West Virginia University: Symbol of Unity in a Sectionalized State

Chapter 11: From the Banks of the Monongahela to the Banks of the Potomac, Part I

Chapter 11 1958-1961 Elvis Jacob Stahr February 1, 1959- january 25, 1961 From the Banks of the Monongahela to the Banks of the Potomac, Part I FROM THE LATE FIFTIES to the late sixties, West Virginia University was affected more deeply than usual by developments emanating from both the national and state scene. As had been the case a hundred years earlier when the thirty-fifth state was created, the Morrill Act passed, and the University first opened, decisions of the federal government seemed to offer the best possible approaches to relieve the economic distress of West Virginia, and, in turn, to provide for the well-being of its comprehensive, land-grant state university. If a century earlier it had seemed expedient to be for Lincoln and the Republican Party, it now seemed pragmatic to join forces with the new Democratic leadership taking over from Dwight Eisenhower. On January 2, 1960, John F. Kennedy, the first Roman Catholic to be seriously considered for the Presidency since Alfred E. Smith, announced his presidential candidacy. West Virginia soon discovered it was destined to figure in making the Kennedy bid a successful one. In the important May 10, 1960, West Virginia primary, the Massachusetts politician garnered 60.8 percent of the presidential preference vote, and, in securing 232 1958-1961 233 236,510 votes to Hubert Humphrey's 152,187, knocked his most serious contender in the primaries out of the race. The press stressed the significance of the urban, Catholic candidate's decisive triumph in a rural, Protestant state, and concluded that his nomination and election were imminent. On July 15, 1960, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson became the Democratic Party 's presidential and vice-presidential candidates, and on November 8, 1960, they won the national election. At the same time, W. W. Barron, a Democrat, captured the state prize in the West Virginia gubernatorial contest, replacing Cecil Underwood, a Republican, as the chief executive. Indebted to West Virginia for endorsing his candidacy and appalled by the poverty he encountered in the state, President-elect Kennedy appointed on December 5, 1960, a special23-member task force to consider federal programs for economically depressed areas of the country. The task force report, submitted on January 1, 1961, recommended an area redevelopment program and urged that Appalachia receive special priority. In 1961, Congress responded with passage of the Area Redevelopment Act, authorizing $394 million over a four-year period, 1962-1965, for loans and grants to depressed areas, an act not without interest to educational institutions. On April 9, 1963, President Kennedy established a Presidential Appalachian Region Commission which described Appalachia as "a region apart- geographically and statistically," noting that its most serious problems were low income, high unemployment, lack of urbanization, low educational achievement, and a comparatively low standard of living. West Virginia had long urged that such action be taken; the state, its people, and its university expectantly awaited results. Thus on November 22, 1963, the thirty-fifth state felt special grief about the death of Kennedy, the thirty-fifth President of the United States. But the Mountain State fortunately was not forgotten by his successor. On January 8, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson in his State of the Union message called for an "unconditional" declaration of "war on poverty in America." By August, 1964, Congress had appropriated almost a billion dollars to alleviate poverty and had authorized ten separate programs under the supervision of the Office of Economic Opportunity. A separate proposal was submitted to Congress on April 28, 1964, calling for a comprehensive program to relieve poverty and to develop economic resources in the depressed ten-state Appalachian Mountain region. Although failing passage when first introduced, the bill became law on March 9, 1965. These actions by Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, and the Congress came none too soon for West Virginia, the only state that lay entirely within the Appalachian region. As a result of the census report of 1960, West Virginia awoke to the fact that it had suffered a population loss, caused not by a declining birthrate but from out-of-state migration by its own people trying to 234 FROM THE MONONGAHELA TO THE POTOMAC: PART I escape the state's severe economic depression. In 1950, West Virginia had a population of 2,006,000; in 1960, only 1,860,000. By 1964 it was estimated that West Virginia's population would...