US Army Reserve Officer's Training Corps, 1941

Contributed by Josh Hager

The News and Observer (Raleigh) of October 4, 1939 featured one photograph on the front page.  In it, readers saw Professor Zeno P. Metcalf, director of instruction at North Carolina State College’s School of Agriculture, acting as the chief marshal for a parade of faculty and notables commemorating the golden anniversary of the college.  Referred to as the “N.C.S. Semi-Centennial,” the newspaper lauded the growth of the institution in the fifty years since classes were first offered.  For clarification, the legislature of North Carolina established the college in 1887 but the college did not open its doors or offer classes until 1889.  One statistic that illustrates this expansion well is the growth in faculty—from 6 in 1889 to over 200 in 1939.  Former Governor Max O. Gardner, an alumnus of the college, praised the institution as having “literally sprung from the grass roots of democracy,” referring to the land grant history of the institution stemming from the Morrill Act (http://news.lib.ncsu.edu/scrc/2011/02/09/how-ncsu-became-ncsu/).  From its humble roots, N.C.S. had become one of the largest higher education institutions in the state, on pace to eventually rival the University of North Carolina in terms of academic scope and student body size.  Of course, most students today think more readily of NCSU’s Centennial in 1987 (commemorating the establishment of the institution, not the beginning of classes) due to the importance of Centennial Campus, built on land first allocated for that purpose in 1987 by Governor Jim Hunt.

However, most readers of the newspaper would, with all respect to North Carolina State College, have directed their attention to the events described in the major headline of the day.  In bold, italicized, and greatly enlarged font, the newspaper warned:  CHAMBERLAIN SAYS ALLIES WILL NOT NEGOTIATE PEACE ON MERE NAZI ASSURANCES.  In the wake of the failure of the Munich Conference to stem Nazi expansion into Czechoslovakia and Poland, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had changed his rhetoric on peace.  When German forces invaded Poland on September 1^st, 1939, Great Britain and France became incensed and declared war.  However, no major fighting occurred and the British evacuated.

Yet this “phony war” did not hide the fact that Americans reading the newspaper of October 4, just like their British counterparts, could tell that full-scale war was coming; the only question was when hostilities would escalate, with the answer coming in June 1940 with German advances into France.  The News & Observer’s major coverage of Chamberlain’s statements shows that the people of Raleigh and of the country at large possessed a strong degree of interest in the war even before the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.  The “N.C.S. Semi-Centennial” may have been the featured photograph of the day and was certainly worthy of commemoration, but the readers of 1939 could not have seen the accompanying war headline and pictured joyous days ahead.

For more information on NC State’s anniversary celebrations and on NC State’s role in World War II, please visit http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/specialcollections.

Source:  News and Observer, October 4, 1939.