The first protests against U.S. involvement in Vietnam were in 1945, when United States Merchant Marine sailors condemned the U.S. government for the use of U.S. merchant ships to transport European troops to "subjugate the native population" of Vietnam.[1]
1954
American Quakers began protesting via the media. For example, in May, "just after the defeat of the French at Dien Bien Phu, the Service Committee bought a page in The New York Times to protest what seemed to be the tendency of the USA to step into Indo-China as France stepped out. We expressed our fear that in so doing, America would back into a war."[2]
1960
November. Amid rising U.S. involvement in Vietnam, 1,100 Quakers undertook a silent protest vigil—the group "ringed the Pentagon for parts of two days".[2]
Early August. White and black activists gathered near Philadelphia, Mississippi for the memorial service of three civil rights workers. One of the speakers bitterly spoke out against Johnson's use of force in Vietnam, comparing it to violence used against blacks in Mississippi.[7]
February 12–16. Anti-U.S. demonstrations in various cities in the world, "including a break-in at the U.S. embassy in Budapest, Hungary, by some 200 Asian and African students."[10]
March 16. An 82-year-old Detroit woman named Alice Herz self-immolated to make a statement against the horrors of the war. She died ten days later.[11]
March 24. First SDS organized teach-in, at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. 3,000 students attend and the idea spreads fast.
April. Oklahoma college students sent out hundreds of thousands of pamphlets with pictures of dead babies in a combat zone on them to portray a message about battles taking place in Vietnam.
April 17. The SDS-organized March Against the Vietnam War onto Washington, D.C. was the largest anti-war demonstration in the U.S. to date with 15,000 to 20,000 people attending. Paul Potter demands a radical change of society.
May 5. Several hundred people carrying a black coffin marched to the Berkeley, California draft board, and 40 men burned their draft cards.[12]
May 21–23. Vietnam Day Committee organized large teach-in at UC Berkeley. 10–30,000 attend.
May 22. The Berkeley draft board was visited again, with 19 men burning their cards. President Lyndon B. Johnson was hung in effigy.[12]
Summer. Young Black-Americans in McComb, Mississippi learn one of their classmates was killed in Vietnam and distribute a leaflet saying "No Mississippi Negroes should be fighting in Vietnam for the White man's freedom".[7]
June. Richard Steinke, a West Point graduate in Vietnam, refused to board an aircraft taking him to a remote Vietnamese village, stating the war "is not worth a single American life".[7]
June 27. End Your Silence, an open letter in the New York Times by the group Artists and Writers Protest against the War in Vietnam.[13]
July. The Vietnam Day Committee organized militant protest in Oakland, California ends in inglorious debacle, when the organizers end the march from Oakland to Berkeley to avoid a confrontation with police.
October 15. David J. Miller burned his draft card at a rally again held near the Armed Forces Induction Center on Whitehall Street. The 24-year-old pacifist, member of the Catholic Worker Movement, became the first man arrested and convicted under the 1965 amendment to the Selective Service Act of 1948.[15]
Europe, October 15–16. First "International Days of Protest". Anti-U.S. demonstrations in London, Rome, Brussels, Copenhagen and Stockholm.
October 16. Tens of thousands march down New York’s Fifth Avenue to protest the war, in a parade organized by the NY Fifth Avenue Peace Parade Committee.
October 20. Stephen Lynn Smith, a student at the University of Iowa, spoke to a rally at the Memorial Union in Iowa City, Iowa, and burned his draft card. He was arrested, found guilty and put on three years probation.[16]
October 30. Pro-Vietnam War march in New York City brings 25,000.
November 2. In front of the Pentagon in Washington, as thousands of employees were streaming out of the building in the late afternoon, Norman Morrison, a thirty-two-year-old pacifist, father of three, stood below the third-floor windows of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, doused himself with kerosene, and set himself afire, giving up his life in protest against the war.[7]
November 27. SANE-sponsored March on Washington in 1965. 15,000 to 20,000 demonstrators.
December 16–17. High school students in Des Moines, Iowa, are suspended for wearing black armbands to "mourn the deaths on both sides" and in support of Robert F. Kennedy's call for a Christmas truce. The students sued the Des Moines School District, resulting in the 1969 U.S. Supreme Court decision in favor of the students, Tinker v. Des Moines.
1966
From September 1965 to January 1970, 170,000 men had been drafted and another 180,000 enlisted. By January, 2,000,000 men had secured college deferments.
March 31. David Paul O'Brien and three companions burned their draft cards on the steps of the South Boston Courthouse. The case was tried by the Supreme Court in United States v. O'Brien.
Muhammad Ali (Cassius Clay) refused to go to war, famously stating that he had "no quarrel with the Viet Cong" and that "no Viet Cong ever called me nigger." Ali also said he would not go "10,000 miles to help murder, kill, and burn other people to simply help continue the domination of white slavemasters over dark people."[18] In 1967 he was sentenced to 5 years in prison, but was released on appeal by the United States Supreme Court.
Summer. Six members of the SNCC invade an induction center in Atlanta and are later arrested.[7]
July 3. A crowd of over 4,000 demonstrate outside of the U.S. Embassy in London. Scuffles break out between the protesters and police, and at least 31 people are arrested.[19]
January 29 – February 5. Angry Arts Week by the Artists Protest group.
April 4. Martin Luther King Jr. speaks at Riverside church in New York City about the Vietnam War: "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence". King stated that, "somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours."[7]
April 15. At Sheep Meadow in Central Park in New York City, some 60 young men including a few Cornell University students came together to burn their draft cards in a Maxwell House coffee can.[20] More join them, including uniformed Green Beret Army Reservist Gary Rader. As many as 158 cards are burned.[21]
Stockholm (May) and Roskilde, Denmark (November). International War Crimes Tribunal, known as the Russell Tribunal, unanimously finds the U.S. government and its armed forces "guilty of the deliberate, systematic and large-scale bombardment of civilian targets, including civilian populations, dwellings, villages, dams, dikes, medical establishments, leper colonies, schools, churches, pagodas, historical and cultural monuments".
In the summer of 1967, Neil Armstrong and various other NASA officials began a tour of South America to raise awareness for space travel. According to First Man, a biography of Armstrong's life, during the tour several South American college students protested the astronaut, and shouted such phrases as "Murderers get out of Vietnam!" and other anti-Vietnam War messages.
October 16. A day of widespread war protest organized by The Mobe in 30 cities across the U.S., with some 1,400 draft cards burned.[28]
October 18. "Dow Day" at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in Madison, Wisconsin, the first university Vietnam War protest to turn violent as thousands of students protest Dow Chemical, the manufacturer of napalm, during the company's campus recruitment visit. Nineteen police officers and about 50 students were treated for injuries at hospitals.[29][30]
October 27. Father Philip Berrigan, a Josephite priest and World War II veteran, led a group now known as the Baltimore Four who went to a draft board in Baltimore, drenched the draft records with blood, and waited to be arrested.[7]
December 4–8. During "Stop the Draft Week" demonstrations in New York City, 585 are arrested, including Benjamin Spock.
Sweden, December 20. Seventh Year of the Viet Cong, the Front National de Libération du Vietnam du Sud, or FNL, is celebrated with violent clashes in Stockholm and 40 Swedish towns.
United States Peace Corps volunteers in Chile spoke out against the war. 92 volunteers defied the Peace Corps director and issued a circular denouncing the war.[7]
January. Singer Eartha Kitt, while at a luncheon at the White House, speaks out against the war and its effects on the youth, exclaiming, "you send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed," to her fellow guests. "They rebel in the street. They will take pot...and they will get high. They don't want to go to school because they're going to be snatched off from their mothers to be shot in Vietnam."[31]
April 3. At a national draft-card turn-in, about 1,000 draft cards were turned in. In Boston, 15,000 protesters watched 235 men turn in their draft cards.[28]
May 1. Boston University graduate Philip Supina wrote to his draft board in Tucson, Arizona, that he had "absolutely no intention to report for [his] exam, or for induction, or to aid in any way the American war effort against the people of Vietnam."[7]
May 17. Philip Berrigan and his brother, Daniel, lead seven others into a draft board office in Catonsville, Maryland, remove records, and set them afire with homemade napalm outside in front of reporters and onlookers.[7]
October 21. In Japan, 20,000 activists occupied the Shinjuku Station, protesting an earlier incident in August 1967 where a JNR freight train hauling kerosene to the Tachikawa Airbase collided with another train and exploded. The activists managed to disrupt all railway traffic at the station and led to clashes with riot police and acts of vandalism in what became known as the Shinjuku riot; it was the largest anti-war protest in Japan at the time.
November 14. National draft-card turn-in.
1969
Throughout the entire year, campus protests take place across the country.
March 22. Nine protesters smashed glass, hurled files out a fourth floor window, and poured blood on files and furniture at the Dow Chemical offices in Washington, D.C.
March 29. Conspiracy charges are filed against eight suspected organizers of the Chicago Convention protests.
May 21. The Silver Spring Three, Les Bayless, John Bayless, and Michael Bransome, walked into a Silver Spring, Maryland Selective Service office, where they destroyed several hundred draft records to protest the war.
June 8. The Old Main building at Southern Illinois University burns to the ground as units of firefighters from the area try to salvage the building but could not put out the fire before everything was destroyed.[38]
June. In Chicago at the SDS national convention, SDS disintegrates into SDS-WSA and SDS. The Worker Student Alliance of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) has the majority of delegates (900) on its side. The smaller Revolutionary Youth Movement fraction (500) divide into RYM-I/Weatherman, who retain control of the SDS National Office, and Maoist RYM-II. This fraction will further divide into the various groups of New Communist Movement.
December 1. The Selective Service System of the United States conducted two lotteries
December 7. The 5th Dimension performs their song "Declaration" on the Ed Sullivan Show, including the opening of the Declaration of Independence. "For their future security", it suggests that the right and duty of revolting against a despotic government is still relevant.
1970
January 30. The Danish artist Bjørn Nørgaard protested against the war by publicly slaughtering a horse. The slaughter was supposed to take place at an art museum, but was instead held on a field as the museum cancelled the arrangement.[40]
May 8, in New York City, the Hard Hat Riot occurs after a student anti-war demonstration in which workers attack them and riot for two hours.
May 8. Jim Cairns, a member of the Australian parliament, leads over 100,000 people in a demonstration in Melbourne.[39] Smaller protests were also held on the same day in every state capital of Australia.
May 9. Mobe sponsored "Kent State/Cambodia Incursion Protest, Washington, D.C." between 75,000 and 100,000 demonstrators converged on Washington, D.C. to protest the Kent State shootings and the Nixon administration's incursion into Cambodia. Even though the demonstration was quickly put together, protesters were still able to bring out thousands to march in the National Mall in front of the Capitol. It was an almost spontaneous response to the events of the previous week. Police ringed the White House with buses to block the demonstrators from getting too close to the executive mansion. Early in the morning before sunrise, U.S. President Richard Nixon walks to the Lincoln Memorial to meet with the protesters.
August 24. At the University of Wisconsin–Madison in Madison, Wisconsin, the Sterling Hall bombing aimed at the Army Math Research Center on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th floors of the building misses its target, and a Ford van packed with explosives hits the physics laboratory on the first floor and kills a young researcher Robert Fassnacht and seriously injured others.
April 24. A peaceful "Vietnam War Out Now" rally on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., in which "upwards of half a million took part," [46][47] calling for an end to the Vietnam War. 156,000 participate in the largest demonstration so far on the West Coast, in San Francisco.[45]
April 22. Mass anti-war demonstrations sponsored by National Peace Action Coalition, People's Coalition for Peace and Justice, and other organizations attracted an estimated 100,000 people in New York City, 12,000 in Los Angeles, 25,000 in San Francisco, and other cities around the U.S. and world.[48][49][50]
May 21. "Emergency March" in Washington, D.C., organized by the National Peace Action Coalition and the People's Coalition for Peace and Justice. 8,000 to 15,000 protest in Washington, D.C. against the increased bombing of North Vietnam and the mining of its harbors.[citation needed]
May 24. In Heidelberg, Germany, the Red Army Faction detonates two car bombs at the European Headquarters of the U.S. Army, killing three.[52]
August 22. 3,000 protest against the 1972 Republican National Convention in Miami Beach, Florida, including Ron Kovic, a wheelchair-using Vietnam veteran, who leads fellow veterans into the Convention Hall, wheels down the aisles, and, as Richard Nixon begins his acceptance speech, shouts, "Stop the bombing! Stop the war!"[7]
October 14. The "Peace March to End the Vietnam War" in San Francisco. This "silent-march" demonstration began at City Hall and moved down Fulton Street to Golden Gate Park, where speeches were given. Over 2,000 were in attendance. Numerous groups, including many veterans, march to support the so-called "7-Point" plan to peace. George McGovern gives a speech at the Cow Palace the night before, which energizes the Saturday morning event.[53]
There are many pro- and anti-war slogans and chants. Those who used the anti-war slogans were commonly called "doves"; those who supported the war were known as "hawks"[citation needed]
Anti-war
"Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?" was chanted during Lyndon B. Johnson's tenure as president and almost anytime he appeared publicly.[7][54]
Pro-war
"Love our country", "America, love it or leave it", and "No glory like old glory" are examples of pro-war slogans.[citation needed]
^Coburn, Jon (January 2018). ""I Have Chosen the Flaming Death": The Forgotten Self-Immolation of Alice Herz". Peace and Change. 43 (1): 32–60. doi:10.1111/pech.12273.
^Aust, Stefan (2017). Der Baader-Meinhof-Komplex (1. Auflage der Neuausgabe, erweiterte und aktualisierte Ausgabe ed.). Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe Verlag. pp. 383–385. ISBN978-3-455-00033-7.
.jpg)
