American Students Organize: Founding the National Student Association after World War II. An Anthology and Source Book (review)
Eugene G. Schwartz's American Students Organize, an "anthology and source book" on the founding and first years of the National Student Association (NSA), 1947-1952, is far more than a compilation of documents, timelines, and rosters tracing the history of an organization. Through memoirs, journal articles, and reports written by the students, the book offers the historian insight into the women and men who founded the NSA. Long before the lunch-counter sit-ins and anti-Vietnam demonstrations of 1960's, these men and women fought for civil rights for African Americans and became involved in international affairs.
Too often histories of American higher education focus predominantly on the institutions and their administrators, presenting the students as only peripherally significant. Due to the dearth of materials regarding students, their absence from history is understandable. Schwartz's book begins filling this lacuna by enabling eighty-five students to tell their stories through memoirs, recovered student newspaper essays, and doctoral dissertation excerpts. Together with timelines, documents, rosters, and reproductions of student newspapers, Schwartz paints a fuller picture of the NSA than one would expect is possible. He accomplishes this, in part, through the multi-layered organization of his anthology.
Schwartz has divided the book into four parts, plus a prologue and epilogue, which are further divided into subsections. The prologue examines antecedent student organizations before and during World War II, that paved the way for the NSA. Parts 1-3 chronologically recount the founding of the NSA [End Page 1003] and its international and domestic activities. Part 4 illustrates the diversity within the NSA by looking at the impact of the returning veterans, the different Catholic and Protestant student organizations, and varied political movements on the campuses. Part 5 explores the different geographical regions of the NSA's intercollegiate network. Part 6, the Epilogue tells the story of the NSA in the years after 1952. Finally, the "Appendix" and "Reference," contain key NSA documents including rosters of member universities and colleges and lists of directories, archives, and libraries that would be of interest to the researcher. Throughout each part, subsections titled, "Album," "Mentor," and "Background," respectively offer reproductions of student newspaper articles, biographies of influential adults, and personal reflections on events and articles shaping the students' views and attitudes.
Among the materials found in "Background" is the Jesuit theologian John Courtney Murray's article, "Operation University," which urged Catholic students to become involved in international student organizations. Schwartz included this essay because both Catholic and non-Catholic students discussed the role Murray's essay played in galvanizing them to take action. Consequently, Catholic students' part in the NSA is integrated through the book and not treated separately. What becomes evident in American Students is the fact that the history of the NSA holds particular significance for the historian of American Catholicism because of the role it played in enabling Catholic student involvement in international politics. One point that the historian of American Catholicism should note is that, as expected, Schwartz's treatment of the Catholic student organizations is not comprehensive and on some minor points is not accurate. However, it offers a strong point from which to begin one's research.
American Students is not and does not claim to be a formal history of the NSA; however, for the historian of higher education, Schwartz has offered a valuable resource for gaining insight into the students of this generation and the events and adults influencing them. Most importantly, he has demonstrated the importance of incorporating student voices into the history of higher education and lighted the way for finding sources that contain their voices.
