Interview with Bill McCurine '69
On October 29, 2021, I interviewed Bill McCurine, a class of 1969 and retired magistrate judge. Prior to the interview, I was very nervous, but McCurine alleviated my anxieties. He was friendly, easing going but very confident, even though a zoom screen. McCurine was like an open book, confident sharing intimate aspects of his childhood, such as his parents’ divorce. Some of the most memorable moments of the interview were McCurine’s description of his family and their expectations of him in school. McCurine’s academic endeavors were rooted in his family’s encouragement. For example, his mother was the first Black woman to head the keypunch unit for the Chicago Housing Authority, and his father attended Morehouse. Education expectations were emphasized when he shared that his parents even enrolled him into one of Chicago’s prestigious college prep schools without his knowledge. The support of his family members and high school teacher instilled an overwhelming ambition to attend secondary school. McCurine’s narrative of his Dartmouth experience was not as surprising as his childhood years. He detailed many of the themes present in the Bradley, Purdy, and Isserman et al.; readings: racism, segregation, the reality of the Vietnam draft, assassinations of political figures, and activism. Although Dartmouth College was an integrated institution, racism permeated social, political, and academic life for McCurine. There were two spaces where McCurine found a sense of belonging and the highlights of his experience at Dartmouth. The A Better Chance Program first allowed McCurine to tutor bright African American youth and travel across the United States to recruit them. The second organization was the Afro-American Society (AAm), of which McCurine was one of the founders. I found a discrepancy in the documented history of the Aam in which the institution states it was founded in 1969. McCurine refutes this, claiming that he and his classmates founded it in 1966 during his sophomore year. To him, the Afro-American Society was the epicenter of the Black social and political experience. The AAm was a dual entity in the lives of Black students in the 60s: it both hosted parties and social events and led protests on inequality facing minority students.
During the interview, McCurine recalled pinnacle developments of the time, such as the Vietnam war draft, assassinations of famous figures, and the significance of art to protest. Another memorable moment in our interview was an anecdote McCurine shared about how he was “too healthy” for the draft. He ran so much in college that his heart beat much slower than other men his age. As a result, doctors examining him misdiagnosed him with a heart condition when he was in fact of sound health. McCurine shared more stories of how he was continuously lucky enough to escape the Vietnam draft. He informed me of the importance of art during the movement. He recalled his love for Zora Neal Hurston’s short stories, Malcolm X’s Autobiography, and Motown records. The song that really defined the movement, to him, was James Brown’s “Say it Loud-I’ Black and I’m Proud.” These songs and novels served as inspiration for many of the literary magazines published by the Afro-American Society. At the end of the interview, McCurine detailed the post-graduate experience that led him to attend law school and the importance of God as a guiding force in his life.
Interview Audio and Interview Transcript
Interview Transcript with William McCurine
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