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1940s
GATHERING OUR MEMORIES: REFLECTIONS OF MULTICULTURAL STUDENT LIFE AT CARLETON, 1874-2000
It is indisputable that the 1940s were filled with monumental events that had an influence at home and around the world. From Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor to Jackie Robinson's leap into major league baseball, the 1940s featured major episodes that profoundly contributed to a shift in America's status quo. Despite being in a rural, Midwestern community, Carleton College was no exception to this kind of change. The plight of Japanese Americans on the West Coast who were forced away from their homes and into internment camps following American entry into World War II is well known. Carleton was one of many colleges which volunteered to take in a number of Japanese American students who were thus unable to continue studies begun in West Coast universities--during the 1942-43 academic year Carleton agreed to enroll six such students. In 1945, Laurence McKinley Gould was inaugurated as president of the college and initiated decisions that would encourage and embrace some degree of change on campus. One decision that Gould made early in his presidency was that Carleton should actively seek to enroll an African American student.
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Alvis Lee Tinnin '49
Gould's integration efforts paid dividends when in 1948 Carleton matriculated its first African American student on the college level. After two years at a southern academic institution, following World War II military service, Alvis Tinnin enrolled and taught Carleton the value and importance of diversity. Tinnin earned a measure of immortality not only as (in his words) the first "fly in the buttermilk" at Carleton, but also by starring in the Players' world premier production of Bertholt Brecht's Caucasian Chalk Circle. Tinnin's membership in the class of 1949 demonstrated that doors were open for other prospective African American Students. He went on to complement his Carleton degree in English with a post-graduate degree from Yale University several years later.
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