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37 ≤* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * The Higher Ideals of Democracy Race and Recruiting through 1964 As the dawn broke on the morning of 1 January 1955, the rain that had drenched New Orleans for several days finally ended. The Gulf sun dried the city that Saturday, and football fans from across the nation tuned their television sets to ABC a≈liates for the 12:45 kicko√ of the 1955 Sugar Bowl. Although the University of Mississippi Rebels entered the game as the favorite, Navy scored a touchdown on the opening kick, a feat it repeated when the second half of the game began. The midshipmen, whom coach Eddie Erdelatz called his ‘‘Team of Desire,’’ later scored a third time, never allowing the Rebels to gain a single point.∞ Mississippi’s coach, John Vaught, told reporters that ‘‘we met a fine team on a peak day. Navy was great in every way.’’ The 82 thousand fans present at the game were listening, as were approximately 65 million television viewers throughout the United States. Naval Academy recruiting, then in its infancy, blossomed dramatically as USNA leaders realized the benefits of television exposure to the American public. This chapter examines the growth and development of Naval Academy recruiting, as well as the attendance of minority midshipmen, through 1964, the year White House o≈cials began to pay attention to minority enrollment at USNA. Among those present at the Sugar Bowl was the Academy’s superintendent , Walter Boone. In 1954, Boone had begun work on a plan to raise awareness of USNA among the nation’s male youth.≤ His action was likely motivated by three causes. Although the Korean War had brought an increase in interest in admissions to Annapolis as a refuge from combat, the number of applicants waned after the war’s conclusion. Secondly, Boone did not feel that the Academy was attracting enough young men with the highest qualifications for entry. Lastly, attrition rates in the 1950s rose beyond those of former 38 * Race and Recruiting through 1964 years. Among the classes of 1950 through 1954, 23.4 percent of entering midshipmen did not graduate. By the fall of 1954, attrition had already claimed 31.4 percent of the class of 1955 and 29.2 percent of the class of 1956. Boone conceived of a program in which midshipmen would return to their hometowns during vacations and speak to local high school students and youth groups as a means of raising awareness of, interest in, and applications to the Naval Academy. The dramatic climb after the Sugar Bowl in the number of letters from young men interested in attending the Academy had a strong impact on the thinking of Boone and other administrators contemplating recruiting plans.≥ Prior to the Sugar Bowl appearance, the Academy relied primarily on individual prospective candidates contacting the Academy or their congressmen to demonstrate a desire to attend USNA. Interested high school students learned of the Naval Academy from news sources, books, family, friends, and alumni, or from the more than twenty dramatic Hollywood films that featured the Naval Academy and its midshipmen as part of their story lines.∂ Movie theater news films, including those of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer News, Movie Tone News, Paramount News, and Warner Brothers News, frequently covered Naval Academy events such as June Week and graduation ceremonies. Army-Navy games and USNA basketball games appeared on television as early as 1947, but it was the extensive Sugar Bowl viewership that truly led USNA administrators to take note of the power of television. The ensuing decades brought still more methods of recruitment and expanding goals, reflecting both the changes in American society and transformations at the Naval Academy. Superintendent Boone devised his plan, known as ‘‘Operation Information ’’ (‘‘Op Info’’), which became fully functional during the 1955–56 academic year under his successor, Rear Admiral William R. Smedberg III.∑ As Smedberg explained, the Academy chose approximately one hundred midshipmen , each of whom displayed academic achievement and public speaking skills, as volunteers for the program. During winter and summer leaves, these midshipmen returned to their hometowns and arranged speaking engagements ; when feasible, they also arranged radio or television interviews, appearances , and announcements. As the LOG noted in 1957, midshipmen who participated in Operation Information had the benefit of nearly an extra week of Christmas leave. ‘‘Never has this entered [a midshipman’s] mind,’’ LOG writers quipped, ‘‘as a reason for applying for Op Info.’’ Whether cynical or not, midshipmen understood that the Naval Academy was pro...

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