The week of November 16th, I averaged about 2 and a half hours a day scouring the newspapers in the Special Collections office. My eyes did not like me that week. I don’t know if you all know this, but my vision is horrible. Behind the wide sides of my copper-colored flowered frames are extremely thick lenses. Needless to say, the concentrated amount of tiny text printed on each page of the paper did not help my vision, but it was all in pursuit of my ethnographic project. I am happy to report that I found a lot of interesting things in the newspapers. That week I focused on ’39-’40, and ’45. I had meant to go all the way to ’47, but with the amount of newspapers I couldn’t. So many papers, not enough time. I first scanned through the papers from ’39-’40 the week before. To my dismay, I didn’t find the amount of World War II articles I had hoped to find. The campus was normal and carefree. I decided to look through them again. As I was flipping through the pages of obligatory campus announcements, society news, and sports announcements, a single word caught my eye, “Hitler”. My first WWII article! I hadn’t been so excited to see the word Hitler in my life (crazy, I know). The article was a weekly editorial entitled “Parade of Opinion”. It was on the left side of the second page, out of side from all the other snazzy headlines and advertisements. “So, that’s where they’ve been hiding,” I thought to myself. I look at the previous editions, and find a couple more war-related articles. Toward the end of 1939 and into 1940, there was an increase in war-related articles. Interest spiked when war was declared in Europe, and the U.S. was intent on keeping positive relations with Mexico. These articles only made a small dent in the paper though. Campus, society, and sports news took up the majority of the space, along with lots of ads.
The end of the war signaled repair for East Texas State Teachers College. There was a large influx of students for the ’45-’46 school year, that included 100 veterans. The football team was to play again for the ’46 season. People were no longer encouraged to “buy more war bonds”, but instead to “keep those war bonds.” Peace articles were printed to encourage the conservation of peace. Everything seemed so hopeful.
Thus concludes my collection of fieldnotes on The East Texan. I’ve looked at papers from 1935-1945. Now comes the fun part: trying to make sense of it all.
