Trips

Leonard Billing: I studied economics with Gerry Barnes, who may not have been the best teacher, but he did encourage me to go on a trip to study the cooperatives that existed in the southern towns around BMC, because I was interested in the Rochdale "twin pines" co-ops. That was a broadening experience.

Robert Sunley: A trip made by several students (including me) and faculty to Harlan, Kentucky had a high impact on me. Armed men, hired by the mine owners, patrolled the streets and not too long before there had been real violence.... There were other similar trips to different places and for different purposes, but all had the common feature of being small groups with faculty and students, informal and into real life, not conducted tours.

Leslie Paul Symington: Early in 1942 a group of BMC students attended a conference sponsored by the International Student Service on students's stake in the war efforts and post-war planning. Bob Wunsch drove four of us to the University of North Carolina where about a hundred students from colleges throughout the South had gathered to hear Frank Graham, Stuart Cramer, James Carey (CIO), M.G. Mann, Arthur Sweetset, Jonathan Daniels, and Eleanor Roosevelt, with whom I had the opportunity to speak when we broke up into small discussion groups.

Norman Weston: A group of us went to Washington, checked into a hotel, called Senator LaFollette, made an appointment and went to see him. I recall sitting on the floor in his office and discussing matters.... I vaguely recall calling on Senator Norris in connection with a trip to the Norris Dam.

Leslie Paul Symington: Trips were highlights of my "Southern experience," sociological trips in particular. Nothing one had studied in earlier years or read of in a classroom situation could compare with the sights, sounds, smells and atmosphere of a Georgia landscape, seeing the living conditions of black sharecroppers and learning firsthand what the government was doing about them.