the decision passed by a comfortable margin. 1932 financial crisis In October 1929, Brookwood college opened with just six full-time faculty but a full class of 37 students. The faculty included Muste (teaching foreign labor history, public speaking, and history), Josephine Colby (teaching English and parliamentary law), David J. Saposs (teaching American labor history), Helen G. Norton (teaching journalism), and Mark Starr (teaching economics). Instructors were added as needed for correspondence courses, and celebrated author Sinclair Lewis agreed to lecture during the term. The college also began expanding that year, offering its first extension programs. Tom Tippett was hired to direct the extension effort. Brookwood admitted 41 students in its fall 1930 term. But 24 of the 41 were from overseas, a significant change from previous years. When these students graduated in May 1931, Brookwood celebrated not only its tenth anniversary but also its 200th graduate. In March 1931, in the middle of its 1930-1931 term, Brookwood Labor College established a national clearinghouse for information on worker education. It was believed to be not only the first but also the only national clearinghouse of its kind. But there were signs that not all was well at Brookwood. Expansion was coming as the Great Depression deepened. In addition, racial tension now erupted at the school. In 1932, Mark Starr lead a Brookwood Players theater group on a trip through the South. The Jim Crow laws of the Southern states which the troupe visited required the troupe's lone black student to stay in racially segregated, substandard housing; eat in the blacks-only section of restaurants (or use a separate restaurant entirely); use racially segregated toilet facilities, and more. Starr did not challenge these laws. White students complained bitterly to Muste about Starr's lack of militancy, and Muste reprimanded Starr for "jim-crowing" the black student. A major funding crisis also hit the school in 1932. Muste was spending more and more time on CPLA business and far less effort on raising money for the college. He also diverted college resources to CPLA activities. In 1932, he instructed Tippett to write a play dramatizing the plight of Southern textile workers, who were facing strikebreakers, employer-sponsored violence, and attacks by the National Guard. This play, Mill Shadows, was taken at Brookwood expense on a nine-day, tour of the South. The money raised did not return to Brookwood, but rather was donated to striking textile workers in