International records / OpenAlex research

Is the World Our Campus? International Students and U.S. Global Power in the LongTwentieth Century*

It was 1951 and Rozella Switzer, postmistress of McPherson, Kansas, a prosperous, conservative, nearly all white oil town of 9,000 people on the eastern edge of the wheat belt, had not seen the Nigerians coming. That fall, seven African students, all male, in their early and mid twenties, had arrived in the area to attend McPherson College and Central College. The accomplished young men, who counted among themselves a one-time math teacher, a surveyor, an accountant, a pharmacist, and a railway telegrapher, had come with high professional aspirations to acquire training in agriculture, enginee…