Rhodes Scholars, Oxford, and the Creation of an American Elite. Thomas J. Schaeper

that in Oxford he had “a hell of a good time.”⁶ By the time he returned to Arkansas he had become a pipe-smoking, tweedy intellectual.

      Dean Rusk's introduction to Britain was equally dramatic. He was born in Cherokee County, Georgia, in 1909. His father had been a Presbyterian preacher until a voice ailment had forced him to give that up. The elder Rusk then became a farmer, a schoolteacher, and finally a mail carrier. Dean was the fourth of five children. The doctor who delivered him was a veterinarian, and as a small boy Dean wore underwear made out of flour sacks. Once his sixth-grade teacher sent him home because he had come to school barefoot. Defiantly his mother sent him back to school the following – still without shoes. His grit and native intelligence made him a star high school student. He worked his way through Davidson College and won election to Phi Beta Kappa. All through college he planned to apply for a Rhodes Scholarship, for he knew that it might be the only way for a boy from a poor family to do graduate work. In order to meet the athletic part of the criteria, he taught himself basketball and made the Davidson team.⁷

      Before he reached New York City in 1931 to board a ship for Britain, the farthest he had ever been from Georgia was North Carolina. As the Cunard liner pulled out of the harbor a deck steward offered him a ham sandwich. Rusk took one bite, tasted the English mustard, and threw it over the side. “This rube from Georgia had a great deal to learn,” he wrote many years later in his memoirs.⁸ During the next several days at sea an Englishwoman made him the center of attention. Learning that he was from Georgia, she asked, “Oh, isn't that the place where you butcher your Negroes?” Trying to maintain his poise and offer witty repartee, he answered, “Oh, yes. And we consider them rare delicacies.”⁹

      Upon arrival in London he was taken aback by some of the risqué signs and advertisements. One large billboard displayed a stork with its beak pointed skyward. The message below it declared: “GUINNESS'S STOUT KEEPS YOUR PECKER UP!” (Actually, what Rusk interpreted as a smutty double entendre was an innocent British colloquialism, meaning “keep your chin up.”) He noticed on urinal stalls, in Greek letters, the warning, “Players with short bats should stand close to the wicket.” Even before he reached Oxford he could see that Britain “was a far cry from Georgia Presbyterianism.”¹⁰

      Despite these inauspicious beginnings, Rusk soon adapted to life at St. John's College. He grew a bushy red beard during a trip to the Lake District and wrote home that Oxford life was the most pleasant he had ever experienced.