The University of North Carolina Wilmington was one of many universities that joined the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam on October 15, 1969. The Moratorium was a national day for teach-ins, memorial services, and demonstrations. 

UNC Wilmington's Student Political Action Committee sponsored a memorial service attended by more than 200 students and community members. Speakers included ministers, a physician, and a UNCW professor. Some speakers voiced opposition to the Vietnam War, while a pro-war minister prioritized honoring fallen soldiers and avoiding distortion of their sacrifices.

The local newspaper, the Wilmington Star-News, covered the event. Newspaper clippings can be seen in a 1969-1970 scrapbook held in the University of North Carolina Wilmington Advancement and University Relations Records at the Center for Southeast N.C. Archives and History. 

A Star-News photographer captured UNCW philosophy professor Gerald Shinn speaking on campus to a crowd gathered to memorialize those who lost their lives in Vietnam. 

In another article, three Student Government Association leaders criticize the Vietnam Moratorium ceremony as inappropriate and misleading as a memorial service, while reaffirming support for free speech and academic freedom.

Find these articles online in the University Archives News Clipping Scrapbooks, a digital collection featuring news, events, sports, and the arts at Wilmington College and UNCW from the 1950s through the 1980s. 

Want to see the original scrapbooks? Visit the Center for Southeast North Carolina Archives and History (CSENCAH) in Discovery Hall to find these items and much more Seahawk history from the founding of Wilmington College in 1947 to the present day.

Source

Scrapbook, 1969-1970, Scrapbook 11, RG-10, University of North Carolina Wilmington Advancement and University Relations Records, Center for Southeast North Carolina Archives and History.

From 1944 to 2020, the servicemembers of U.S. Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune (with the assistance of some additional civilian staff) published a weekly newspaper called The Globe. The articles in this newspaper are vital pieces of evidence towards reconstructing the lived experiences of individual service members stationed at Camp Lejeune, in Jacksonville, N.C., throughout the second half of the 20th century.  

Extant issues of the Globe are few and far between, and it can be difficult to track down historical issues of the newspaper. The good news is that a nearly complete run of issues has been digitized and made freely accessible to the public online by the U.S. Department of Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS). Researchers can browse and download issues via the DVIDS database. 

If you need to access an issue that isn’t featured in the database, tracking down a print copy is challenging. A largely complete run of print issues dated 1944-2013 are held at the Harriotte B. Smith Library at Camp Lejeune, but not all issues are present. Also, access to the Harriotte B. Smith Library may be difficult if you aren’t a member of the Marine Corps. You can contact the library directly for information about accessing these issues. 

The Center has a handful of print issues available for onsite access, in MS 195 USO Club, Jacksonville NC Collection, but coverage is scattered, and many issues are incomplete fragments. A few libraries across the country hold microfilm editions of the newspaper, which researchers might be able to borrow via the Interlibrary Loan program from a public or academic library with which they are affiliated. To our knowledge, these are the only libraries with microfilm copies in their holdings: 

• State Library of North Carolina: 1944-1945
• Wilson Library, UNC Chapel Hill: 1944-1948; 1992-2003
• University of Wisconsin-Madison: 1944-1976; 1978-1991; 1994 

For more information about historical newspapers from this part of North Carolina, check out our Guide to Southeast North Carolina Newspapers, which explains how to find and access back issues of newspapers known to have been published in the Center's eight-county region from the 18th century to the present.