Note 3-74 — Index

Footnote 3-74: The V-12 program was designed to prepare large numbers of educated men for the Navy's Reserve Midshipmen schools and to increase the war-depleted student bodies of many colleges. The Navy signed on eligible students as apprentice seamen and paid their academic expenses. Eventually the V-12 program produced some 80,000 officers for the wartime Navy. For an account of the experiences of a black recruit in the V-12 program, see Carl T. Rowan, "Those Navy Boys Changed My Life," Reader's Digest 72 (January 1958):55-58. Rowan, the celebrated columnist and onetime Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, was one of the first Negroes to complete the V-12 program. Another was Samuel Gravely.(Back)