Chapter 9

Speaking Out against the War

In This Chapter

Uniting for peace

Rallying students to action

Mobilizing against war

Uniting the movement

Ending the war for peace

Decades after the fact, a great deal of debate still swirls around the anti– Vietnam War movement in America, as do many myths about the movement’s origins, goals, and its ultimate impact on the war itself. Although some people claim that the movement and protests helped bring an end to the quagmire by forcing U.S. government officials to deescalate the war, others insist that the protests gave support to the enemy and prolonged the war by encouraging the enemy with the idea that the United States would eventually leave. Some people define the movement as an activity of rich kids on college campuses who simply desired to avoid the draft, but statistics undermine this idea, showing that the antiwar movement grew as the war progressed to encompass a wide variety of people from all walks of life. Some people also call the antiwar protesters traitors to the American cause, while others claim that these same people represent the noblest traditions of dissent and free speech embedded in the rights of the U.S. Constitution.

Determining which view is right is difficult, because both views focus on the home front, but the real war was fought in Vietnam. The antiwar movement may have pleased both the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese leaders, but what won the war for them was their ability to hold the countryside and make insurgencies into the cities throughout South Vietnam. The antiwar movement, on the other hand, may have bothered the South Vietnamese Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), but the movement didn’t create the corruption and self-serving methods that caused the ARVN to falter — their own greed and lack of national identity did. Ultimately, the antiwar movement may have affected the outcome of the war but didn’t decide it.

No matter which idea you believe about the antiwar movement, we make one point clear in this chapter: In the early years of the war, the American people overwhelmingly supported U.S. government policy. But as the war progressed, the bodies came home, and victory seemed ever more elusive, public support began to decline, and the ranks of the war protesters swelled.

The Diversity of Dissent

One of the great difficulties in describing the antiwar movement comes from its diversity of ideas, methods, and efforts over the span of a couple of decades. The movement lacked a central leader or organizing agency. Though a few coalitions formed, they were often short-lived. Protesters employed a tremendous variety of tactics, ranging from peaceful civil disobedience and vigils to teach-ins and mass demonstrations. Some labored within the system, seeking change through lobbying efforts, letter-writing campaigns, and electoral politics, while others sought change from the outside through sabotage, bombings, and self-immolations (setting oneself on fire). The common factor among the protesters was that they all sought peace. However, the origins of the fierce antiwar movement can be traced along a few paths — the pre-1960s peace movements and the student movements that emerged in the early ’60s.

Beginning with the peace movement

The origins of the antiwar movement lie in the opposition to the cold war in the 1950s, which is logical because the Vietnam War itself can be seen as a proxy war within the context of the larger cold war. During the 1950s, nuclear annihilation was a big concern. Well acquainted with the destruction at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, as well as the long-term effects of radiation, Americans feared the ongoing nuclear testing almost as much as they feared nuclear war. The peace movement was a movement of public advocacy aimed at avoiding war and drawing attention to nuclear testing and the dangers of a nuclear confrontation.

After the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963, which satisfied some of their concerns regarding nuclear proliferation (see Chapter 2), peace groups began to shift their focus. Though they started with different concerns and methods, with the escalation of the war in Vietnam throughout the decade, these groups began to concentrate on the growing war. Groups such as the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE), the Committee for Nonviolent Action (CNVA), the Women’s Strike for Peace (WSP), and other peace organizations began to cooperate, allying their resources and networks. By 1967, many of these smaller groups began to merge with a common cause.

SANE

SANE was formed in 1957 based upon the “Call to Conscience” by renowned pastor, humanitarian, and scientist Dr. Albert Schweitzer. “Call to Conscience” was an article that moved many American citizens to action regarding the dangers of nuclear radiation. The committee’s stated mission was to “develop public support for a boldly conceived and executed policy which will lead mankind away from war and toward peace and justice.”

SANE became one of the leading voices for nuclear disarmament, attracting prominent spokespeople and supporters such as Dr. Schweitzer, Dr. Benjamin Spock (the baby doctor), Eleanor Roosevelt (former first lady), A. Philip Randolph (the founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, a largely black labor union), Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Coretta Scott King, Bertrand Russell (a prominent philosopher), Harry Belafonte (a singer and activist), and Walter Reuther (head of the United Automobile Workers). For SANE members, opposition to the war was a natural position to take, and SANE became an early leader in the antiwar movement.

CNVA

Founded in 1957, the CNVA was formed by a pacifist Quaker named Lawrence Scott. With branches in New York and San Francisco, this organization was the first of the peace groups to embrace civil disobedience as a means to protest nuclear proliferation.

In 1957, their first action was a vigil held at an atomic weapons testing ground near Las Vegas, Nevada.

In 1958, they used boats to enter the atomic testing zones in the South Pacific to interfere with planned detonations.

In 1959, they began a protest against the production of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles in Omaha, Nebraska.

In 1960, they protested the Polaris nuclear missiles being placed aboard U.S. submarines in New London, Connecticut.

Each time, CNVA members were arrested and jailed. Yet according to their founding principles, they remained nonviolent, seeking instead to draw public attention to their protests in hopes that greater awareness would lead to a demand for a reduction in nuclear arms.

WSP

The WSP also arose in the late 1950s. Started in Washington, D.C., by children’s book illustrator Dagmar Wilson, this group organized women to speak out for disarmament, a ban on nuclear testing, and a moratorium on the insults and name calling coming from both the pro- and anti-nuclear sides of the debate. Using the same networks as SANE and the CNVA, the WSP organized 25,000 women to voice their protest under the slogan, “End the Arms Race — Not the Human Race.” WSP members believed that as women, they were fittingly appropriate to speak out in favor of the survival of the species. Figure 9-1 shows a WSP protest at the Pentagon.

Figure 9-1: Members of Women’s Strike for Peace protest the Vietnam War at the Pentagon in 1967.

©Bettmann/CORBIS

Participating in the student movement

The antiwar movement of the ’60s was also anchored by two student groups — Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the free speech movement (FSM) — that together formed much of the New Left, a generation of young Americans who came of age in the 1960s and were motivated to action by the social injustices of the age. Leaders of the student movements began to consider ways to shape the growing peace sentiment into a broader political agenda, which was aimed at creating fundemental change with regard to issues such as peace and justice.

In the beginning, SDS was marked by idealistic ideas that were transformed into concrete action. The students were active in the civil rights movement on their own campuses, working to eliminate discrimination in fraternaties and sororities and improving conditions in urban ghettos. Many members of SDS traveled south to eliminate segregation and barriers to voting.

However, as the Vietnam War escalated and student deferrments were abolished, ending the war became the main focus of SDS. Along with the FSM in Berkeley, SDS developed chapters at campuses across the nation. To find out more about the history of the New Left student movement, its ideas, and its other activities, turn to Chapter 11.

The Emerging Antiwar Movement

Because the scope of U.S. involvement in Vietnam was limited in the late 1950s and early ’60s, public opposition was also limited. Yet with the 1964 presidential elections, a large-scale antiwar movement began to take shape. Lyndon Johnson ran as a “Dove” or peace candidate, pledging to not send U.S. boys to Vietnam. By contrast, the Republican candidate, Barry Goldwater, ran as a “Hawk,” or war candidate, to the point of even advocating the use of some tactical nuclear weapons in Vietnam.

The peace movement clearly supported Johnson, and the election was an easy victory for him. Ironically, though, the bombing of North Vietnam and the commitment of U.S. combat troops to Vietnam took place within months of Johnson’s election (see Chapter 8). As a result of this increased role in Vietnam and the perception that Johnson had deceived voters, the antiwar movement emerged for the first time as a national phenomenon with a clear agenda and not just an outgrowth of presidential politics.

Spreading the word with teach-ins

A primary goal of the antiwar movement in its infancy was to educate national leaders and the American public. The tools to accomplish this education were teach-ins, which began in earnest in 1965. Believing that government policy was based upon ignorance and mistakes, intellectuals sought to educate the public to solve the problems.

Teach-ins were informal lectures and discussions given by professors and graduate students and open to anyone interested in the topic. The idea was that exposing people to the facts and raising questions could move people to action. After enough people were motivated, the government would be forced to listen as well. In a May 15–16 teach-in, for example, participants from Yale, Harvard, Columbia, the University of Chicago, and the State Department debated policy over a radio link connecting 122 colleges nationwide.

As college professors spoke out about the Vietnam War, President Johnson responded in a speech at Johns Hopkins University on April 7, 1965, stating that he was ready for negotiations regarding a free and independent South Vietnam, yet he wouldn’t deal with the National Liberation Front (the political branch of the Viet Cong). Johnson’s speech angered many antiwar groups and moved them to action. Throughout 1965, the teach-ins continued at campuses across the nation.

Holding early marches and demonstrations

On April 17, 1965, ten days after Johnson’s Johns Hopkins speech (see the preceding section), SDS held its first march in Washington, D.C., to protest the war. A few thousand protesters were expected, yet some 25,000 people showed up, making it the largest antiwar protest in the city’s history. Other large demonstrations soon followed:

On October 15, 15,000 people marched in Berkeley, California, and another 20,000 marched in Manhattan, New York.

On November 27, another demonstration in Washington drew 25,000 protesters.

Though these demonstrations were small compared to those of the late ’60s, they were record setting for their day. Public demonstrations were the next logical step to take after the teach-ins, because the teach-ins seemed somewhat like preaching to the choir. Protesters were moving beyond words, reason, and education to place pressure on policymakers who seemed to be ignoring the will of the people, as expressed in the 1964 election.

Initiating civil disobedience

Many protesters who joined the emerging antiwar movement were veterans of the civil rights movement and understood the value of civil disobedience, particularly in the form of public moral sacrifice. In August 1965, Vietnam Day committee members (a group formed to coordinate antiwar activities in California) began to lie down on railroad tracks in northern California in order to block the movement of troops trains in the area. Another 350 protesters were arrested in Washington for civil disobedience for attempting to disrupt the government. Over the same summer, protesters began to burn their draft cards (see the “Resisting the draft” section, later in this chapter).

Following the lead of the Buddhist monks

In 1965, another form of protest emerged — that of public suicide to draw attention to the war. The first suicide occurred on a Detroit street corner on March 16, when Alice Herz, an 82-year-old pacifist, doused herself with cleaning fluid and ignited it. Herz left a note condemning President Johnson for trying to wipe out small nations and explaining that she was protesting in the same way that the Buddhist monks had in Vietnam in 1963 (see Chapter 8). Though this was the act of a single protester the media coverage shocked many into asking questions about the conduct and morality of the war.

On November 2, a 32-year-old Quaker made the ultimate sacrifice as an act of moral persuasion. Norman Morrison carried his infant daughter with him to the Pentagon, where he set her down and, standing in front of the office windows of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, doused himself with gasoline and set himself on fire. Like Herz, Morrison was consciously trying to emulate the monks. McNamara, one of the chief architects of U.S. policy in Vietnam (see Chapter 8), witnessed the suicide. He was shocked by the protest and in his memoirs referred to the incident as a personal tragedy.

One week later, a 22-year-old man named Roger La Porte killed himself in the same manner in front of the United Nations headquarters in New York. La Porte, like Herz and Morrison, sought to make a religious statement against the war in Vietnam.

Turning Up the Heat

In 1966, the antiwar protesters took a more aggressive stance, picketing President Johnson and his cabinet members at public engagements. In San Francisco in August, protesters found out that General Maxwell Taylor, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam, was staying in a downtown hotel. They picketed and called him a war criminal, forcing him at one point to take refuge in the manager’s office as protesters banged on the door. Though the first family worried a great deal about whether the wedding of Johnson’s daughter would be ruined by protest, that event in August went off with little problem.

Throughout 1966 and 1967, the antiwar movement gained momentum. In February, after the bombing campaign resumed following a short pause for negotiations, the antiwar movement began planning larger demonstrations. Though the antiwar groups worked continuously on the grass roots level, it was the big demonstrations that were designed to reach the general public. In April 1966, demonstrators put together the Vietnam Peace Parade on Fifth Avenue in New York. SANE and the Women’s Strike for Peace assembled a peace rally at the White House in May. And the summer was spent rallying support for the midterm election of congressional doves.

Robert McNamara, who had been troubled over the suicide of Norman Morrison (see the preceding section), was further distressed by an incident at Harvard University on November 7, 1966, when a group of radical students surrounded his car and rocked it. Though unhurt in the incident, McNamara later described it as “a searing experience.”

In 1967, antiwar leaders organized massive demonstrations on April 15, in New York and San Francisco. In the fall, the focus shifted to the activities of Oakland Draft Resistance week (see the “Instituting Stop the Draft Week” section later in the chapter).

Resisting the draft

Rather than just protesting, many young men began to defy the law and burn their draft cards as a public statement. The draft, which was reinstated in 1948 during a period of peace, became a focal point of protest for some groups. Drafts, or selective service, have always been a controversial subject in U.S. history dating back to the Civil War. The draft was used in World Wars I and II but was ended after each war. The 1948 Selective Service Act required all males between 18 and 26 to register for the draft, yet there was a list of exemptions one could claim to avoid serving. The draft was updated in 1951 and again in 1967, yet the loopholes that remained discriminated against working class and poor men who couldn’t avoid the draft as easily as their richer counterparts.

On December 1, 1969, in the name of fairness, the Selective Service instituted a draft lottery. Each day of the year was printed on a piece of paper and placed in a jar. The dates were drawn randomly, and the first date picked was assigned number one, the second number two, and so on, until 365 (or 366 for leap year men). Draftees were then called in order of their draft number, lowest first, so those young men with a low number would be drafted first, and those with a high number were probably safe at home. Those with numbers below 195 were subject to being drafted while those above this mark were generally safe from the draft. If nothing else, the lottery gave draftees a sense of predictability in their lives.

One of the earliest antidraft groups was the May 2nd Movement in New York, issuing a pledge in 1964 to refuse to fight against the people of Vietnam. Other antidraft groups arose throughout the decade, seeking publicity and public support. By 1967 these groups had become a significant presence in the antiwar movement.

Reviewing the methods and consequences

On April 15, 1967, 150 young men in New York City burned their draft cards in public. In San Francisco, a group calling themselves “The Resistance” organized a national day for turning in draft cards on October 3, 1967, and burned 1,500 cards during the single-day event. By the time the war was over, close to 100,000 burned their draft cards (see Figure 9-2). In addition to destroying and returning draft cards, other methods of resistance included

Declaring conscientious objector status: Throughout U.S. history, people have avoided military service by declaring conscientious objector status on the basis of membership in a religion that is categorically opposed to war, such as the Quakers or Jehovah’s Witnesses, or personal religious convictions. During the Vietnam War, men tried to be classified as conscientious objectors because they didn’t oppose all wars, but only that particular war. However, they were denied this designation and were subject to the draft.

In 1970, the Supreme Court removed the religious requirement and allowed objection based on a deeply held moral conviction alone. In 1971, the Supreme Court refused to allow objection to a particular war, a decision affecting thousands of objectors to the Vietnam War. However, being a conscientious objector didn’t necessary exempt someone from military service. Most frequently, they were assigned to noncombatant military service, such as being a medic or a cook. During the war, the Center on Conscience and War (CCW) estimates that 200,000 men registered as conscientious objectors.

Not registering for the draft: Though all men between the ages of 18 and 26 were supposed to register with the Draft Board, approximately 250,000 never did.

Escaping to Canada: Some 50,000 to 100,000 men are estimated to have left the United States to avoid being drafted. Most of them went to Canada, where the Vietnam War was unpopular and the door was open to immigration. During the war, the Canadian government allowed draft evaders and deserters to apply for landed immigrant status, which could be granted immediately at the Canadian border. In 1969, Pierre Trudeau, prime minister of Canada, instructed immigration authorities to not discriminate against applicants who may not have fulfilled their military obligations in other countries.

Figure 9-2: Burning draft cards outside of the Pentagon in 1967.

©Bettmann/CORBIS

Any of these young men who were caught resisting the draft could be convicted and sent to prison. The U.S. Justice Department identified 570,000 men who violated draft laws. Of these, 206,775 were referred to the U.S. Attorneys for prosecution. Of these, 25,000 were indicted, more than 9,000 were convicted, and 3,250 were sent to prison for their resistance.

In 1977, when Jimmy Carter was elected president, he pardoned anyone who peacefully resisted the draft by leaving the country or failing to register for the draft. Amnesty wasn’t granted, however, to military deserters.

Instituting Stop the Draft Week

The third week of October, the Resistance conducted an ongoing attempt to physically shut down the Oakland Induction Center in California, where people from West Coast states were inducted into the armed forces — this effort became known as Stop the Draft Week. Beginning on Monday, October 16, 1967, the Resistance held a nonviolent sit-in in an attempt to stop the flow of young men into the processing center. The demonstrators continued their efforts over the next five days, culminating in a five-hour battle between 10,000 demonstra- tors and 2,000 Oakland police officers. The Resistance used “mobile tactics” to control most of the streets of downtown Oakland, demonstrating their control and organization in a guerrilla style. They blocked buses full of inductees from the Induction Center with the use of barricades and with the crowds.

The men aboard the buses exchanged the “V” sign with the protesters, giving rise to the legend that the peace sign originated during Stop the Draft Week.

The draft resistance movement hit a milestone on October 20, 1967, when a delegation of prominent citizens, including Dr. Benjamin Spock and Reverend William Sloane Coffin, delivered a briefcase with more than 1,000 draft cards to the Justice Department.

As a coordinated effort in Stop the Draft Week, antiwar groups also organized a march on the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., on October 21 (see Figure 9-3). The protest groups estimated the crowd as being more than 100,000 strong, but Johnson administration officials estimated about 50,000 protesters. Nevertheless, the protest was huge. It started with speeches and music at the Lincoln Memorial, yet approximately 35,000 protesters were also gathered at the Pentagon, where they placed flowers in the guns of the Pentagon soldiers standing guard to secure the building.

Robert McNamara, Johnson’s secretary of defense, who had already tendered his resignation and was ready to depart for his new position as head of the World Bank, feared that soldiers would have to shoot some of the protesters if the situation got out of hand. Though many Johnson administration officials downplayed the demonstration at the Pentagon, others, including McNamara and Press Secretary George Christian, saw the march as a major turning point for many in the administration as they came to terms with the fact that the peace movement wasn’t fading away and was instead increasing in strength steadily.

Figure 9-3: Protests at the Pentagon during Stop the Draft Week in 1967.

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Making diplomacy a personal mission

During the war, several prominent Americans went to North Vietnam on their own in order to give Americans the “view from the inside.” Some of the men who conducted these missions of personal diplomacy were well-known Americans who traveled to Hanoi, North Vietnam, in 1965, ’66, and ’67. Their missions gave Americans new sources of information regarding the war, while exposing the inadequate and self-serving nature of the Johnson administration’s assessments of the war. Reports from these missions served to bolster the antiwar movement at several critical points.

Three leftists . . .

Three leaders of the antiwar movement undertook the first mission to Hanoi in December 1965 to try to negotiate an end to the war. Staughton Lynd, a Quaker and Yale history professor; Herbert Aptheker, director of the American Institute for Marxist Studies; and Tom Hayden, cofounder of SDS, all agreed to accept an invitation from the North Vietnamese government to visit Hanoi and “to see firsthand the conditions and prospects for peace as the North Vietnamese saw them.” Traveling through Communist bloc nations, the trio arrived in Hanoi on December 2.

During their 11-day stay, they visited factories, government buildings, and museums, where they met and questioned the North Vietnamese people. Though criticized for being led around and propagandized by the North Vietnamese, the men were less interested in uncovering facts than in putting a human face on the enemy. The book that Lynd and Hayden wrote upon their return to the U.S., The Other Side, emphasizes human suffering without debating the ideological foundations of the conflict. Their portrayal of human suffering raised the issue of the morality of U.S. actions.

Upon their return, Aptheker, Lynd, and Hayden spoke publicly about their experiences in Hanoi. Their work revealed the need for independent sources to ensure that the American public heard the truth. Johnson was furious with these private efforts, and the administration worked to counter the effects of this mission by calling the trio “leftist radicals” and branding them as unpatrotic. The number of people willing to listen to reports from Hanoi remained small in late 1965, due in large part to Lynd, Hayden, and Aptheker’s political alignment with the far left. For the moment, the administration remained in control of the flow of information to the public. This situation would radically change in 1967, after Harrison Salisbury began publishing his stories on location.

. . . A Pulitzer Prize winner . . .

The next private mission to Hanoi was more difficult for the administration to handle. Before going to Hanoi in December 1966, Harrison Salisbury had already established himself as a trustworthy and powerful correspondent. He attained his position as assistant managing editor of the New York Times for his diligent reporting of events in Communist-aligned countries during the late ’40s and ’50s. He also won the Pulitzer Prize in 1955 for a series of articles on the Soviet Union. Thus, when Salisbury traveled to Hanoi, he was a credible voice, and the Johnson administration couldn’t dismiss him as easily as they could Aptheker, Lynd, and Hayden.

Salisbury published a series of firsthand reports from Hanoi, beginning on Christmas Day 1966. Salisbury photographed and described bomb-damaged neighborhoods, putting a human face on the North Vietnamese for the first time in the mainstream American press. Further, his claims contradicted the administration’s claims of conducting only carefully controlled, surgically precise bombing campaigns in North Vietnam. More importantly, Salisbury’s observations led him to question the feasibility of American strategy in Vietnam and the morality of the American war effort itself. Though highly controversial at the time, Salisbury’s reports raised issues that later visitors reiterated and that would remain controversial as long as the war continued.

. . . And a pair of journalists

As the Johnson administration struggled to manage the crisis created by Salisbury’s articles, two more journalists arrived in Hanoi. Harry S. Ashmore of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions (and a Pulitzer Prize– winning reporter) and William C. Baggs of the Miami News arrived on the very same plane that was flying Salisbury out of Hanoi. Unlike Salisbury’s mission, which had been completely independent of the U.S. government, Ashmore and Baggs had a semiofficial status, as they had coordinated with the State Depart- ment and were to make a number of inquiries on behalf of the U.S. government.

Upon arriving in Hanoi on January 6, 1967, Ashmore and Baggs began to assess the damage created by the air war. To prove their impartiality, they acknowledged the possibility of propaganda in their reports because they saw only the bomb damage that officials showed them, including damaged hospitals, schools, pagodas, and in one notable case, a leperarium (a home for the treatment of lepers). Though the two Americans attempted to remain neutral, the sheer number of bombed-out sites diminished the assumption that the North Vietnamese had carefully orchestrated everything they showed the men. Ashmore and Baggs visited many of the same areas that Salisbury had visited, and in their stories they substantiated Salisbury’s reports.

As part of the official status of their mission, Ashmore and Baggs met with Ho Chi Minh for two hours to discuss the opening of a quiet channel for direct negotiations. Upon their return, they dodged eager reporters to deliver Ho’s message directly to the State Department. Ho had expressed interest in negotiation, citing the friendship Vietnam had achieved with its former foe, the French.

Baggs delayed writing his articles in favor of advancing the peace initiatives that he and Ashmore believed they’d opened. They had been invited to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, but they declined at the request of the State Department. Though Ashmore and Baggs believed they had initiated negotiations that could possibly end the war, their hopes were dashed when negotiations with the State Department led only to continued debate over minute details such as whether negotiations “could” or “would” begin at the cessation of the bombing. The administration finally used this new channel to simply send the North Vietnamese yet another ultimatum.

Though the stakes were quite high, neither Johnson nor Secretary of State Dean Rusk met directly with Ashmore and Baggs. Ultimately, the two citizens felt that the administration had not only undermined their efforts, but also had successfully muzzled them. No longer fearing damage to the failed negotiations, Ashmore wrote a scathing, widely disseminated article accusing Johnson of duplicity in the peace overture. In 1968, Ashmore and Baggs published a book documenting all the details of the undermined peace initiative. The title itself explains their point of view: Mission to Hanoi: A Chronicle of Double-Dealing In High Places. And no, they weren’t talking about the North Vietnamese.

Buying media coverage

Though media coverage and analysis of the Vietnam War got good air time in 1965, by 1966, coverage shrank. The networks did televise several documentaries on the war in late 1965 as well as the Fulbright hearings in February 1966, yet they ceased televising legislative events under pressure from the White House. Factual new stories were shown, but the media offered little analysis of the war after early 1966. The fascination with the war faded as the news seemed to be the same nearly every day.

The Fulbright hearings, led by Senator William Fulbright, were Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings that debated issues concerning the war, including a huge appropriations bill requested by President Johnson. The hearings, which were televised, seemed to be a turning point in terms of increasing antiwar sentiment.

The antiwar movement began to shift to paid advertising to get its message out to the American people. On June 5, 1966, the New York Times ran an advertisement containing the names of 6,400 academics and professionals who opposed the war. The spread covering three pages of the Sunday Times cost more than $20,000 and reached a vast audience. The ads continued to increase in number and frequency through 1968.

Joining the fray: Civil rights and the antiwar movement

Following his receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. expressed concern over the growing war in Vietnam, yet he maintained a moderate stance that wouldn’t alienate any factions within the civil rights movement. There were, however, a disproportionate number of African American soldiers fighting in Vietnam, and King saw this as another inequity to be addressed. Militant groups such as the Black Panther Party and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) were openly denouncing U.S. policies as imperialism aimed at the nonwhite nation of Vietnam, while more conservative elements such as the NAACP and the Urban League sought to keep the civil rights movement from being lost within the antiwar movement.

Dr. King finally made his decision to take a strong stand against the war in April 1967. In Manhattan’s Riverside Church, 3,000 people listened to King’s speech, entitled, “Declaration of Independence from the war in Vietnam.” The crowd rose to its feet and roared its approval, giving King a standing ovation.

Later that year, the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, formed by President Johnson in July 1967, reported that the U.S. was increasingly becoming two separate societies — one white and one black. The report seemed to be underscored by the February 1968 massacre at South Carolina State College, where police and National Guard troops opened fire on unarmed black students, killing 3 and wounding 27 others. On April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, setting off a whole new round of violence. In a week of violence in more than 125 U.S. cities, the government had to mobilize 55,000 troops to help the tens of thousands of local law enforcement officers trying to quell the unrest.

No sooner had order been restored after the King assassination than violence erupted on college campuses across the country. Police battled students at elite universities such as Stanford and Columbia. Increasingly, student demonstrators were linking their cause with that of the blacks and the poorer classes that bore the brunt of the military draft.

The Turning Point in 1968

In the late ’60s, leaders of the antiwar movement recognized President Johnson’s growing credibility problem and sought to exploit and publicize it at every opportunity. The straw that broke the camel’s back was the Tet Offensive.

In January 1968, General Westmoreland gave a brilliantly optimistic report on the U.S. progress in Vietnam. However, within days, Westmoreland’s report seemed ridiculous, as the Tet Offensive firmly placed the United States on the defensive throughout the Vietnamese countryside. The U.S. never regained the strategic offensive in the war. Within months, Westmoreland had been relieved of his command, the president had been compelled to withdraw from the election campaign, and antiwar candidates had swept the Democratic primaries (see Chapter 8).

In a single week, protests erupted. Even the world monetary system began to reel from the U.S. debt and the government’s loss of credibility. When Johnson announced his withdrawal from the presidential race, he also announced that he’d begin to try to deescalate the war and seek peace with the North Vietnamese. The desire to win had shifted to a quest for a way out.

Confrontation in Chicago

The 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago had an inauspicious start. The convention center had burned to the ground, the favorite candidate (Robert Kennedy) had been assassinated (see Chapter 4), the antiwar movement was planning a huge protest, and Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, who supported the war and President Johnson’s policies in Vietnam and hated hippies, was determined to thwart the protesters at every turn. He refused permits for marches and rallies and encouraged the use of force to subdue crowds, but the protests went on.

Witnessing “a police riot”

Thousands of people showed up in Chicago to protest the war, sure that their sheer numbers would win “hearts and minds.” The Democratic National Convention was scheduled for Monday August 26 to Thursday August 29. There was a great deal of anticipation about the event with high expectations from the various protest groups, each of whom desired to make their own statement about the war. They began to gather in Chicago early in order to plan a variety of events. To add even more fuel to the already potentially explosive situation, the yippies (a highly theatrical youth protest group) arrived, not only to protest the war, but also to stage a “happening” of music, workshops, and a beach party including “folk-singing, barbecues, swimming, lovemaking.” Needless to say, antiwar protests and yippie antics didn’t exactly endear the “visitors” to the mayor and the citizens of Chicago.

Looking for media attention, the yippies generated their own publicity, such as threatening to put LSD in the Chicago water supply.

As protest and counterculture groups, many of the hippies, yippies, and other protesters had already had unfavorable confrontations with police, so when the authorities showed up at demonstrations or less serious events, they were greeted with shouts of “Pig!” Angered, and knowing that Mayor Daley never discouraged violence against protesters, the police pushed back the crowd and beat them with clubs. And this was before the convention even started. Though groups such as the yippies, the Mobe, and the Women’s Strike for Peace applied for permits to peaceably assemble and protest, Mayor Daley had them all rejected, except for one rally in Grant Park.

On Friday, August 23, the yippies met in Civic Center Plaza and elected their candidate, Pigasus the Pig. The police weren’t amused and after clashes with the yippies, seven protesters were arrested, and the pig was confiscated. That same day, some 6,000 National Guard troops were mobilized to begin practicing riot-control drills. On Sunday, August 25, the Mobe held a “Meet the Delegates” march near the Hilton Hotel, where most delegates stayed. The police established an 11 p.m. curfew and tried to enforce it with sweeps of baton-wielding officers. A crowd of about 2,000 people who were flushed out of Lincoln Park, were attacked by baton-wielding riot police in the Old Town section of Chicago. Police beat journalists, as well as protesters, during the riots.

On the morning when the convention opened, Tom Hayden, head of SDS, was among a group arrested as part of a 1,000-protester march on the police department. Though the march was detoured into Lincoln Park, the police assaulted the crowds and forced them to disperse.

On the first night of the convention, the police were a lot more forceful in trying to get the protesters out of Lincoln Park, which had been commandeered by the yippies and a series of protest bands to entertain the crowd. Police again imposed the 11 p.m. curfew, and at the designated hour, surrounded the park. The protesters built a barricade, and approximately 1,000 of them attempted to remain in the park. When a police cruiser began to push against the makeshift barricade, the protesters pelted the car with rocks and bottles. The police responded with tear gas and baton attacks. When the protesters started “oinking” at them, they began swinging their clubs at everyone and everything in sight until the park was cleared.

Rumor had it that when the park was emptied, the police attacked the parking lot, slashing the tires of cars with a McCarthy bumper sticker. (Eugene McCarthy was the most vocal antiwar candidate.)

Things only got worse after that. The police, tired, insulted, and encouraged by Mayor Daley, reacted to any opposition by the demonstrators. They arrested demonstrators, often dragging them off and clubbing anyone within reach, including innocent bystanders. The riots were broadcast live into American living rooms by photographers whose cameras weren’t smashed in the melee (see Figure 9-4).

Figure 9-4: Police and protesters square off near the Conrad Hilton Hotel in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

©Bettmann/CORBIS

On Tuesday in Lincoln Park, 200 clergy and religious leaders joined the crowd of 2,000 protesters trying to stay in the park after curfew. Police again used tear gas and batons to clear the park. Though protesters kept trying to march to the Amphitheatre, the police and National Guard never let the marchers anywhere near the actual convention site.

The violence continued for the rest of the week, and the events at the Chicago convention became another one of those defining moments of the ’60s. The demonstration and the police reaction polarized the country. People either believed that using force against an angry mob was justified, coming down on the side of law and order (usually equated with President Johnson and the Vietnam War) or sympathized with the protesters, viewing the actions in Chicago as police brutality and supporting the actions of the yippies, the hippies, and the rest of the antiwar movement.

There was actually a convention going on in the Chicago Amphitheater. Hubert Humphrey, Johnson’s vice president, became the Democratic presidential nominee. But the party was too divided, and he was too closely associated with Johnson’s stance on the war, so he lost the election to Richard Nixon (see Chapter 4).

During the week of the convention, 308 Americans were killed in Vietnam and another 1,144 were injured.

Trying the Chicago Eight

In an epilogue to the Chicago Riots, the organizers of the protests, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, David Dellinger, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Bobby Seale, John Froines, and Lee Weiner, were indicted for conspiring to cross state lines to incite a riot. They went to trial, and the trial became a bit of a circus, due to Hoffman and Rubin’s antics. One day, Hoffman and Rubin showed up wearing judicial robes. On another day, Hoffman was sworn in as a witness with one hand on the Bible while the other was making an obscene gesture in the court.

Five of the original eight (Seale’s trial was separated from the others, and Froines and Weiner were acquitted) were found guilty of intent to incite a riot across state lines, and all were acquitted on the conspiracy charge. The five were sentenced to a $5,000 and five years in prison, but in 1972, the convictions were overturned.

Winding Down the War

Lyndon Johnson’s war soon became Richard Nixon’s war. Though he had campaigned on the platform that he had a plan to end the war, Nixon had no better ideas than did Johnson, but Nixon had a brief “honeymoon period” — the antiwar movement temporarily slowed as the Nixon administration moved into the White House.

When it became clear that Nixon didn’t have any clear and progressive plan to end the war, the antiwar movement began to push once again. In 1969, they planned two major events: Moratorium of 1969 and the November Mobilization (see the next section). When Americans became aware that Nixon was actually expanding the war in Cambodia, the movement again gained momentum.

The nationwide response to the Cambodian invasion (see Chapter 10) was the last major victory of the antiwar movement. Campus demonstrations and antiwar activity in general declined after the spring of 1970, though violent scenes such as Kent State massacre the Jackson State killings served to further the antiwar cause. When Nixon used ARVN troops to invade Laos in February 1971, the antiwar movement’s reaction was smaller than expected. The fact that no U.S. troops were used, along with the steady withdrawal of U.S. forces from Vietnam, was slowly draining the will from the antiwar effort.

The Moratorium of October 1969 and the November Mobilization

Though many protest groups waited to see Nixon’s plan unfold, the lack of progress by the spring of 1969 compelled the antiwar groups to gear up for a new round of protests and demonstrations. The major events planned for 1969 were the Moratorium of October and the Mobilization of November. The Moratorium was particularly worrisome for the Nixon administration because it was a nonviolent protest that threatened to disrupt business as an ongoing monthly protest. Millions of Americans took part in the October 15 Moratorium, while millions of others sympathized with the protest. There were more than 200 major demonstrations on that one day.

In November 1969, some 250,000 people converged on Washington to protest the continuing war. This protest was the largest to date. Nixon vowed not to bend to antiwar pressure. As a prelude to the main event, 40,000 demonstrators filed past the White House in a 36 hour March of Death, depositing in canisters the names of the 45,000 American soldiers killed in the war to date. The main event of the Mobilization was the Saturday morning rally on the Mall by the Washington Monument where a half million protesters gathered peacefully to call for a withdrawal from the war. The Moratorium and the Mobilization were the high water marks for the antiwar movement.

More than 14,000 people were arrested at the November Mobilization — as many as participated in many of the marches of 1965.

At the end of 1969, the antiwar movement and Nixon had reached a standoff. Nixon realized that he would not be able to force a breakthrough with an esca- lation of force and would have to settle for a strategy of Vietnamization. As long as Nixon continued the peace talks and continued to incrementally bring home the American soldiers, he could count on the public’s support for his policies. By the spring of 1970, the antiwar movement lost momentum, and the protests began to be significantly smaller, because Nixon’s Vietnamization seemed to be what the people wanted — a deescalation of the conflict and a steady flow of American boys back home.

Death on campus

On April 30, 1970, the previously secret bombing of Cambodia shifted into a ground-force invasion designed to stop the North Vietnamese supply lines. Nixon’s announcement of the invasion and the New York Times revelation of the earlier secret bombing campaign prompted national antiwar leaders to organize a national student strike. As the strikes occurred at campuses across the nation, some turned into tragic events.

At Kent State University in Ohio, protesters focused their wrath on the campus R.O.T.C. building, prompting the governor to dispatch National Guard troops. On May 4, 1970, Guard troops confronting a hostile crowd fired on the students, killing four. Of the four killed, two had been a part of the protest, and the other two had been walking by on their way to class. The killing of unarmed protesters sparked further protests across the country. More than 400 universities and colleges shut down. One hundred thousand protesters marched in Washington, circling the Capitol and the White House. Nixon had campaigned on a promise to bring the troops home, yet after only a year and a half, the results were that the war had expanded.

Shortly after the Kent State Massacre, another group of National Guardsmen stormed a college dormitory on the Jackson State College campus. Two unarmed young black students were killed, and another 11 were wounded. Over the next few months, hundreds of college campuses closed because of student strikes and demonstrations. Eighty percent of all college campuses reported some kind of protest in the wake of the massacres of unarmed students. A Gallup poll after the Kent State Massacre showed that campus unrest was one of the most important issues for many Americans.

Problems within the military

Though resistance to the draft was a serious problem for the military, it was far less serious than the problem of desertion. There were far more desertions than there were draft evaders. Many of these deserters embarrassed the government even more by forming active antiwar groups in Canada, England, France, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Germany. According to the Department of Defense there were 503,926 incidents of desertion between July 1, 1966, and December 31, 1973, but between 1963 and 1973 only 191,840 cases of men failed to respond to the draft.

The U.S. military faced even greater dangers from other internal problems such as morale, discipline, drugs, and racial conflict, which began to flare badly in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Soldiers challenged their leaders because they all knew that the United States was withdrawing under Nixon’s Vietnamization program, and no one wanted to be the last to die in Vietnam. Soldiers lacked incentives to fight and began to rebel, oftentimes asking: “What are they going to do about it, send me to ‘Nam?”

Drugs were a problem in Vietnam but it became even worse in the late years of the war. There was a steady, cheap supply of marijuana and heroin, and many soldiers used drugs as a way to cope with being in Vietnam. According to a 1971 congressional survey, drugs in Vietnam were more plentiful than cigarettes or chewing gum.

The path to advancement among officers was to have strong kill ratios, and as the war wound down, this became a source of direct conflict between officers and grunts (enlisted men). As officers sought to enhance their jackets, they pushed for aggressive action and engagement, but the typical grunt knew the United States was leaving and often tried to avoid any unnecessary contact with the enemy to increase his own chances of survival. Thus the search-and-destroy missions became search-and-evade missions instead. When gung-ho officers pushed the issue, the grunts began to “frag” their officers as a way to eliminate their problems. Fragging was the practice of tossing a grenade into the tent or foxhole of your commanding officer to wound or kill him — either way the grunts would be free of the officers who, they felt, placed them in danger. For obvious reasons, reliable statistics on fragging are difficult to obtain, yet some sources estimate the number to be more than 2,000.

Peace signs and the letters F.T.A. (F*%# the Army) became common symbols on combat helmets. Soldiers and sailors began to mutiny. As early as mid-1969, an entire company of soldiers in the 196th Light Infantry Brigade refused to go out of base camp on a patrol. Later in 1969, soldiers in the famed First Air Cavalry Division refused to go out on patrol right in front of a CBS television crew. Over the next 12 months the same division experienced 35 more refusals to engage.

Sabotage was another problem. On May 26, 1970, as the U.S.S. Anderson prepared to depart San Diego for Vietnam, it was discovered that someone had dropped nuts, bolts, and chain links into the main gear shaft, causing a major breakdown. Thousands of dollars of damage was done, and the departure was delayed several weeks. In a more serious case, the aircraft carrier, U.S.S. Ranger was also sabotaged as investigators found a paint scraper and two 12-inch bolts that had been dropped into the engine’s reduction gears. This incident caused more than a $1 million in damages and delayed their departure by 3 1/2 months. Sabotage of aircraft and helicopters cancelled missions, thereby rewarding those bold enough to commit such acts.

Overall, the military was coming apart at the seams. Each incident of insubordination inspired others to push further. The sheer numbers of the resistors kept the military from making mass arrests. As the war wound down, military planners recognized that the military would need to be rebuilt and revamped before it was ready for any new action.

The Winter Soldier Investigation

In February 1971 about 150 Vietnam veterans convened “The Winter Soldier Investigation” in Detroit to hold hearings on their experiences in the Vietnam War. These men were moved to tell their stories because the U.S. military had described the events of the My Lai Massacre as unique and unusual. They wanted to set the record straight, so 200 former soldiers testified about atrocities they had been involved in or had witnessed. The Winter Soldiers explained that incidents like the My Lai Massacre were the natural conclusion to the obsessive anti-Communist stance, the free-fire zones, and the body counts. The reports horrified the small number of Americans who dared to listen to them.

The VVAW

The Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) also protested the war, demanding an immediate end. Their former participation in the war gave them a unique perspective from which to criticize the conduct of the war. The VVAW’s participation in the antiwar movement made a stronger statement than protests from those who just wanted to avoid having to serve. Because the men of the VVAW had served, they were more respected, and thus they gathered a good deal of attention. In April 1971 the VVAW conducted what they called operation Dewey Canyon III — a protest in which thousands of veterans came to Washington, D.C., to demand an end to the war. Hundreds of veterans threw away the medals they had earned in combat as a powerful demonstration of their frustration and shame for their role in the war.

In the 2004 presidential campaign, Democratic candidate John Kerry was either praised or condemned (depending on your point of view) for participating in the VVAW.