Vietnam War Protests

The collective antiwar sentiment in America, expressed through demonstrations and marches during [Page 795]the 1960s and 1970s by individuals and groups opposed to the U.S. military presence in Vietnam. The Vietnam conflict, whose origins and relevance many did not understand, left an entire nation questioning the policies of a government it had always trusted. The country had not been so divided since the American Civil War. Every American family was affected, more than 50,000 Americans were killed, and many of those who returned suffered (and continued to suffer) deep physical and emotional scars.

Origins of the Antiwar Movement

The origins and growth of the protests and adversary culture before and during the Vietnam era stemmed from the monumental social changes taking place at the time. The so-called baby boomers witnessed unprecedented economic expansion, hypnotic effects of television, and insecurity induced by the development of the nuclear bomb and the ongoing Cold War with Soviet Russia. They saw the exponential growth of suburbia and the birth of the consumer society—two phenomena that many believe contributed to the breakdown of both the extended and nuclear family, and the religious bonds that typically went with them. The nature of music also changed from the acoustic rhythms of blues and boogie-woogie in the mid-1950s to the electric rumble of rock and roll, whose lyrics became increasingly politicized.

In sum, most members of the Vietnam generation grew up with a sense of moral engagement, unlimited social prospects, and social hopefulness. Racism and social injustice, made more glaring by the power of television, threatened to burst the bubble of optimism and invincibility, and the civil rights struggle became the most important catalyst of the antiwar movement. Predisposed to protest, this generation was enticed by counterculture.

Nature and Evolution

The antiwar movement passed through three broad phases. In the first phase (before 1966), opposition to expanding the war in Vietnam was primarily liberal in inspiration. In the second phase (between 1966 and 1969), the movement's center of gravity shifted to being increasingly radical as the war's unpopularity was growing in the country at large. In the third phase (from 1969 to the fall of Saigon in 1975), the more liberally centered movement again took over, which some argue helped to limit U.S. military activity in Vietnam.

For the liberals, the idealism engendered in a new generation inspired by the youngest president in the nation's history established the foundations of the early movement. Before 1965, public demonstrations against the war were small, rare, and went largely unnoticed by the administration and the press. Very few demonstrations were sponsored by the liberal organizations, with the exception of the National Committee for A Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE), which in 1963 called publicly for a U.S. disengagement from Vietnam.

Small-scale radical actions continued. In August 1963, a march commemorating the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was organized by a group of demonstrators called the Student Peace Union (SPU). At the same time in New York, the Catholic Worker Movement marched in front of Vietnam's permanent observer mission to the United Nations. In the same month, 250,000 people participated in the March on Washington and listened to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. deliver his I Have a Dream speech.

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