How did the anti-war movement react to US involvement in Vietnam?

How did the anti-war movement react to US involvement in Vietnam?

Support Demonstration for draft resister Mike Leavy, at Seattle's Federal Building, September 13, 1968. Copyright (c) Fred Lonidier.

This page is one part of a multi-part illustrated history, written by Jessie Kindig, that provides an overview of regional and national antiwar experiences. Click the link below to be taken to each section.

How did the anti-war movement react to US involvement in Vietnam?

Flyer for the GI-civilian Antiwar Basic Training Days Conference, April 5-6 in Seattle, 1968. Courtesy of the Special Collections Library.

The Vietnam War sparked a mass antiwar movement employing the civil disobedience tactics and grassroots mobilizations of the civil rights struggles. The early movement was also spurred by networks of student protest already formed during the Berkeley Free Speech Movement in 1964 and the founding of Students for a Democratic Society in 1960.

Though sailors and soldiers following World War II had protested US aid to the French colonization project in Vietnam, and liberal anti-nuclear groups had begun discussing the conflict in the early 1960s, it was not until President Johnson’s switch in 1965 from a proxy war to a full-scale air and ground war that the large organized protest to the war emerged.

Led by student organizations like Students for a Democratic Society, the antiwar movement developed rapidly, and by 1969, hundreds of thousands of people were demonstrating against the war. The following year, hundreds of campuses across the country went on strike in protest of Nixon’s escalation of the war into Cambodia. Inside all branches of the military, soldiers began refusing orders, printing underground antiwar newspapers, and organizing small-scale mutinies, which crippled the military’s ability to function. Protesting the war led many to question the social and political systems that produced such wars, and activists tied their critiques to issues of capitalism, racism, economic exploitation, and women’s and gay liberation.

The Pacific Northwest, with its large array of military bases, universities, and history of radicalism, was a flashpoint for the Vietnam antiwar movement. Antiwar GIs at Fort Lewis and students at the University of Washington were some of the first in the country to organize collectively, and inspired activists in larger cities. Draft resistance organizations formed underground railroads to funnel AWOL soldiers and draft resisters to nearby Canada. Students in Seattle went on strike for Black Studies programs and again to protest the war. Shaun Maloney, head of the Seattle's Local 19 of the longshoremen's union, the ILWU, told reporters in 1972 that President Nixon’s attack on North Vietnam was no different than his attack on American workers’ living standards at home.[1]

Go to the next chapter:
Ch. 5: Anti-Nuclear Organizing in the 1970s and 1980s, and Beyond

Copyright (c) 2008 Jessie Kindig

[1] Shaun Maloney Papers, Special Collections Library, University of Washington (Accession 5255-001, Box 21, Folder 83).

Two Days in October | Article From the Collection: Vietnam War

They marched by the thousands, on campuses from coast to coast. At different times they chose different targets: the Pentagon, Presidents Nixon and Johnson, the draft, Dow Chemical. But the students all acted from a common belief that the Vietnam War was wrong. As that conflict escalated, the protests grew in strength, and some turned violent. They also triggered a backlash.

How did the anti-war movement react to US involvement in Vietnam?
Courtesy: Wisconsin Historical Society

Getting Started
In many ways the student protests at the University of Wisconsin mirrored those taking place on campuses across the country. The first substantial demonstration, in October 1963, occurred when there were only American military advisers in Vietnam, and it opposed the government's support for Ngo Dinh Diem, the repressive president of South Vietnam. Some early antiwar events were organized by faculty, such as the teach-in on April 1, 1965, that future Chancellor William Sewell put together. It was the second such teach-in in the nation and came only a few weeks after the first American combat troops arrived in Vietnam. Some teach-ins involved only lectures and discussion; some combined theory with practical steps, such as the 15,000 who marched from the University of California at Berkeley towards the Oakland Army Terminal in October 1965.

Protesting the Draft
Demonstrations grew in 1966, spurred by a change in the Selective Service System's draft policy that exposed students in the bottom of half of their classes to the possibility that their deferments would be revoked and they would be drafted. Teach-ins changed to sit-ins — student take-overs of administration offices. A three-day event at the University of Chicago got national attention in May 1966, and University of Wisconsin students also staged their own occupation of an administration building that month. The Madison draft protest, which drew several thousand students to one rally, was peacefully resolved by a promise that the faculty would review the school's draft policy. But tensions rose at campuses like Cornell, where students tried to organize a national burn-your-draft-card movement; and Harvard, where protesters trapped Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in a police car and assailed him with questions about the war.

Anti-Dow Sentiment
As 1967 began, many antiwar students continued traditional forms of dissent, writing letters to the editor and taking out advertisements in campus publications. But even as antiwar student body presidents were meeting with Secretary of State Dean Rusk, other students were planning sit-ins tied to napalm-maker Dow Chemicals attempts to recruit on campus. The first anti-Dow protests took place in October 1966, with more than a hundred occurring at colleges nationwide within a year. University of Wisconsin students staged their first Dow-related sit-in in February 1967, and when Dow returned that October, the protests and police response marked the first time that a campus antiwar demonstration had turned violent.

How did the anti-war movement react to US involvement in Vietnam?
Courtesy: Wisconsin Historical Society

Violence on Campuses
It would not be the last time violence broke out. Rough confrontations became much more common in the years that followed, culminating most horribly in the May 1970 shooting of 13 Kent State University students by National Guardsmen. Four of those Kent State students died. That event, combined with Nixon's invasion of Cambodia, led to protests at more than 1,300 college campuses, with some 500 closed by student and faculty strikes. ROTC facilities were attacked, and police and National Guard troops were dispatched to more than a hundred colleges. In August of that year, the antiwar protests at the University of Wisconsin took an ominous turn; a bomb destroyed the building holding the Army Math Research Center, killing one young scientist.

The Backlash
Since the first wave of teach-ins hit campuses, the American government had been working to get its side of the story out at universities. For example, it supported the American Friends of Vietnam, a pro-administration group that held a rally in June 1965 at Michigan State University. The group could never match the intensity or numbers of antiwar demonstrations. But the violent consequences of some of those protests helped trigger a backlash of support for the government and targeted corporations like Dow. A record number of University of Wisconsin students signed up for Dow interviews in the wake of the October 1967 bloodshed. Wisconsin legislation held hearings denouncing student protests. And local newspaper editorials overwhelmingly supported Dow and criticized the students. The pro-war group Young Americans for Freedom saw increased enrollment in its University of Wisconsin chapter. A right-wing student newspaper was founded, the Badger Herald. And polls after the Dow protests showed that large majorities felt the demonstrations were "acts of disloyalty" against the soldiers in Vietnam that hurt the larger antiwar cause.

While there had been a long history in the United States of popular resistance to foreign wars, such as the Anti-Imperialist League’s campaign against the U.S. invasion of the Philippines in the early 20th century, the movement against the Vietnam War was unprecedented in scope. There already was a small peace movement prior to the escalation of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, based primarily on concerns around nuclear proliferation, particularly nuclear testing. This movement was led primarily by the Committee for Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE) established in 1957, but also included the pacifist Committee for Nonviolent Action (CNVA), founded that same year, and Women’s Strike for Peace (WSP). The early opposition to the Vietnam War was largely restricted to pacifists and leftists empowered by the successful application of strategic nonviolent action in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement. Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) emerged in 1960, espousing a democratic socialist vision and opposition to militarism and soon became primarily focused on ending the war. The first major protests began in 1964 and quickly gained strength as the war escalated. Starting at the University of Michigan, “teach-ins” on the Vietnam War modeled after seminars raising consciousness in support of the Civil Rights Movement, brought in thousands of participants. In addition to national protests, which attracted tens of thousands to Washington, DC, there were acts of civil disobedience that became more widespread over time, including sit-ins on the steps of the Pentagon, draft induction centers, and railroad tracks transporting troops, as well as the public burning of draft cards.

Opposition increased in tandem with the escalation of the war, as body counts escalated, reports of atrocities against civilians circulated, draft calls increased, and prospects of a U.S. victory dissipated. In particular, military conscription began to impact a growing number of working and middle class families and helped mobilize college students, who faced the prospects of being sent to Vietnam soon after graduation. Recruiters for the military as well as companies associated with the war—such as Dow Chemical, the chief manufacturer of napalm—were increasingly met by protesters when they came to campuses. In 1967, 300,000 marched in New York City and 50,000 protesters descended on the Pentagon, with over 700 being arrested. A national organization of draft resisters is formed in 1967, calling itself the Resistance, as many thousands were jailed, fled to sanctuary in Canada, or went underground. Young people increasingly fused political opposition with cultural experimentation, defying traditional American norms. Surveillance, smear campaigns and staged support rallies were organized by government agencies to inhibit the growth of the movement and media coverage was largely unsympathetic, yet by the end of 1967, public support for the war dropped to barely one-third of the population.

U.S. troop levels in Vietnam peaked in 1968 at 540,000, with more than 300 Americans being killed every week. Despite this, an NLF/North Vietnamese offensive at the end of January underscored the unwinnability of the war. The nomination of pro-war candidates by the two major political parties despite widespread anti-war sentiments, combined with violent police actions against anti-war demonstrators at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago and elsewhere, served to further radicalize the anti-war movement. A countercultural group calling themselves the Yippies staged innovative actions and guerrilla theater, radical priests raided offices of draft boards destroying records, and prominent veterans of the civil rights struggle, including Martin Luther King, Jr., became increasingly outspoken against the war. The news media began to become more skeptical in its war coverage and mainstream churches and unions began to speak out more boldly. Blockades of thoroughfares and other forms of nonviolent direct action became increasingly common. These pressures forced the Johnson administration to begin peace talks with the North Vietnamese and NLF and to suspend the bombing of North Vietnam.

What cohesion existed in the anti-war movement declined in the coming years despite a popular wave of energy and support, as many activists embraced far left ideologies, countercultural lifestyles, or abandoned their commitment to nonviolent tactics. Still, three million people participated in demonstrations as part of the Moratorium on the War in October 1969 across the country and half a million protested in Washington, DC the following month.

President Nixon’s hopes that the gradual withdrawal of troops and a concomitant decline in draft rolls would diminish the anti-war movement were shattered with the U.S. decision to invade Cambodia in the spring of 1970, which resulted in large-scale protests. Tensions between the anti-war movement and the U.S. government escalated further when six college students were killed and dozens wounded in anti-war demonstrations at Kent State University and Jackson State University. Hundreds of colleges and universities shut down from student strikes and occupations of campus buildings and other disruptions forced a withdrawal of U.S. ground forces from Cambodia less than eight weeks after the initial invasion.

Desertions and mutinies within the U.S. armed forces made prosecution of the war increasingly difficult. Three quarters of a million people marched on Washington in April of 1971, followed in early May by tens of thousands of protesters attempting to shut down government operations in the nation’s capital in early May by blockading bridges and thoroughfares. Further revelations of massacres of Vietnamese civilians by U.S. troops, systematic deceptions of the public and Congress by the administration, torture of political prisoners in South Vietnam, and domestic spying on U.S. citizens alienated the U.S. public further from U.S. government policy. However, increasingly violent protests—while still representing only a small minority of the movement—ended up alienating most Americans from the anti-war cause as well. Government agents would routinely infiltrate anti-war groups, encouraging them to use violence in order to marginalize the movement further.

Despite a brief upsurge in protests following and resumption of the air war against North Vietnam in the spring of 1972, the factionalization of the movement and the withdrawal of most U.S. forces led to a decline in protests. Still, the anti-war movement did force the United States to sign a peace treaty, withdraw its remaining forces, and end the draft in early 1973. Continued U.S. support for the Thieu dictatorship in Saigon and the breakdown of the cease-fire led to small ongoing protests, leading Congress to finally refuse additional U.S. aid to the South Vietnamese regime as the final NLF/North Vietnamese offensive forced the regime’s collapse in April of 1975. Vietnam was reunified under communist rule two years later.

By the end of the war, the U.S. anti-war movement had amassed an impressive record of nonviolent action. Over a decade of organizing, actions had included mass protests and vigils; sit-ins, occupations, and blockades; conscientious objection, draft resistance and desertion; guerrilla theater; obstruction of military recruiters, arms shipments and personnel; petitioning and letter-writing campaigns; destruction of draft files.