Following World War I, President Woodrow Wilson appointed Henry Churchill King, president of Oberlin College, and Charles R. Crane, Chicago businessman and trustee of Robert College in Constantinople, to serve on an Inter-Allied commission to visit the Middle East to determine what the people living there wanted. Although the full commission never assembled due to French and British opposition, the American team, known as the King-Crane Commission, visited the area from June to August 1919.

See also our exhibit on the King-Crane Commission.