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2. The Way Things Were, 1959–1961
- Louisiana State University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
41 the Way things Were, 1959–1961 Impossible! —Response from white Deep South school o∞cials when asked to consider desegregated testing, ETS telephone survey, spring 1961 In 1959, the College Entrance Examination Board opened its Southern Regional O∞ce in Sewanee, Tennessee, in response to a growing demand for its services in the South. College Board president Frank H. Bowles hired Ben F. Cameron as o∞ce director and charged him with establishing “channels of communication” between secondary schools and colleges in the South, with the ultimate goal of “improving the preparedness of high school students for college.” The College Board anticipated that its presence in the southern region would also improve college admissions practices there, which in turn would raise the academic standards of those institutions. It did not anticipate its almost immediate entanglement with the racial struggles of the region. In addition to his more obvious duties, Ben Cameron would be charged to assess the level of resistance to or support for desegregated testing and then to develop and execute a plan to achieve a roster of test centers accessible to all.1 Cameron, a former chemistry professor and director of admissions at the University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee, was a likely choice for the position. Born and raised in Mississippi, he understood the plight of education in that region and was dedicated to improving it. His teaching experience, work in the selective admissions process, and service as a 42 a campaign of quiet persuasion College Board trustee qualified him for his new job. During World War II, Cameron had served as a bomb disposal o∞cer, and this experience, too, may have prepared him for some of his more sensitive duties as director of the Southern Regional O∞ce.2 Also important to the task that lay ahead was Cameron’s liberal stance on civil rights. Cameron believed in and openly supported the movement, a position he attributed in part to having served in a segregated navy. Cameron’s liberalism in matters of race increasingly put him directly at odds with his father, Judge Ben F. Cameron. An Eisenhower appointee to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, the elder Cameron opposed his son’s views on race and remained an ardent segregationist all his life.3 The opening of the Southern Regional O∞ce and of regional o∞ces in the West and the Midwest in 1959 coincided with the establishment in 1957 of the American College Testing (ACT) program, the College Board’s first rival in its then fifty-seven-year history. The College Board, along with ETS, a former division of the College Board and now its partner , had long enjoyed a monopoly in the business of testing high school students for admission to college. The leadership of the ACT program operated out of the University of Iowa in relationship with the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions O∞cers (AACRAO), an organization made up of o∞cials from public colleges in the Midwest. ACT intended to make inroads in areas where the College Board had not yet established a loyal clientele, including many parts of the South. One of the ways the College Board planned to compete with ACT was to open regional o∞ces that would tailor services to the specific needs of the schools and colleges in their respective areas. Frank Bowles was confident that the College Board and ETS had a superior product in the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), in use primarily in the Northeast since 1926. He believed the College Board could compete with ACT by maintaining that superiority and by o≠ering school and college personnel additional support in their professional development and in their interactions with regional and national colleges. This strategy required the establishment of regional o∞ces.4 [54.225.21.228] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 06:42 GMT) The Way Things Were, 1959–1961 43 If choosing Cameron as director of the Southern Regional O∞ce made good sense to those familiar with the goals and challenges of the College Board, locating the o∞ce in Sewanee, Tennessee, initially did not. Atlanta seemed the obvious choice, but Cameron had two reasons for wanting to stay on the mountaintop where Sewanee was located. First, his wife, a pediatrician, had a thriving practice in the area, and, second, Cameron believed he could better service the entire South from a somewhat remote location. Had the o∞ce been in Atlanta...