Opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War
Opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War began with demonstrations in 1965 against the escalating role of the United States in the Vietnam War and grew into a broad social movement over the ensuing several years. This movement informed and helped shape the vigorous and polarizing debate, primarily in the United States, during the second half of the 1960s and early 1970s on how to end the Vietnam War.
"Opposition to the Vietnam War" redirects here. For opposition to Australian involvement, see Opposition to Australian involvement in the Vietnam War.Opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War
28 January 1965 – 29 March 1973
- End of military conscription
- Withdrawal of troops from Vietnam
- Disruption of military conscription
- Lowered military morale
- End of the Johnson presidency
- Voting age lowered to 18
- Withdrawal of troops and aid
Many in the peace movement within the United States were children, mothers, or anti-establishment youth. Opposition grew with participation by the African American civil rights and second-wave feminist movements, Chicano Movements, and sectors of organized labor. Additional involvement came from many other groups, including educators, clergy, academics, journalists, lawyers, physicians such as Benjamin Spock, and military veterans.
Their actions consisted mainly of peaceful, nonviolent events; few events were deliberately provocative and violent. In some cases, police used violent tactics against peaceful demonstrators. By 1967, according to Gallup polls, an increasing majority of Americans considered military involvement in Vietnam to be a mistake, echoed decades later by the then-head of American war planning, former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.[1]
In December 1964, leads six hundred people in an antiwar demonstration in San Francisco.[116]
Joan Baez
(SANE) – liberal international organization that was founded in 1957 by a group of nuclear pacifists. They attempted to increase public opinion in favor of their cause in an attempt to influence policy makers to halt atmospheric nuclear testing and reversing the arms race and the Cold War.[162]
Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy
Another committee was called – Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
SNCC
(NBAWADU) – led by Gwen Patton and formed from black members of SNCC and socialist parties.[32]
National Black Anti-War Anti-Draft Union
National Black Draft Counselors (NBDC) – led by and created to help young black men avoid being drafted.
[32]
(WILPF) – founded in 1919 after World War I and provided women with an early entry into the antiwar movement.[163]
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom
– founded in 1920, was one of the first groups to call for an end to military involvement in Vietnam.[164]
The League of Women Voters
– popularized the use of kneel-ins and prayer to end the war and stop its escalation.[161]
Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur
Bay Area Asian Coalition Against the War (BAACAW)
[165]
(TWLF) – Some Asian American student organizations under this were: Filipino American Collegiate (PACE), Asian American Political Alliance (AAPA), and Chinese for Social Action (ICSA)
Third World Liberation Front
– an organization of officers formed within the U.S. military.
Concerned Officers Movement
– an antiwar and GI rights organization during the Vietnam War.
Movement for a Democratic Military
– coffeehouses created by antiwar activists as a method of supporting antiwar and anti-military sentiment among GIs.
GI Coffeehouses
– an organization of antiwar and anti-military GIs formed within the U.S. Navy in San Diego, CA.
GI's Against Fascism
FTA – a group whose initials either stand for or Fuck the Army, depending on the situation, was led by Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland.[169]
Free the Army
Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam (CALCAV)
[170]
WIN (Workshop in Nonviolence) Magazine editors and staff included , Marty Jezer, Paul Johnson, Susan Kent Cakars and Tad Richards. Published authors such as Grace Paley, Barbara Deming, Andrea Dworkin and Abbie Hoffman.
Maris Cakars
The Student Libertarian Movement – Libertarian organization that was formed in 1972. The guiding principles of this organization were opposition to the war in Vietnam and opposition to the draft. The organization did not take a strong stand on racial issues. For example, "In virtually hundreds of issues of libertarian newspapers, bulletins, and journals, the civil rights movement, Black nationalism, or race in general composed no more than 1 percent of all articles surveyed."
[171]
Corps of Kazoos (FUCK) – created to make fun of the military and campus ROTC program at Furman University in South Carolina. Such anti-campus ROTC groups were common throughout the U.S.[79]
Furman University
Traditional peace groups like , American Friends Service Committee, the Bruderhof, War Resisters League, and the Catholic Workers Movement, became involved in the antiwar movement as well.[172]
Fellowship of Reconciliation
Various committees and campaigns for peace in Vietnam came about, including Campaign for Disarmament, Campaign to End the Air War, Campaign to Stop Funding the War, Campaign to Stop the Air War, Catholic Peace Fellowship, and .[172]
Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors
Concerned Americans Abroad, London-based group established by
Heinz Norden
"Hell, no, we won't go!" was heard in antidraft and antiwar protests throughout the country.
[173]
"Bring the troops home now!" was heard in mass marches in Washington D.C., Seattle, San Francisco, Berkeley, New York, and San Diego.
"Dow shall not kill." and "Making money burning babies!" were two slogans used by students at and other colleges to protest the Dow Chemical Company, the maker of napalm and Agent Orange.[13] and it refers to The Ten Commandments
UCLA
"Stop the war, feed the poor." was a popular slogan used by socially conscious and minority antiwar groups, protesting that the war diverted funds that struggling Americans desperately needed.
[174]
"Girls say yes to men who say no." was an antidraft slogan used by the SDS and other organizations.
[175]
"War is not healthy for children and other living things" was a slogan of , and was popular on posters.[176]
Another Mother for Peace
"End the nuclear race, not the human race." was first used by the in antinuclear demonstrations and became incorporated into the antiwar events.[177]
WSP
"Not my son, not your son, not their sons." was an antiwar and antidraft slogan used by the during protests.[178]
WSP
"Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, the Viet Cong are gonna win." was a common anti-war chant during anti-war marches and rallies in the later sixties.
"Hey, hey, LBJ! How many kids did you kill today?" was especially chanted by students and other marchers and demonstrators in opposition to .[179]
Lyndon B. Johnson
"One, two, three, four, we don't want your fucking war." was chanted in marches from Brisbane to Boston.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck it all. We don't want this anymore." was also chanted in marches from Brisbane to Boston.
[180]
"আমার নাম তোমার নাম ভিয়েতনাম" (Amar nam tomar nam Bhiẏetnam; lit. 'Your name, My Name Vietnam'): Slogans chanted by leftists of Calcutta, including future Pranab Mukherjee[181]
President of India
Leaflet targeting Veterans and GIs.
Stop the Hawk protest sticker.
1975 flyer for a protest march.
Fatigue Press GI Underground Newspaper May 1970 – 1000 GIs march against the war.
DeBenedetti, Charles (1990). . contributor Charles Chatfield. Syracuse University Press. ISBN 978-0-8156-0245-3.
An American Ordeal: The Antiwar Movement of the Vietnam Era
Aaron Fountain "The War in the Schools: San Francisco Bay Area High Schools and the Anti–Vietnam War Movement, 1965–1973" pp. 22–41 from California History, Volume 92, Issue 2, Summer 2015
John Hagan, Northern passage: American Vietnam War resisters in Canada, Harvard University Press, 2001. 978-0-674-00471-9
ISBN
Mary Susannah Robbins, Against the Vietnam War: Writings by Activists, Rowman & Littlefield, 2007. 978-0-7425-5914-1
ISBN
Robert R. Tomes, Apocalypse Then: American Intellectuals and the Vietnam War, 1954–1975, NYU Press, 2000. 978-0-8147-8262-0
ISBN
King, Martin Luther Jr. "Beyond Vietnam". New York. April 4, 1967.
Tygart, Clarence. "Social Movement Participation: Clergy and the Anti-Vietnam War Movement." Sociological Analysis Vol. 34. No. 3 (Autumn, 1973): pp. 202–211. Print.
Friedland, Michael B. Lift Up Your Voice Like A Trumpet: White Clergy And The Civil Rights And Antiwar Movements, 1954–1973. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. December 15, 2013.
McCarthy, David. "'The Sun Never Sets on the Activities of the CIA': Project Resistance at William and Mary". Routledge Publishing: September 4, 2012.
Patler, Nicholas. Quaker History, Fall 2105, 18–39.
Norman's Triumph: the Transcendent Language of Self-Immolation
Zinn, Howard. A People's History of the United States. New York: HarperCollins Publishing, 2003. Print.
Maeda, Daryl. Chains of Babylon: Rise of Asian America. University of Minnesota Press, 2009.
Lee, Erika. The Making of Asian Ameria: A History. Simon & Schuster, 2015.
Srikanth, Rajini and Hyoung Song, Min. The Cambridge History of Asian American Literature. Cambridge University Press, 2015.
Bates, Tom. Rads: The 1970 Bombing of the Army Math Research Center at the University of Wisconsin and Its Aftermath. New York: HarperCollins, 1992.
Heineman, Kenneth J. Campus Wars: The Peace Movement at American State Universities in the Vietnam Era. New York: New York University Press, 2010.
, ed. (1999). "Antiwar Movement". Historical Dictionary of the 1960s. Greenwood. ISBN 978-0-313-29271-2.
Olson, James S.
Patler, Nicholas. "". Quaker History, Fall 2015, 18–39.
Norman's Triumph: the Transcendent Language of Self-Immolation
Includes chronology, texts, online audio and video (via UC Berkeley)
Social Activism Sound Recording Project: Anti-Vietnam War Protests in the San Francisco Bay Area & Beyond
multimedia collection of photographs, video, oral histories and essays on Vietnam War resistance.
Pacific Northwest Antiwar and Radical History Project
Book excerpt of student seizure of WSU in Detroit
This collection contains leaflets and newspapers that were distributed on the University of Washington campus during the decades of the 1960s and 1970s.
University of Washington Libraries Digital Collections – Vietnam War Era Ephemera
– video by Democracy Now!
As Obama Visits Afghanistan, Tavis Smiley on Rev. Martin Luther King and His Opposition to the Vietnam War
Records of Statement on the War in Vietnam are held by Simon Fraser University's Special Collections and Rare Books
– Documentary on draft resistance and its impact during the Vietnam War.
The Boys Who Said NO
– Organization of Vietnam War peace activists, including veterans and scholars.