Kenneth F. Meyercord oral history interview

Kenneth F. Meyercord, Dartmouth College Class of 1966. Oral history interview documenting his experiences during the Vietnam War. Meyercord describes growing up during the Cold War in Madison, NJ, and later in Dallas, TX. He discusses his undergraduate years at Dartmouth, including joining Kappa Sigma [now Chi Gamma Epsilon] and the social climate on campus prior to coeducation. He describes his graduate education at Stanford University, his decision to drop out, and his experience spending the Summer of Love (1967) in San Francisco, CA. Meyercord discusses his increasing awareness of the Vietnam War and opposition to the draft while traveling through South America and learning more about United States foreign policy. He describes his choice to evade the draft by remaining outside the country and traveling the world, which included time spent in Cambodia prior to United States military action there. Meyercord emphasizes in particular his time in Lebanon, where he married and completed a master’s degree at the American University of Beirut, and his time in Algeria, where he taught English and lived with his wife and their two young children. He discusses the family’s return to the United States and being arrested and tried and found not guilty for his evasion of the draft. Meyercord describes his later career, his identity as an internationalist, and the writing of his memoir.