Class of 1939: Depression Wanes, War Nears; They Riot, Politick

On a warm fall night in September, 1935, President Conant welcomed the 1010 members of the Class of 1939 with a strong speech, asserting that the individual integrity and freedom of thought encouraged by a liberal education would help defeat the "dogmatic prophecies" of the European dictatorships. At the University Theater, Shirley Temple was starring in her latest movie, "Curley Top."

Nearly four years later, President Conant's tone had changed but not his message. In the Baccalaureate sermon he urged '39 to "resist the tumult of the moment, the impact of the immediate present, the corrosive atmosphere of potential strife," and develop their own talents and personalities. At the UT Mickey Rooney was featured in the title role of "Huckleberry Finn."

Confronted by Shirley Temple and Hitler, Mickey Rooney and Mussolini, '39 emerged from four years at Harvard not only fully capable of playing one of Harvard's favorite sports, the riot, but also intensely responsive to events outside Cambridge and the ambit of college life.

The class filled the UT but it also overflowed to hear speeches on national and international politics, demonstrated for aid to refugees, and energetically debated the New Deal and neutralism. It entered amidst the depression's blight and graduated into a world darkened by impending war.

On entrance the Class of 1939 was the brightest in history; 588 ranked in the top quarter of their secondary school classes, and 150 were in the top tenth.

Shortly after it arrived in Cambridge, a bitter dispute developed over the Teachers' Oath Act, a Massachusetts Law which required instructors to swear that they would support the national and state constitutions. Kirtley F. Mather, professor of Geology, called the act "unwarranted and dangerous to democracy." He said he represented many Faculty members in refusing to take the oath because it violated his constitutional rights.

Mather's objection was in reality, based purely on principle for he had taken such oaths many times previously. All through his campaign he maintained that he had "no unwillingness to swear under conditions which make an oath appropriate." While a group of seniors circulated a petition supporting him, Mather reconsidered, then retracted his stand in the interest of keeping the University out of a threatened law-suit.

Across the river, new head coach Dick Harlow encountered problems in his effort to rebuild the Harvard football machine. His team ended the season without a major victory and lost to Yale, 14-7. The Yardling eleven also succumbed to the Elis, 21-19, but their unexpectedly strong showing was viewed in the press box as a harbinger of better days.

In December, Lucius N. Littauer '78 gave Harvard $2 million to build a Graduate School of Public Administration. The University responded quickly.

Within the year, a special committee on university education for public service had reported in favor of the venture and provided detailed plans for its enactment. Princeton President Harold W. Dodds led the committee. Harvard greeted his proposals with enthusiasm, and before '39 graduated the school was in operation.

As the Class of 1939's freshman year drew to a close two important academic events occurred: History of Science became the University's 26th field of concentration, and Harvard's foremost Shakespearean scholar, George Lyman Kittredge '82, resigned from the Faculty after several decades as Gurney Professor of English Literature.

First Riot

Aware of one of the college's oldest traditions, '39 finished its first spring in Cambridge with a riot. Bonfires in the Yard brought over 1000 men from the freshman dormitories and the Houses. Bursar's cards were seized in droves. But a few plucky students managed to evade the proctors. As the CRIMSON reported. "One man who failed to have his card was searched without success. When the Yard policeman thereupon claimed that he would remember his face, the freshman made an atrocious face and left the scene with rapidity."

The tercentenary celebration made the most exciting time at Harvard since World War I. About 15,000 people took part in the festivities and 51 colleges sent official representatives. Among the guest was Peter Harvard, a young Englishman who was the only living descendant of the University's founder. President Conant gave a widely publicized speech in which he decried the "educational chaos" and "intellectual anarchy" he saw around him.

Harvard lost to Yale again, although it did score against Princeton for the first time since 1920. But undergraduates turned their energies into a new campaign--for the official formation of the Ivy League. Along with the six other Ivy student newspapers, the CRIMSON ran a front page editorial arguing that no other measure except formation of the League could preserve amateurism in college football. The seven college athletic directors agreed to discuss the problem, but there was little immediate progress except for the addition of a Penn. Harvard game to the existing inter Ivy contests.

In late spring, 1500 students attended a hoax lecture on birth control. But the term wasn't over yet. There was still time for another riot.

And it was a good one. Early one evening a seemingly innocuous water fight along Plympton Street drew together a few stragglers; by 11:30 p.m. a good-sized crowd had gathered. Another twenty minutes gave the disturbance time to swell to major proportions. By midnight 2,500 students filled the Square. After the crowd had crippled three trolley cars by disconnecting their power lines, the police moved in with tear gas, a tactic not to be repeated for over twenty years. But the patrolmen's efforts failed. About 1500 students fought their way up to Radcliffe, where they milled about yelling and hooting for most of the night.

For the Class of 1939 junior year was against serving rum punch to freshman, and actress Joan Bennet, on a visit to Boston, recommended movie careers to a charmed circle of Harvard men.

The athletic year was more eventful. Members of the Class of 1939 had beefed up the varsity, and The Crimson rolled over Princeton, 34-6. The team then beat Yale, 13-6, in rain and snow, when Frank Foley scored a tie-breaking touchdown.

Hurricane

When the class returned as seniors in the fall of 1938, they were greeted by the damage from one of New England's most violent hurricanes. Harvard suffered $100,000 of damage but tree-lovers (whose sons and daughters today carry on the tradition) were most alarmed by the demise of nine stately elms that were flattened along Memorial Drive outside Eliot House.

Politics caused an increasing storm as well. A Czech professor speaking to an SRO crowd in Sanders denounced the Munich Pact as offering no real peace. Five days later, an exuberant group of Yardlings heckled an American Legion parade by goosestepping alongside it, shouting "hells."

On the gridiron, the Varsity, after lying dormant for its first four games, came back to squash Princeton, 26-7, sneak by Yale, 7-0, and carry off Big Three honors for the second straight year.

In March of 1939 a dining hall strike was averted when the University agreed to grant a preferential shop to employees. The Administration's willingness to allow unionization and to increase wages saved undergraduates from being forced to eat the Square's cuisine.

The big news of the spring term was the sustained attack on the tutoring schools. The CRIMSON initiated the campaign charging that the tutoring schools were an organized vice racket which violated ethics of the University. Its front page editorial began "Lined up on Massachusetts Avenue, grinning down over Harvard Yard, there is a row of intellectual brothels." The paper denounced the "cram parlors" and called for the Administration to "force the lids off the sewer holes, to shine the light of day on the putrefaction within." Within three years all the tutoring schools were closed.

Class Marshals for '39 were Richard H. Sullivan, Robert L. Green, and Francis A. Harding. They led their classmates into the Yard in June where all collected their degrees, joined the fellowship of educated men, and headed out into the world.

Walter Jackson Bate, Abbott Lawrence Lowell Professor of the Humanities, won the Bowdoin Prize in 1939 for an essay on Keats's conception of the poetical character which later grew into a full biography of Keats that won the Pulitzer Prize this year. Robert Lowell, who has won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, is also a member of the class.

Members of the class gained renown both in college and in later life. Among these are Richard H. Sullivan, First Class Marshal, who now is president of Reed College; James Tobin, first marshal of Phi Beta Kappa, who is a professor of economics at Yale and a former member of the President's Council of Economic Advisors; and Cleveland Amory, president of the CRIMSON and secretary of his class, who wrote The Proper Bostonians and is a commentator on American social life