History Timelines and Stories

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…

Originally published in the Corpus Christi Caller-Times Aug. 15, 2019. Reprinted with permission Some stories just get better the more you dig. This one — the story of literary giant Ernest Hemingway’s visit to Corpus Christi — is a doozy.  In March 1959, the Pulitzer- and Nobel-prize winning author arrived from San Valley, Idaho for a brief overnight before heading to Key West and eventually Cuba. He stayed at the Sand and Sea Hotel on Shoreline Boulevard. Hemingway, shockingly, agreed to be interviewed by a reporter (he hated interviews). The reporter was an 18-year-old Del Mar College student on the…

Del Mar has been through changes over the years, but what has stuck around always is student clubs. Since Del Mar’s opening in 1935, activities and clubs slowly grew from only a few small department groups into the busy student organizations around now. In the earlier years, most clubs were connected through academic programs. These departmental registered student organizations (RSOs) gave students a way to go over real world skills, compete in events and represent their club. As Del Mar expanded, the Student Life office created a formal system for registering and supporting clubs, helping them with events and fundraisers. …