Doing Our Bit: UNC and the Great War

July 13, 2017

Update: Exhibition has been extended through June 18, 2017.

When the U.S. prepared to enter World War I in 1917, universities and colleges swiftly responded to the call for service.

At Carolina, the campus transformed into a military training ground. Dormitories became barracks, and classes on battlefield strategy were added to the curriculum. By the end of the Great War, more than 2,200 students, alumni, and faculty and staff members had served overseas. Those who remained behind contributed time and money to the war effort.

Poster for the Doing Our Bit: UNC and the Great War exhibt, with the dates March 3 - June 11, 2017.

Under the guidance of UNC’s new president, Edward Kidder Graham, the University also took on the role of educating North Carolinians about the War. It founded the Bureau of Extension in 1913 to publish informational pamphlets and send faculty lecturers across the state in a legacy that continued well after the War’s end.

Doing Our Bit: UNC and the Great War uses documents, photographs, and other artifacts to recall how the Carolina campus embodied Graham’s vision of public service during one of the great conflicts of the twentieth century. The free public exhibition will be on view in the North Carolina Collection Gallery of the Wilson Special Collections Library through June 11, 2017. June 18, 2017.

Doing Our Bit: UNC and the Great War
North Carolina Collection Gallery
Wilson Special Collections Library
March 3 – June 11 18, 2017
Free and open to the public
(919) 962-3765 or wilsonlibrary@unc.edu