy of identifying with regional life and of providing trained researchers for a relevant project.

The third way of involving the College in appropriate research especially appealed to Pomfret. A colonial historian himself, he believed that the College, with its unique history and location, should assume the leadership in early American historical scholarship. The means to this end was revamping the William and Mary College Quarterly Historical Magazine. The journal, begun by President Lyon G. Tyler and continued by librarian Earl Gregg Swem, had focused on the state’s history and genealogy. Pomfret quickly acted to broaden its scope to include United States history from 1492 to 1815, and to subtitle it A Magazine of Early American History, Institutions, and Culture. He appointed Professor Richard L. Morton of the history department as managing editor, and the third series of the William and Mary Quarterly appeared in January 1944.^[71]

Concurrently, another project emerged that propelled William and Mary into national prominence as a center for early American history. In October 1942 Pomfret approached Colonial Williamsburg’s president Kenneth Chorley about collaboration between the two institutions in historical research.^[72] The idea smoldered for nearly a year, then Pomfret again pressed for a fusion in research efforts and pointed to the enormous prestige that the College and Colonial Williamsburg could gain in early American scholarship.^[73]

Events moved swiftly, and at the end of December 1943, the board of editors of the William and Mary Quarterly, the advisory committee of historians of Colonial Williamsburg, Pomfret, and Chorley met in New York City. They agreed to pool their historical research resources and to establish the Institute of Early American History and Culture. An autonomous organization, jointly financed by the two sponsoring institutions, the Institute would handle all early American historical research and publication. It immediately took over the new William and Mary Quarterly.^[74] Although the war prevented further development of the Institute, the groundwork had been laid.^[75]

In October 1945 the Institute became active when noted colonial historian Carl Bridenbaugh arrived as director, with Lester J. Cappon as editor of publications and archivist. The next month the executive committee met in New York and gave organizational direction to the Institute and its programs.^[76] For the next five years, Bridenbaugh and his staff conducted a vigorous program of research and publication. The Institute, in conjunction with the University of North Carolina Press, published seven books and monographs. Its members participated in scholarly conferences and seminars; provided historical information to educational and commercial organizations; gave courses and lectures; operated a grants-in-aid program; and completed the Virginia Gazette Index, begun earlier by Colonial Williamsburg.^[77]

The Institute’s William and Mary Quarterly quickly gained national recognition. Sound scholarship and historical criticism, prompt book reviews, and good writing contributed to its growing success. Douglass Adair, assistant professor of history, replaced Morton as editor in 1947.^[78] With the Institute well established, Bridenbaugh resigned in 1950, and Lyman Butterfield became director the next year.^[79] The novel experiment by William and Mary and Colonial Williamsburg had produced one of the outstanding historical institutes in the nation. It was the only one of its kind.^[80]

Still another opportunity arose to increase William and Mary’s academic reputation. The university center movement, a concept of regional colleges and universities pooling their resources to provide broader educational opportunities to more students at less cost, had made increasing inroads in the South and by 1944 had reached Richmond. Long familiar with such a center in Nashville while he was at Vanderbilt, Pomfret eagerly met with the presidents of several Richmond area institutions.^[81] They explored ways to improve educational services, prevent duplication in library acquisitions, share expensive scientific equipment, develop a coordinated graduate program, and sponsor distinguished speakers and scholars.^[82]

After touring four university centers in early 1946 and securing a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation’s General Education Board, representatives of the colleges launched the program in October.^[83] The Richmond Area University Center, with headquarters in the historic Ellen Glasgow House, soon conducted conferences for professors, sponsored presentations by several noted scholars and painters, and made a number of grants-in-aid.^[84] In the fall of 1950, the University Center began administering an undergraduate evening college at the Richmond Professional Institute.^[85] Although the Richmond Area University Center had gotten started, it failed to attain its ambitious goals during the postwar era.

As its academic status grew, the College looked for opportunities to capture national attention. Its athletic teams already enjoyed widespread recognition, and more publicity followed. In 1946 General Dwight D. Eisenhower and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill visited the campus. The next year Colgate W. Darden, Jr., popular former Virginia governor, was invested as the fifth American chancellor of the College.^[86] On Canadian-American Day, April 2, 1948, President Harry S. Truman became the sixth consecutive chief executive to accept an honorary degree from William and Mary.^[87] Other national figures later spoke at the College or were degree recipients, and the school hosted meetings of nationwide organizations such as the council of the United Chapters of Phi Beta Kappa and the National Association of Deans and Advisers of Men.^[88] Pomfret himself was elected vice-president of Phi Beta Kappa in 1949, and he also became president of the Southern University Conference, a consulting body of forty-six liberal arts institutions.

Running the College

To devote more time to improving the intellectual climate of the College, Pomfret rearranged the administrative structure, but he added only one additional administrator, bringing the total to sixteen. Pomfret himself had little interest in routine institutional management and expected his staff to carry out operational details.^[89] Sharvy G. Umbeck served as dean of the College—a new title for dean of the faculty—from 1946 until 1949 when Nelson Marshall, director of the Virginia Fisheries Laboratory, replaced him.^[90] In December 1945 J. Wilfred Lambert filled the newly created post of dean of students, and John E. Hocutt became dean of men. Lambert soon was registrar as well, and his office was the first to boast of a computer.^[91] Dudley W. Woodbridge served as dean of the jurisprudence department; Katherine R Jeffers, dean of women. Robert H. Land was librarian, while Vernon L. Nunn remained auditor, a post he had held since 1935, and George J. Oliver was director of summer sessions. Pomfret also added directors of the work-study and placement bureau and of counseling. Another new administrative position, created by the Board of Visitors in 1950, was director of physical plant and maintenance, and E. Lockert Bemiss, Jr., filled this post.^[92]

The most influential member of the Pomfret administration was Charles J. Duke, Jr. Bursar since 1934, he was also the wartime director of the Norfolk Division.^[93] In 1948 he was chief of staff of the governor’s panel to reorganize the state government.^[94] Two years later he filled the newly created position of assistant to the president of the College. Pomfret relied on the versatile Duke not only as chief fiscal officer, but as the College’s man to secure favorable treatment from the General Assembly and as a general troubleshooter.^[95]

As the administrative staff became more efficient, Pomfret was often at odds with the College’s governing body, the Board of Visitors. The Board’s eleven members, appointed by the governor for four-year terms, controlled all College funds, regulations, appointments, and salaries. Pomfret worked smoothly with the Board until 1946 when three members, who had been instrumental in Pomfret’s selection as president, declined reappointment; their replacements were more amenable to fostering big-time athletics.^[96]

After A. Herbert Foreman became rector in 1946, Pomfret recommended a mathematics professor, Harold R. Phalen, to be dean of the College, but the Board overrode the president and selected a sociology professor and tennis coach, Sharvy G. Umbeck.^[97] The Board overrode him again by quickly adopting an intercollegiate athletic policy calling for teams that could compete successfully against other state and Southern Conference teams and that could win the majority of their contests.^[98] Pomfret was powerless against such determined athletic enthusiasts. Although he never tried to influence the governor’s selection of Board members, he lamented privately that the Board needed a few men concerned with matters other than intercollegiate football.^[99]

Problems of a Different Sort

On one thing, however, the Board of Visitors and Pomfret completely agreed: racial segregation. In February 1945 the Flat Hat featured an inflammatory editorial, “Lincoln’s Job Half-Done,” which advocated equal opportunities for all races, including attendance at William and Mary and racial intermarriage.^[100] The South was not ready for such ideas, and Pomfret acted quickly. He secured the Board of Visitors’ approval to replace the editor and to begin College supervision of undergraduate publications. Following heated debate, the faculty approved these measures, but the students regarded them as censorship.^[101] After a brief suspension of publication, Pomfret and student leaders agreed on the recent policy changes; and, under a new editor and faculty counselors, publication of the newspaper resumed. The wire services picked up the entire episode, and William and Mary reluctantly appeared in the national spotlight again.^[102]

After the Flat Hat uproar subsided, a few isolated events heralded approaching changes. In 1947 William and Mary canceled a home tennis match with Dartmouth because the visiting team had a black player. But two years later, the Southern Historical Association met without incident in Williamsburg, and its program included a prominent black scholar.^[103]

The stirring of the civil rights movement and Supreme Court decisions requiring state institutions to admit blacks when black colleges did not provide equal graduate training caused grave concern.^[104] A few blacks had applied to the Richmond Professional Institute’s graduate school of social work; but Virginia’s constitution, laws, and practices prohibited racially mixed schools.^[105] In September 1950 a federal district court ordered the University of Virginia to admit a qualified black to its law school.^[106] Realizing that William and Mary’s law school, as well as the Richmond Professional Institute, would also be vulnerable, Pomfret got the Board of Visitors’ approval to abide by the state attorney general’s opinion that blacks could indeed attend graduate programs not offered by black colleges.^[107] As segregation began to break down in public colleges, William and Mary quietly admitted its first black graduate students. With little fanfare, Hulon L. Willis enrolled for graduate work in physical education in the summer session of 1951, and Edward A. Travis entered the law school that fall.^[108]

During these postwar years, another war—the Cold War—dominated American life. Fear of the Soviet Union’s worldwide aspirations spawned a suspicion of communist influence everywhere, including the academic community. Investigations, dismissals, and loyalty oaths marked an era of national hysteria, exacerbated in 1950 by the beginning of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy’s anticommunist crusade. At some universities, professors lost their jobs or had doubts cast on their loyalty by overzealous investigators. Other cautious faculty retreated to conformity.^[109] William and Mary escaped any effects of these witch-hunts. There were no allegations of communist faculty, no loyalty oaths or probes. No one lost his job because of political activities. But, as at other colleges, many faculty noted a general repression of outspoken criticism.^[110]

In June 1950 a shooting war intensified the Cold War. American participation in the United Nations force repelling the communist invasion of South Korea mobilized the country and affected William and Mary’s male students. By September seventy-five men had been called into the armed forces; more would quickly follow, and the College faced the same morale problem as it had in 1942.^[111] This time, however, the administration was better prepared. The College already had an ROTC unit, and Pomfret planned to seek a military unit and reactivation of the Naval Training School (chaplains’ school) if male enrollment dropped.^[112] Wartime status replaced the postwar era, and student unrest and uncertainty characterized the last months of the Pomfret administration.^[113] William and Mary once more stood poised for momentous change.

Athletics and the Downfall of the President

Change would come in an unexpected form—the upheaval caused by the College’s athletic program. In 1947 editor Charles P. McCurdy, Jr., writing in the Alumni Gazette, chastised the administration, the Board of Visitors, the faculty, the students, and the alumni for failing to think seriously about the true purpose of William and Mary: expanding the intellect. He was especially critical of alumni and the Board of Visitors for their overemphasis on winning football teams.^[114] McCurdy’s penetrating analysis presaged worsening times for the College.

The drive toward athletic prominence had begun as early as 1939 under Coach Carl Voyles and continued when Reuben N. McCray became head football coach and athletic director in 1944. Under McCray’s guidance, the William and Mary football team ranked thirteenth in the nation in 1947, won the Southern Conference championship, played in the Dixie Bowl, then won the 1949 Delta Bowl. Close behind were the basketball and baseball teams, which chalked up Southern Conference and state championships. Most spectacular was the tennis team, which ran up a winning streak of eighty-two games and captured Southern Conference championships and national intercollegiate tournaments.^[115] McCray and his chief assistant, Bernard S. Wilson, were the driving force behind the College’s postwar athletic glory.

At William and Mary, the Athletic Association oversaw intercollegiate athletics and was closely intertwined with the Department of Physical Education for Men. The staffs and functions overlapped. McCray was not only head football coach and director of the Athletic Association but was also associate professor in the physical education department. Wilson was head of this department and head basketball coach. The Board of Visitors, buttressed by enthusiastic alumni, had encouraged a strong athletic program for years and basked in the prestige that victories brought to the College.^[116] After the proathletics shift in its membership in 1946, the Board quickly authorized more athletic scholarship funds, adopted its “win” policy, and named Umbeck, the tennis coach, as dean of the College.^[117] Athletic budgets and McCray’s salary and entertainment allowance increased regularly, and in 1949, when Oscar L. Shewmake became rector, the Board offered a new five-year contract with tenure to the successful coach.^[118] The next year its athletic committee recommended revamping the Faculty Committee on Athletics by adding members who wanted to advance, not curtail, the College’s athletic program and by replacing the chairman, Nelson Marshall.^[119]

Under Southern Conference and Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools regulations, the faculty had responsibility for and control of intercollegiate athletics, but for years it had only rubber-stamped ongoing activities. When chaired by Umbeck, the Faculty Committee on Athletics had overlooked athletes’ scholastic underachievement. Marshall replaced Umbeck as chairman in 1949, and soon some faculty members started questioning the growing dichotomy between academic standards and athletic demands.^[120] In May 1950 the Faculty Committee on Athletics began to challenge the Board’s absolute control of athletics when it asked Pomfret for a joint study by the athletic committees of both the Board and the faculty to delineate the faculty’s duties in light of Southern Conference and Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools regulations.^[121]

Although Pomfret did not act on the request of the Faculty Committee on Athletics, he had always tried to subordinate athletics to scholarship. Early in his presidency, he had recommended adopting a stable policy consistent with the College’s financial resources. He wanted unsubsidized teams playing only natural rivals. He had come to the College from Vanderbilt, which had had a professional football team since the mid-1930s; so he knew of the possible hazards of overemphasizing athletics.^[122] Because the Athletic Association had no formal organization, he submitted a proposed constitution and set of bylaws to the Board, hoping to determine the College’s policy for the future.^[123] When postwar enthusiasm for strong teams surged, the Board overrode Pomfret with its own policy.

In 1949 Pomfret, along with the presidents of other Virginia colleges, signed the Sanity Code of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), which drastically curtailed financial assistance to athletes. The College, like many others, soon violated part of the code by overpaying its working athletes.^[124] After the NCAA abolished its unworkable Sanity Code in January 1951, Southern Conference schools agreed to limit athletic aid to only college expenses. In August Pomfret again tried to restrict William and Mary’s competitors to state teams such as the University of Richmond and the Virginia Military Institute and comparable out-of-state colleges, but the Board firmly reasserted its 1946 “win” policy.^[125] Rumors about athletic commercialization had circulated for years, and many wondered how a college with only about one thousand male students attracted and kept its outstanding athletes.^[126] To lure promising players to William and Mary, McCray and Wilson directed an energetic recruiting program. College representatives, carrying application and transcript forms, visited high schools and encouraged interested students and schools to complete the forms on the spot. The emissaries brought the papers back to the Athletic Association, which forwarded them to the admissions office.^[127]

This practice provided an attractive temptation. In the spring of 1949, Lambert, dean of students and registrar, and chairman of the committee on admissions, found that high school transcripts for five athletes had been altered to assure their acceptance by the College. After further investigation, Lambert reported his findings to Pomfret and Marshall in November, and the administration immediately directed that all entrance applications come directly to the admissions office.^[128]

But the undercurrent of rumors persisted. In his first report as dean of the College, Marshall pointed to an academic double standard for athletes and nonathletes. To remain in school, athletes could pull up low grade averages by taking extra courses in physical education. They received financial aid and employment designed for all students but funneled to athletes. In addition, illegal athletic tryouts to secure financial aid continued. Finally, the faculty was supposed to control intercollegiate athletics but had no real authority.^[129] Marshall’s warnings went unheeded.

In the following months, Marshall learned more about unethical practices from other members of the administration, from the physical education staff, and from student leaders. He despaired of Pomfret’s acting to investigate the alleged abuses, so he offered his resignation as dean of the College in April 1951. Pomfret did not accept the resignation and asked Marshall to compile examples of dishonesty in the athletic program.^[130] As Marshall gathered his facts, Pomfret did not mention any irregularities to the Board of Visitors when it met in May. Inexplicably, he recommended McCray for promotion to full professor.^[131]

In June Marshall documented wrongdoings that, he felt, undermined the Honor System and set an unsavory example for the young athletes. A series of unearned credits granted in physical education, of grade altering or influencing by the director of athletics, of credits given for courses requiring little or no work, and of deleting an honor code violation on a transcript sent to another college all revealed academic malfeasance. Cases of a car kept on campus against College regulations and of inflated student work hours and kickbacks paid to the head of the physical education department showed flagrant ethical abuses.^[132] These findings, combined with the high school transcript alterations uncovered by Lambert and substantiated by two former Athletic Association secretaries, left no doubt of the grave problems facing the College.

Events moved swiftly. Pomfret confronted McCray and Wilson, who denied any wrongdoing.^[133] The faculty met on July 3 and appointed a special committee to investigate the coaches’ conduct. That same day McCray’s attorney suggested a graceful compromise to Pomfret McCray would resign as of February 1, 1952; Wilson, March 1. Relieved of their teaching duties, both men would only coach, and McCray would help straighten out the unearned credits problem. Believing this a merciful solution which gave the coaches time to find other positions, Pomfret recommended it to the faculty special committee on July 4. After lengthy deliberations, the committee agreed, and the full faculty approved the compromise on the seventh.^[134]

With the ties between the physical education department and the coaching staff completely severed, Pomfret and the faculty hoped the settlement would solve the athletic crisis without additional publicity for the College; but events worked against them. The newspapers continued to speculate about the reorganization of the Department of Physical Education, and a disgruntled former staff member threatened to speak candidly to reporters. McCray failed to cooperate fully with Marshall in clarifying questionable academic credits given to athletes, and the faculty special committee was ready to resume its investigation. In a surprise move, McCray and Wilson abruptly resigned on August 10.^[135] As this startling scenario unfolded, Shewmake, rector of the Board of Visitors, called a special meeting for August 15, and Pomfret described the discovery of the malpractices to the group. Three days later, after conferring with the faculty’s special committee, Shewmake reconvened the Board, which heard Lambert tell of finding the transcript alterations, all made on the same typewriter in the men’s gymnasium. The Board once again rejected Pomfret’ s recommendation that the College limit its football competition to comparable colleges and reaffirmed its “win” policy of 1946. It launched its own investigation of the athletic situation.^[136] Announcing the results of its probe when it met again on September 8, the Board concluded that the whole matter “could and should have been handled with dispatch by the administrative officers of the College.”^[137] In failing to take any responsibility for the consequences of its athletic policy, the Board found a convenient scapegoat—President Pomfret.^[138]

After the Board of Visitors meeting, Pomfret flew to San Marino, California, for interviews with the Board of Trustees of the Huntington Library. He had been negotiating since early 1951 for the director’s position of that prestigious institution. Unaware of the turmoil at William and Mary, the trustees informally offered Pomfret the directorship on September 12; and Pomfret intended to resign when he returned to Williamsburg, saying that he had another position.^[139] When he arrived at the College the next day, he decided to bear the brunt of the scandal and to resign because he did not “possess the confidence of the full membership of the Board of Visitors.” He did not mention his new job.^[140]

Pomfret’s failure to act decisively during the athletic crisis markedly contrasted with the behavior of his predecessor. President Bryan had promptly removed the director of the Norfolk Division in 1941 for academic wrongdoing. Perhaps Pomfret’ s very nature—gentle, trusting, nonconfrontational—precluded quick and forthright action.^[141] If he had summarily dismissed McCray and Wilson when the dimensions of the abuses became apparent, it is doubtful that the proathletic Board of Visitors would have supported him. After all, he had tried many times to curtail big-time athletics in an age when collegiate athletic scandals were rampant. In July 1951 he had thought that the compromise on the coaches’ resignations would end the malpractices and keep the situation out of the newspapers. He wanted no unfavorable publicity for the College that he had helped to raise to academic respectability.^[142]

The faculty, meanwhile, had been composing an eloquent statement about the disastrous effects of the College’s athletic policy. The resounding Williamsburg Manifesto, as it came to be called, described the erosion of academic standards, the commercialization of intercollegiate athletics, the tarnished Honor System, the declining morale of the student body, and the financial burden of big-time athletics. It pledged a sound and healthy program, under firm faculty control, that would be truly extracurricular.^[143] Released to the press, the Williamsburg Manifesto drew nationwide praise as a courageous declaration of academic integrity and helped to defuse the adverse publicity of the football scandal and Pomfret’s resignation.^[144] Soon, the faculty passed a resolution commending Pomfret and his administration of William and Mary.^[145]

 
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During the 1940s when presidents of undergraduate colleges with around two thousand students could be scholars rather than businessmen, Pomfret found effective means of raising the intellectual standards at William and Mary.^[146] Positive achievements studded his years at the College.^[147] When he became president in 1942, the academic cloud of lost accreditation hung over the College. Pomfret took immediate steps to restore the College to good standing, then guided the institution through the difficult war years. In the postwar era, he helped the College resourcefully handle the influx of veterans while he intensified his program of turning William and Mary into a first-rate liberal arts college.

Adept at academic matters, Pomfret moved the College to a higher scholarly plateau by improving the caliber of the faculty and students and by tightening the curriculum. Expansion of the library’s resources paralleled these developments. He encouraged the Richmond Area University Center and tried to rid the College of the Richmond and Norfolk Divisions. Appropriate research was his forte; and under his administration the Virginia Fisheries Laboratory was expanded and the Hampton Roads study was completed. His most lasting monument, however, was the Institute of Early American History and Culture with its revitalized William and Mary Quarterly series.

Administratively, Pomfret relied on his staff to handle routine operations. Financially conservative, Pomfret reduced the debt and increased the endowment to keep the College in sound condition. He took the first steps in preparing for integration, and he was ready for the changes that the Korean War would bring. This gentle scholar was no match, however, for the single-minded Board of Visitors. Most importantly, the erudite president gave the College a real sense of mission and purpose. He had created “an environment of learning,” but unfortunately, he was unable to “subordinate all other activities to it.”^[148] When he left William and Mary, an academic cloud once more hung low. The future was uncertain, and difficult times lay ahead for the College.

Unless otherwise noted, all material is from the William and Mary Archives (WMA).