ORGANIZING A COMMUNITY AND RESPONDING TO ITS NEEDS: THE FIRST FIFTY YEARS OF THE AMERICAN FORENSIC ASSOCIATION.

• Author: Klumpp, James F.

Organizations that celebrate their fiftieth anniversary must have a history of both adaptation and consistency. This is especially true of organizations such as the American Forensic Association that respond to the needs of an active professional community. An organization that cannot adapt will preordain its demise as new problems and needs generate new organizations. However, an organization that does not provide a pole of stability in the midst of changes will also find its demise in the waning commitment to its founding character. This essay narrates how the AFA evolved in ways that involved both adaptation and consistency, sometimes wandering in confusion and occasionally reacting too rigidly.

In telling the story, this essay describes the issues that have driven the AFA's agenda in the first fifty years. I seek to capture not only the content of these issues, but more importantly the style through which the organization's members have addressed them. That style has evolved over the years as the organization's context has changed and as the successes and failures of each decade have become the starting points for the next. When the story is finished, there will be moments of regret, but on the whole, AFA's survival and health in its fiftieth year are signs of its success in weathering storms.

THE FOUNDING: 1948-1949

In 1949, Hugo Hellman, a founder and first President of the American Forensic Association, wrote: "Throughout the last fifteen years of my professional association with extracurricular [forensic] activities ... I have been hearing perennially that there ought to be a separate organization associated with these activities. It was like the New England weather in that Mark Twain said everyone talked about it but no one did anything" (p. 38). Heilman's comment implied that an organization was inevitably going to materialize soon. However, his characterization oversimplifies. As we might suspect, the AFA was founded in debate. The several motivations that came together in its founding and the careful weaving of those motivations into the energy that would make the organization successful each contributed to its character.

The path that led to the AFA is clearly marked out. A group of forensic directors met at the Iowa Collegiate Conference on World Problems in the fall of 1948. A resolution was passed unanimously calling fot the establishment of the "Association of Directors of Speech Activities" and establishing a committee to implement the resolution (Hellman, 1949, p. 38; Blyton, 1970, p. 13). Much discussion followed about the wisdom and shape of such an organization. Through the initiative of the organizing committee, a number of committees were elected by mail ballot to begin work on tasks such as writing a constitution and encouraging membership. James H. McBurney, President of the Speech Association of America (SAA; now the National Communication Association), appointed SAA Vice President E. R. Nichols, a prominent forensic director and editor-publisher of Speech Activities, as liaison to the new organization, thus encouraging its development and affiliation with SAA. Nichols secured facilities and time at the 1949 SA A National Convention in Chicago to complete the work. Three meetings at the 1949 Convention at the Hotel Stevens (now the Chicago Hilton and Towers) brought the plan to fruition. The first meeting debated the specifics of a constitution for the organization, including an important amendment to name the organization the "American Forensic Association." The second meeting was a working meeting of committees. At a third meeting the constitution was formally adopted, the committees reported, and the work of the organization began.

The campaign that led to the founding and the debate at the Chicago convention help us understand the forces that brought the organization to life. Much of the debate preceded the convention in conversations that took place among forensic directors at tournaments throughout 1949, and these of course cannot be reconstructed. However, debate was conducted publicly in periodicals of the time, including Nichols's Speech Activities and Tau Kappa Alpha's The Speaker. The arguments and reassurnces in the debate indicate the fault lines negotiated in bringing together a strong national organization.

The fault lines appeared against the background of post-World War II forensics. The period following the war saw the nation's colleges and universities bulge with returning servicemen. Although debate and speaking events were as old as classical education, the tournament structure that then dominated was just 25 years old (Cowperthwaite & Baird, 1954, p. 274), and the difficulties arising from the economic depression of the 1930s and the war years of the early 1940s made forensic activity even less mature than its years.

Forensic activity was organized locally in the 1940s, but efforts were under way to expand its organizational pattern. The Southern and Western regions sponsored annual tournaments. In 1947, the national West Point tournament was organized, with the country divided into districts, each of which sent teams to the tournament at the United States Military Academy in the spring. The dominant national activities were the tournaments of the forensic honorary organizations: Delta Sigma Rho, Tau Kappa Alpha, Pi Kappa Delta, and Phi Rho Pi. Forensic directors in this era recognized the changes with a range of foreboding and optimism. Some favored strong relationships with colleges and universities close to their own campus. Others saw the national competition as the coming wave. All, however, recognized that the great growth in numbers and geography posed challenges that required cooperation, and all recognized that many issues were not geographically constrained. All participated in a common activity: forensics.

Of course, the growth of forensics was not isolated from the growth of the academy in general and the speech discipline in particular. Perhaps the most prominent fault line defining the debate over the new organization turned on the relationship between support for the forensic activity and the professional development of potential members. Many argued for the new organization to provide support and sponsorship for speech activities in their postwar growth. Lt. Colonel Chester L. Johnson of West Point wrote: "We hope this organization will relieve the undue burdens of administration and decision which now must fall solely upon the shoulders of our District Committees" ("Proposed," 1949, p. 39). Similarly, Eugene C. Chenoweth of Indina University called for the organization to provide "a more satisfactory method of judging debate, discussion, extempore speaking, and oratory" ("Proposed," 1949, p. 39). These purposes dictated possible structures for the organization. There was a prominent suggestion that the p roper analogy for the organization was the NCAA and that colleges, rather than individuals, should be members (Hellman, 1949, p. 38).

There was a different voice, however, not in opposition to support for activities but nuanced with a different tone. That voice stressed the advantages of an organization for the professional life of the forensic director. A. Craig Baird called for the organization to avoid "any implication that [Directors of Forensics] are 'coaches'" and to "work closely within the framework of the Speech Association of America" ("Proposed," 1949, p. 39). E. R. Nichols called for an organization "to do for debate and discussion and Speech Activities and Contests the things that the SAA has not had the time or the inclination to do" ("New," 1949, p. 182). McBurney's support indicated SAA's desire to align the organization more with a professional structure than an NCAA-type activities structure.

There was a third important tension revealed in the debate. Although some felt that the new organization would fill a vacuum, others felt that it was usurping power. There were many existing forensic organizations, each of which provided services to forensic directors: the regional speech organizations, the West Point Tournament, and the honoraries. Proponents of the new organization argued that this fragmented mosaic had not, and could not, achieve the unity that the new association could foster. E. R. Nichols editorialized in support of the new organization: "The honor societies have none of them felt responsible or in authority to do the things that an association of directors may do. Nor have the honor societies seen fit to cooperate very largely, and probably never could cooperate in a way individual teachers in a new organization may do" ("New," 1949, p. 182). The planners showed a sensitivity to the issue that we today call "turf battles" by validating the various alternative organizations as venues f or discussion. Hellman noted in the spring of 1949: "Present plans call for the presentation of this proposal at meetings of the various debating societies this spring" (p. 38). Dates of regional speech association conventions were listed to make certain that those interested knew about those venues.

As the debate evolved, support grew for a national professional organization that would provide services to its members who directed speech activities. The original membership application summarized the motivations that emerged for the organization: "(1) Solve more efficiently our mutual problems, and thereby, (2) Improve our professional standards, and practices, and thereby, (3) Develop among educational administrators a more general and more adequate recognition of the work of the debate coach, and at the same time (4) Achieve everywhere a wider and deeper appreciation of the contribution of debate and forensic activities to the school, community and nation" (Hellman, 1950, p. 137).

The debate was concluded at the meetings in Chicago. The professional name was adopted over the name featuring activities. Individual and...