Within two weeks of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Office of Education Wartime Commission was formed to provide guidance to institutions of higher learning and public schools for the duration of the war. The goals set for the commission included: (1) facilitating the adjustment of education agencies to war needs; (2) informing government agencies directly responsible for the war effort concerning the services schools and colleges could provide; and (3) determine the effects on schools and colleges of all proposed changes suggested by government agencies. By August of 1942, the National Institute on Education and the War was created by the Office of Education with the goal of enlisting schools in the war effort. This historical case study seeks to explain the role of the war effort, and more specifically of pre-induction training and the establishment of the Victory Corps, as agents of change within a single, urban school during the war years. Based primarily on oral history interviews with alumni, the school newspaper and yearbooks, school board minutes and reports of school activities in the local newspapers, race, class, and gender equity issues are identified. As the story unfolds, these equity issues reflect an increasing concern for the democratization of school-supported activities among a segment of the student body and their parents, as well as the push-back from those who wished to maintain the status quo.