James V. Compton ’50

Jim died Oct. 19, 2018, in California.

An Exeter graduate, at Princeton he majored in history, was active in Whig-Clio, and belonged to Prospect.

He earned a master’s degree at the University of Chicago. A critic of McCarthyism, he was dismissed by an Arizona school for refusing to sign a loyalty pledge and left the United States. He filled the next 15 years by studying in Heidelberg and Munich, where he held a Konrad Adenauer Fellowship, traveling throughout Europe, including the Soviet Union on motorcycle; writing his Ph.D. at the University of London; and chairing the University of Edinburgh’s Department of North American Studies.

In 1968 he returned to the United States and to San Francisco State University, where he taught until 1995, when he became professor emeritus of history. Still “quite haunted” by Edinburgh, he donated his 1,800-book library to its university and endowed an annual lecture there.

Students flocked to his history classes, delighted by his insolence and imitations of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, whom he knew as a child through his father’s involvement in the New Deal administration. He authored books dealing with Hitler and World War II, the Cold War, and anti-communism in post-World War II America.

Jim enjoyed playing his banjo while singing folk songs and political ballads. He had no immediate kin.