History Timeline and Stories
History Timelines and Stories

History Timeline and Stories
A DEL MAR COLLEGE STUDENT PUBLICATION

Del Mar College’s Radio-TV program began in the Fall of 1980, offered by the speech communication department ran by Jack Ashford and Dr. Lorayne Doegey. A history building classroom was remodeled into a TV studio, with a news set, interview set and black and white and two-color cameras that rolled around the cement floor on heavy mountings. Floor to ceiling drapes on a three-wall track gave a backdrop along with muffling echoes. An adjacent office was turned into a control room with turn tables and control board along with tv monitors. “Rooms H117 and H117A will be converted this summer…
Two years before Brown v. Board of Education mandated desegregation, Del Mar College voluntarily desegregated in 1952. Del Mar was founded in 1935 and in the late 1940s a separate campus for African American students at Solomon Coles high school was established, called Coles Junior College. The school was in the segregated area of Corpus Christi, which was the Washington-Coles neighborhood on the north side of the city. At that time, the Supreme Court’s decision in Plessy v. Ferguson stated separate facilities among different races were constitutional if equal. “The idea that these schools or any of those other facilities…
Despite not being involved in team competitive play today, Del Mar College has a long and rich history of success from 1939 through the ‘70s when the Vikings conquered the Gulf Coast, South Texas, and Pioneer conferences. The “Cagers” were the first Del Mar competitive sports team with their inaugural basketball season in 1939 and joined the Gulf Coast Conference in 1941. They changed their name to the “Vikings” in 1945 to match their mascot, who was created the same year the Cagers began playing. After this name change, the Vikings began to have more winning seasons throughout the ‘50s,…
