Is the World Our Campus? International Students and U.S. Global Power in the LongTwentieth Century*

Abstract

It was 1951 and Rozella Switzer, postmistress of McPherson, Kansas, a prosperous, conservative, nearly all white oil town of 9,000 people on the eastern edge of the wheat belt, had not seen the Nigerians coming. That fall, seven African students, all male, in their early and mid twenties, had arrived in the area to attend McPherson College and Central College. The accomplished young men, who counted among themselves a one-time math teacher, a surveyor, an accountant, a pharmacist, and a railway telegrapher, had come with high professional aspirations to acquire training in agriculture, engineering, and medicine; within months, they were treated to a fairly typical round of Jim Crow hospitality, from half-wages at the local laundry to the segregated upper balcony of the local movie house. While at least one of the men had been warned by his father that Christians “don't practice what they preach,” the students were apparently unprepared for the Midwest's less metaphorical chill; with the arrival of winter, officials at McPherson College telephoned around town to gather warm clothes for the men, which is how they came to Switzer's restless and expansive attention. A widow in her forties, Switzer, according to Time, “smokes Pall Malls, drinks an occasional bourbon & coke, likes politics and people.” She was also “curious about the African students” and invited them to her home for coffee, music, and talk.1

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