Peace Corps

“March 2021 marks the 60th anniversary of the start of the Peace Corps and in this latest edition of WUKY’s award winning history series Saving Stories, Doug Boyd with the Nunn Center for Oral History in the UK Libraries shares audio from a Kentuckian who was one of the program’s earliest participants. Angene Hopkins Wilson and her then fiancee Jack Hopkins got accepted into the program and in 1962 were sent to Liberia.

On March 1, 1961, President Kennedy issued an executive order establishing the Peace Corps as a federal agency within the State Department. By June, 1961 the Peace corps had received about 11,000 completed applications. By September of 1961, Kennedy signed legislation that gave permanence to the Peace Corps.” Read full story with link to oral history audio here.