Who knew? President Nixon studied law at Duke

Only one U.S. president earned a graduate degree from an institution of higher learning in North Carolina. He was Richard Milhous Nixon, who in 1937, was awarded a law degree from Duke University in Durham. 

Richard Nixon became America’s 37th president. 

He is perhaps Duke’s most famous alumnus who didn’t play on the Blue Devils’ basketball team. 

At least that’s the opinion of Sean Braswell, senior writer at the Ozy media company…and an attorney. 

Richard Nixon was born in 1913 as the second son of hardworking Quakers Frank and Hannah Nixon. They lived in Yorba Linda, Calif., and operated a lemon grove. 

Soon thereafter, the family moved to Whittier, Calif., where Frank Nixon opened a grocery store and gas station. 

As a young man, Richard learned to play five instruments – piano, saxophone, clarinet, accordion and violin. In high school, he was a champion debater, graduating third in his high school class in 1930. 

Richard was offered a scholarship from Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. He declined, however, because he was needed to help run the family business. His elder brother, Harold, was dying from tuberculosis. 

Hence, Richard Nixon stayed home and attended Whittier College, graduating in 1934, majoring in history. He was attracted to Duke Law School, which was seeking “to build its reputation as an Ivy League-caliber school in North Carolina,” Braswell wrote.

At Duke, Richard Nixon’s work ethic stood out. Braswell said: “One classmate called him ‘the hardest-working man I ever met.’” 

He awoke before dawn, studied, went to classes, worked at the law school library and studied some more when he was off duty. 

Richard Nixon’s home-away-from home at Duke was described by Braswell as “an abandoned tool shed not far from campus. It was an 8-by-12-foot room with a bed, table and chair with no stove” – no heat, lights or running water. 

It definitely was a hard-knocks life for law school students during the Great Depression years. Lyman Brownfield lived through it. He and Richard Nixon became good friends as Duke classmates. Brownfield hailed from Uniontown, Pa., a coal-mining community. 

Nixon and Brownfield, along with two other law school students, decided to “combine resources” during their third and final year at Duke, all rooming together, living “in the back of an old farmhouse, tucked into the Durham woods, about a mile from campus.”

Brownfield went on to practice law in Columbus, Ohio. He was interviewed by Jay R. Smith in 1970 for an article in the Ohio State University student newspaper. 

“It was a flimsy frame house,” Brownfield recalled, “like a barracks with tar paper. We had electricity, but no plumbing, running water or central heat. Rent was $50 a month.” 

They called the place “Whippoorwill Manor.” 

Brownfield said: “When it was cold, the only sources of heat was a lightbulb dangling by a cord from the ceiling and an old laundry stove.” 

“At night we’d buy a newspaper, ball it up and throw it in the stove. Next morning, we’d strike a match to the paper, and the stove, which was thin sheet metal, was red-hot in two minutes. It stayed hot just long enough so we could get dressed.” 

“We kept our shaving equipment behind library books at school, and we showered at the gym,” Brownfield recalled.

 

This is Nixon's official graduation portrait. He and Brownfield graduated from Duke Law School in 1937…and jobs were tight.