UCF Community Veterans History Project

The United States Congress created the Veterans History Project in 2000. The authorizing legislation (Public Law 106-380), sponsored by Representatives Ron Kind, Amo Houghton, and Steny Hoyer in the U.S. Senate, received unanimous support and was signed into law by President William Jefferson Clinton on October 27, 2000.

“It is in the nation’s best interest to collect and catalog oral histories of American war veterans so that…Americans will always remember those who served in war and may learn first-hand of the heroics, tediousness, horrors, and triumphs of war.” -- Veterans' Oral History Project Act.

The Veterans History Project of the American Folklife Center collects, preserves, and makes accessible the personal accounts of American war veterans so that future generations may hear directly from veterans and better understand the realities of war.

The Project collects first-hand accounts of U.S. Veterans from the following wars:

- World War I (1914-1920)

- World War II (1939-1946)

- Korean War (1950-1955)

- Vietnam War (1961-1975)

- Persian Gulf War (1990-1995)

- Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts (2001-present)

It includes all participants in those wars--men and women, civilian and military. It documents the contributions of civilian volunteers, support staff, and war industry workers as well as the experiences of military personnel from all ranks and all branches of service--the Air Force, Army, Marine Corps, and Navy, as well as the U.S. Coast Guard and Merchant Marine.

The oral histories in this collection were all completed as class projects in various courses taught in UCF Department of History, and comply with the standards of the Library of Congress, American Folklife Center's Veterans History Project. The histories, which students began recording during the fall 2010 semester, are archived and made digitally available through the UCF Libraries, Digital Initiatives website.