Eugene Vietnam Anti-war Movement Oral History Project records , 2023-2025

The Eugene Vietnam Anti-War Movement Oral History Project was directed by Martin J. Bennett from 2023 to 2024 and included interviews of nineteen people who were active in the Vietnam anti-war movement in Eugene, Oregon or at the University of Oregon from 1969 to 1973. The collection comprises sound recordings and transcripts of oral history interviews of people who were university students, faculty members, war veterans, faith leaders, and community members at that time and active in the anti-war movement. The sound recordings and transcripts are available as digital files. The collected transcripts are also available in printed, bound volumes and as a digital file.

Interviewees discuss their backgrounds and the development of their anti-war beliefs. They discuss their participation in the anti-war movement, with focus on local, anti-war politics, events, organizations, and leaders. Interviewees reflect on the movement's accomplishments, its relation to other social movements, and its impact on their lives. Reflecting on the movement's impacts on their lives, interviewees discuss how it shaped subsequent occupational choices, relationships with family, and involvement in subsequent social movements, such as those centered on women's rights, gay and lesbian rights, environmental protection, organized labor, and American foreign policy in Central America. Interviewees discuss schisms in their families that were later reconciled, and express pride in their children's involvement in later anti-war movements, such as the Iraq anti-war movement.

The collection includes a timeline of anti-war movement events, 1967 to 1974, and a bibliography of selected Eugene Register-Guard articles covering local anti-war movement events, 1970 to 1972. The collection focuses on events in the community and on campus, including sit-ins and teach-ins, draft resistance and draft card burning, marches and demonstrations, strikes and boycotts, guerrilla theater and mock trials, speeches and concerts, political campaigns and elections, and civil disobedience and violent activism. Anti-war actions in the community were directed at city, county, and federal organizations, particularly the Selective Service System, Internal Revenue Service, and Lane County Jail. Events on campus were directed at the Reserve Officers' Training Corps, University of Oregon Senate, and University of Oregon administration, as well as corporations recruiting on campus, including Dow Chemical and Weyerhaeuser Company. Significant events on campus include the Prince Lucien Campbell Hall bombing in October 1970, the Johnson Hall sit-in in April 1970, the anti-Reserve Officers' Training Corps student uprising from 1970 to 1972, the 13th Street barricading in 1970, and University of Oregon Senate and faculty meetings.