Introduction

Chancellor John T. Caldwell, 1962

John Tyler Caldwell was born in Mississippi in 1911. He lived through both World Wars and almost a century of incredible change in the United States. Caldwell taught political science at several schools and served as president of both Alabama College and the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville before being named Chancellor of NC State in 1959.[1] Caldwell held the position of Chancellor through some of the most tumultuous times of the university's history.

Caldwell was an incredible advocate for change. He insisted on reinforcing the already strong faculty-student working relationship in order to create an even better university environment to turn well-informed citizens out into the world and worked to try to do away with racism in the university and its surrounding city.

Even though he understood and in many ways supported the mission of on-campus student activists who disagreed with US involvement in the Vietnam War in the late ‘60s and early 70’s, Caldwell believed that a university was a place meant to create a better civilization and that violent and/or chaotic protests and demonstrations could interfere with this purpose. For this reason, he sought to find a way to give students the free speech outlet they craved without losing any of the traditional educational facets of the university.