In the post-World War II era, efforts to improve the accessibility and quality of higher education rose to prominence in US educational debates and policymaking. In retrospect, a confluence of factors helped to forge this growing social consensus about the need to create educational opportunity and to diversify the nation's colleges and universities. Notably among these factors were Cold War efforts to bolster national security, the nascent Civil Rights movement's urgent call for social justice, and a deepening recognition of the benefits of higher education participation in terms of economic well-being and social mobility. As crucial as the high-profile federal initiatives were to the postwar expansion of higher education and efforts to promote equality of educational opportunity, the story of federal intervention provides only a partial view of the push toward broadening educational access. The role and motivations of White Northern philanthropies, such as the Slater, Peabody, and Rosenwald funds, and Rockefeller's General Education Board, in funding higher education for African Americans after the Civil War have been well-documented and debated. This essay explores the early history of one of the country's oldest philanthropically-funded access experiments: the Rockefeller-funded A Better Chance program, also known as ABC. Taking root in the social and political milieu, ABC's founding mission was to identify talented "deserving" lower-income students and students of color (though the program's early focus was generally on African Americans) and prepare them for college. The author focuses on ABC's foundational period from 1963 to 1969. (Contains 14 notes.)