Women’s Education and Wartime Teacher Training at Oswego State in Marjorie O. Walker’s Scrapbook, 1941 to 1942

Teachers College

Pamphlets

Walker, Marjorie O. scrapbook, 1941 to 1942, documents women’s teacher training, coeducational student life, campus music culture, and wartime institutional change at Oswego State Normal School as it became Oswego State Teachers College. Kept by Marjorie O. Walker of Woodridge, New York, the scrapbook records the teacher-training system through report cards, student directories, handbooks, campus newspapers, correspondence, and event programs, revealing how Oswego organized student life while responding to wartime mobilization, selective service, air-raid fears, and the 1942 shift to four-year degree-granting status.

Walker, Marjorie O. Scrapbook album. Oswego, New York, 1941 to 1942. Scrapbook with 155 pieces of ephemera, including newspaper clippings, full issues of the campus paper, ticket stubs, programs, invitations, typed notices, correspondence, and student publications. Original paper wraps with large color fall foliage image on front cover, 80 pages, 15 x 11 inches. Contents include material from both Oswego State Normal School and Oswego State Teachers College, a 1939–1940 report card listing Child Development, History of Civilization, Composition and Speech, Intro to Science, Art 102, Essentials of Music, and Recreational Activities; a 1941 Summer Session pamphlet; Student Handbook; Personnel Directory; Student Directory for 1941–1942; Halloween Party invitation; and newspaper coverage of Epsilon Pi Tau, Sigma Pi Rho, campus music groups, and the Bel Canto singing group, in which Walker participated. Walker annotates several clippings with notes identifying classmates and friends, including “this is one of my classmates” and “they’re all swell singers.”

The strongest historical material concerns Oswego’s wartime campus life before and after American entry into World War II, including February 1941 clippings urging cooperation against Nazi victory and calling male students to register for selective service, later reports anticipating air raids and city bombings, an Armistice Day program presented with the American Legion and U.S. Coast Artillery, and coverage of wartime delays to rebuilding after the January 1941 campus fire. Newspaper headlines also record the institutional milestone “Oswego Normal becomes State Teachers College,” marking the school’s elevation in 1942 to a four-year degree-granting teachers college. Pages thin, with a few very small closed edge tears, very good. A substantial documentary record of women’s education, teacher preparation, student music culture, home-front anxiety, and institutional adaptation at Oswego during the first year of American involvement in World War II.

Item #17164

Price: $485.00