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University Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

The University of Illinois in the Cold War Era 1945-1975: U of I Students and the Draft

U of I Students and the Draft

Student protest against the draft, circa 1969 (Illio)

Conscription of young men into the armed services expanded considerably in 1964 to fight the Vietnam War.  Although college students received deferments during their period of enrollment, many knew that they could be drafted upon graduation.  Beginning in 1965, protestors expressed their grievances against the war by publicly burning their draft cards.



U of I Sources:

Student and Faculty Organization Constitutions and Registration Cards, 1909-  (RS 41/2/41)

Student Organizations Publications, 1871-  (RS 41/6/840)

Dean of Student’s Subject File, 1966-98 (RS 41/1/6): Includes information on SDS in Box 1

Student Discipline Files, 1953-84 (RS 41/2/44)

President David D. Henry General Correspondence, 1955-71 (RS: 2/12/1)

Bibliography:

Michael S. Foley, Confronting the War Machine: Draft Resistance During the Vietnam War (Chapel Hill: 2003).

William A. Gordon, The Fourth of May: Killings and Coverups at Kent State (Buffalo: 1990).

Kenneth J. Heineman, Campus Wars: the Peace Movement at American State Universities in the Vietnam Era (New York: 1993).

Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, Peace Now!: American Society and the Ending of the Vietnam War (New Haven, 1999).

Patrick D. Kennedy, “Reactions Against the Vietnam War and Military-Related Targets on Campus: The University of Illinois as a Case Study, 1965-72,” Illinois Historical Journal 84:2 (1991): 101-118.

James Miller, “Democracy is in the Streets”: From Port Huron to the Siege of Chicago (New York: 1987).

Michael Parenti, “Repression in Academia: A Report From the Field,” Politics and Society 1:4 (1971), 527-538.

Joel P. Rhodes, The Voice of Violence: Performative Violence as Protest in the Vietnam Era (Westport, CT: 2001).

Nancy Zaroulis and Gerald Sullivan, Who Spoke Up?: American Protest Against the War in Vietnam, 1963-1975 (Garden City, N.Y.: 1984).