Introduction
World War I (1914-1918) was one of the largest wars in history, culminating the in nine million combat deaths and thirteen million civilian casualties. Genocide programs and and the Spanish flu epidemic in 1918 resulted in an additional 17-100 million additional deaths worldwide.
The stock market crash in 1929 led to wide spread financial ruin for investors and businesses. By 1933, the low point of the economic crisis, 15 million American workers were unemployed and nearly half of the nation's banks had failed. International trade fell by over 30% during the crisis, and the economic downturn spread across the globe, encompassing Africa, Asia, Australis, Europe, and the Americas.
See some of the collections listed below for more information about this historical period and its affect on Vanderbilt's history.
Primary Sources
- Alf Adams PapersThis collection contains newspaper clippings related to WWI and the 1915-1919 Vanderbilt football teams that Alfred Adams played for. Also included are telegrams and miscellaneous materials related to Alf Adams dating from 1917-1923.
Dates
circa 1915-1925; 1965-1967
Majority of material found within 1917 - 1923 - Roy Crowdy Avery CollectionThis .21 linear feet collection contains four reel-to-reel tapes, a transcript of the tapes, transcript from a diary kept by Roy Crowdy Avery during World War I, newspaper clippings, and a manuscript titled, “The Background on the Discovery of Histoplasmosis”.
Dates
1918 - 1971 - Stanley Fisk Bryan CollectionThis collection contains copies of the World War I letters of Captain Stanley Fisk Bryan to his mother, father, and brother. Most of the letters are typed, but several are handwritten. The collection also contains 3 newspaper clippings, 2 pamphlets, and song lyrics all relating to World War I.
Dates
1917 - 1919 - Oliver C. Carmichael PapersThe papers of O.C. Carmichael are comprised of correspondence, his writings including addresses, articles, book manuscripts and institutional reports, and other materials relating to Oliver Carmichael’s long and distinguished career in teaching, university administration, and educational consulting. There are also papers relating to his leadership and service roles at many organizations including Vanderbilt University,
Dates
1920s-1966 - Harmon F. Gunn CollectionThis collection contains one handwritten diary describing experiences while assigned to a hospital group from Camp Funston during World War I. There are some sketches in the notebook. The entries are dated June 4, 1918 travelling France to July 2, 1919 back to New York.
Dates
1918 - 1919 - James Hampton Kirkland PapersThe Papers of James Hampton Kirkland, the second chancellor of Vanderbilt University, are composed of eighteen cubic feet of material that represent Kirkland’s life, particularly his tenure at Vanderbilt (Professor of Latin, 1886 - 1893, Chancellor, 1893 - 1937, Chancellor Emeritus 1937 - 1939).
Dates
1859 - 1939 - James G. Stahlman CollectionThis collection contains the papers of James G. Stahlman, publisher of the Nashville Banner from 1930 to 1972 and member of the Board of Trust for Vanderbilt from 1927 until his death in 1976. As publisher, Stahlman and the conservative Banner carried on storied battles with the more liberal Tennessean until the Banner's sale to the Gannett Corporation in 1972.
- Alvin York CollectionThe Alvin York Collection is comprised one linear feet of artifacts. The materials are some of York's personal household items as well as a New Testament and scrapbook.
Dates
circa 1910s-circa 1954
- The CommodoreCall Number: LD5597 .C65Publication Date: 1909-presentThe Vanderbilt yearbook was first published in 1887 as the Comet, named to "compliment...our brilliant young astronomer Professor E.E. Barnard, who has done so much to spread abroad the name and fame of Vanderbilt." The name of the book was changed to Commodore in 1909.
The yearbook was published by the fraternities of Vanderbilt from 1887 through 1916. Since 1917, it has been published as a private enterprise by the students.
The first Comet included brief articles on the various departments of the University; the crest, membership role, and pictures of two editors from each fraternity; and sections on athletics, clubs, societies and organizations, as well as "miscellany," which included poetry and humorous prose.
Publication has been suspended only once, in 1944, when a smaller paperbound book, Towers, was published by the senior class. - The JadeCall Number: LH1.V25 J323Publication Date: 1919-1922The Jade, the earliest of Vanderbilt humor magazines, was published four or five times during the school year between 1919 and 1922 by the Calumet Club, the Vanderbilt chapter of Sigma Upsilon national literary fraternity. Contents of The Jade include largely jokes and anecdotes, cartoons, and short humorous fiction. The Editorial page features serious comment on campus affairs. The first editorial (November 27, 1919) notes the demise of the Vanderbilt Observer and states the aim of the Jade to “be all things to all men,” and "to give the campus a good new publication” (I, i, p. 16).
- The MasqueraderCall Number: LH1.V25 M376Publication Date: 1923-1967Published under the supervision of the Calumet Club of the Sigma Upsilon Literary Fraternity. The Masquerader, a humor magazine, was published by the Calumet Club between 1923 and 1967. Six issues appeared yearly between 1930 and 1943; three to eight issues were published in other years.
The contents of the Masquerader include jokes, campus anecdotes, light verse, photographs, cartoons, and, especially in later issues, humorous articles and fiction. A regular feature of volumes 9-13 is "Campus Quotables,” which includes witty sayings from professors John Crowe Ransom, Edwin Mims, Walter Clyde Curry, and Randall Stewart, among others. - Vanderbilt ObserverCall Number: LH1 .V24 V35Publication Date: 1882-1917The Vanderbil Observer, the earliest and longest-lived of Vanderbilt student magazines, was published from 1881 through May 1917. The Observer was a literary magazine, and its contents included essays, both formal and informal, on literature and related subjects, as well as university and society news items, anecdotes, editorial comments, and an occasional poem. The magazine's development was generally toward a more formal organization and style, longer articles, and a higher proportion of purely creative writing, i.e., short stories and poetry.
From 1881 to 1891, the Observer was published by "the literary societies of Vanderbilt University," from 1891 to 1909 by the Philosophic and Dialectic societies, from 1909 to 1916 by the Philosophic, Dialectic, and John Marshall Law societies, and in 1916-1917, "by the students."
You will need to log into the Sanborn Maps database before following these links to individual pages.
- Vanderbilt University, 1914 (Digital Sanborn Maps, 1914 Volume 4, page 0b)This key to the map illustrations shows how the volume designates streets and architectural features of buildings.
- Vanderbilt University, 1914 (Digital Sanborn Maps, 1914 Volume 4, page 496)
This Sanborn Fire Insurance Map shows the Vanderbilt campus in 1914. New building additions include Mechanical Engineering Hall, Furman Hall, and University Hall (Kirkland) which was rebuilt in 1910 after a devastating fire in 1905. - Vanderbilt University, 1931 (Digital Sanborn Maps, 1914-1957 Volume 4 1931, page 425)This 1931 map - reprinted in 1957 - shows post-World War I campus developments which include separate dormitories for men and women, a School of Engineering building, Buttrick Hall, and a student Health Center, among many others.
Secondary Sources
American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation by Call Number: BL2525 .M423 2007ISBN: 9780812976663Publication Date: 2007-03-20Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jon Meacham reveals how the Founding Fathers viewed faith--and how they ultimately created a nation in which belief in God is a matter of choice. At the heart of the American experiment lies the God of what Benjamin Franklin called "public religion," a God who invests all human beings with inalienable rights while protecting private religion from government interference.
Chapter 4: Imperfect though we are: wars against the Great Depression, totalitarianism, and Jim Crow
- Between Citizens and the State: the Politics of American Higher Education in the 20th Century byISBN: 128333979XPublication Date: 2011-01-01This book tracks the dramatic outcomes of the federal government's growing involvement in higher education between World War I and the 1970s, and the conservative backlash against that involvement from the 1980s onward. Using cutting-edge analysis, Christopher Loss recovers higher education's central importance to the larger social and political history of the United States in the twentieth century, and chronicles its transformation into a key mediating institution between citizens and the state.
Confronting Southern Poverty in the Great Depression by Call Number: HB3746 .C66 1996ISBN: 0312114974Publication Date: 1996-01-15The National Emergency Countil's 1938 Report on Economic Conditions of the South caused Franklin Roosevelt to view the south as "the Nation's #1 economic problem" and quickly became a standard part of modern Southern history. This important and out-of-print document is reprinted here, along with primary accounts of the Depression-era South, statistical data, and contemporary reactions to the Report.
The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935 by ISBN: 0807898880Publication Date: 2010-01-27James Anderson critically reinterprets the history of southern black education from Reconstruction to the Great Depression. By placing black schooling within a political, cultural, and economic context, he offers fresh insights into black commitment to education, the peculiar significance of Tuskegee Institute, and the conflicting goals of various philanthropic groups, among other matters.- The Geography of Europe; a Presentation of Some Aspects of European Geography for the Use of Members of the Students' Army Training Corps. byCall Number: 914 N27gPublication Date: New Haven: Yale University Press, 1918.
- The Students' Army Training CorpsH. W. CHASE. “STUDENTS’ ARMY TRAINING CORPS.” The High School journal 1.6 (1918): 22–23.
