{"id":2321,"date":"2021-11-23T12:34:19","date_gmt":"2021-11-23T16:34:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/125\/?p=2321"},"modified":"2022-01-21T14:12:31","modified_gmt":"2022-01-21T18:12:31","slug":"news-from-your-home-front","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/125\/news-from-your-home-front\/","title":{"rendered":"‘News from your home front’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"AFROTC
Air Force ROTC cadets at Joint Base Andrews<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Students who attended Princess Anne College during World War II boosted the morale of their peers in the armed forces with an orchestrated letter-writing campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It kept service members abreast of campus comings and goings \u2013 some mundane, others special. All reinforce the sense of patriotism the \u201cgreatest generation\u201d famously embraced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The correspondence also provides a snapshot of life on a historically Black campus well before it produced yearbooks starting in the late 1950s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Letters addressed to \u201cSon of P.A.C.\u201d always set an understandably upbeat tone:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cNovember has been the most joyful 30 days of 1944 for the P.A.C. family due to your many responses to the last News Letter.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA Happy New Year to you. We hope to be able to express this wish in person in the year of 1946.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cWith the conclusion of the month of March comes the privilege of writing another bit of news from your home front.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Letters also tended to include a spiritual message at the end:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMay He who is here, there and everywhere be with you and keep you safely.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur hopes, our prayers are all with you and for you. So for another month, God\u2019s care and protection be over you and keep you safe.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cKeep the spirit of faith. From all reports it will not be long now and we are praying for your safe guidance through this storm.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In between were a mix of harmless gossip and teasing, reports of engagements and babies born and descriptions of familiar academic, sporting and social activities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

P.A.C. students and faculty gathered food and gifts to give to the less fortunate at Christmastime, while \u201cthe families in town \u2026 were awakened by the resounding of the beautiful melodious voices telling the Christmas story in song by the College Choir.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Letter writers called the college\u2019s \u201cSandlot football eleven\u201d the Trojanettes, which \u201centertained on the gridiron vs. the local community eleven and were victorious to the score of 12-6.\u201d<\/em> \u201cFlash\u201d Stansbury, \u201cShell\u201d Cole and \u201cJive\u201d Johnson were among the offensive stars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Students apparently referred to the basketball team as the \u201cBone Crushers,\u201d which played Greenwood High in Princess Anne and Worcester High, both all-black public schools.\u00a0 The \u201cCrushers\u201d also had games with St. Francis de Sales Catholic School from Salisbury, a team of \u201cyoung white athletes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe sportsmanship of both teams was fine. After the game, both teams were served by the (home economics) department by members of the Student Life Committee and three \u2018H.E.\u2019 girls. Before going home, our guests went to the recreation center for a jolly good time.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Guest speakers who visited campus included Jefferson Davis Blackwell, president of Maryland State Teachers College in Salisbury, \u201cnationally famous\u201d educator Charlotte Hawkins Brown of the Palmer Institute and \u201cAll American Football star\u201d Jerome \u201cBrud\u201d Holland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Holland, who grew up in Auburn, N.Y. where abolitionist Harriett Tubman resettled after escaping slavery in Dorchester County, was the first black to play football at Cornell University in the 1930s. He was denied an opportunity to play professional football because of his race.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless, Holland went on to become president of Delaware State (College) and later Hampton Institute — and served as ambassador to Sweden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

“… we are praying for your safe guidance through this storm.”<\/em><\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n

Charles H. Chipman, the widely respected principal of Salisbury\u2019s Black high school, was a guest speaker of the Student Forum and delivered a talk in the spring of 1945 about \u201cPost War Opportunities for the Negro.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Professor Waldo Kiah\u2019s son, Tommy, won a 1945 \u201cbaby contest\u201d staged by the Faculty Wives\u2019 Club, which held the event as a fund-raiser that netted $169.20.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cAll around us \u2026 can be heard the call of farmers to teams at work in the fields, the hum of tractors preparing the soil for the sowing of seed for next winter\u2019s pantry shelves. Spring is here.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Correspondents urged the sons of P.A.C. to reciprocate: \u201cYour letters do us a world of good and your pictures too. We venture to say that we are more anxious for news from you than you are for news from us.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn your various travels, let others know that the torch of enlightenment is held high at P.A.C. and influence them this way, thus build(ing) your Alma Mater larger and stronger.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Letters courtesy of the family of John and Eunice Nichols<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Students who attended Princess Anne College during World War II boosted the morale of their peers in the armed forces with an orchestrated letter-writing campaign. It kept service members abreast of campus comings and goings \u2013 some mundane, others special. All reinforce the sense of patriotism the \u201cgreatest generation\u201d famously embraced. The correspondence also provides…Read more ‘News from your home front’<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1787,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-2321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archive"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/125\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/125\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/125\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/125\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/125\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/125\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2321\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/125\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/125\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/125\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/125\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2321"},{"taxonomy":"post_folder","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/125\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_folder?post=2321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}