Vietnam War Student Protests/ Counter Culture 1964

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Vietnam War Student Protests/Counter
Culture1964 1973
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Student Activism

• Pentagon Papers
• Described how US Govt lied about war
• Baby-boomers and college
• Many went to college
• Had a different world view than their WWII-era
  parents
• Students for a Democratic Society (University of
  Michigan)
• New Left

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Free Speech Movement

• UC Berkley
• Students free speech hampered by school
  officials, they protest
• Police are called in
• Students take over Admin. Building
• Students and Faculty strike for free speech
• Teach-Ins
• Teachers have special classes to teach about
  Vietnam War

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Resistance to War

• Selective Service Act Draft
• Conscientious Objectors oppose war on religious
  grounds
• Example Muhammad Ali
• Deferment college students dont have to be
  drafted
• 1965 LBJ doubles of men drafted twice during
  the year
• 1967 College students with low scores could be
  drafted

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Avoiding the Draft

• Thousands claim to be conscientious objectors,
  physical disabilities, or move to Canada
• 1967 Marches in NYC and Wash, DC to protest war
• 1968 200 major demonstrations at colleges and
  universities
• 1969 National Chicano Moratorium Committee
  claims war is racial

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Counter Culture

• Similar to 1950s Beatniks Known as Hippies
• Sexual Revolution more open talk and practices,
  more people living together instead of getting
  married Make Love, Not War, birth control pill
• Drug Scene influenced Counter Culture
  (Marijuana, Lysergic acid diethylamide LSD)
  Overdoses Hendrix, Joplin, Morrison

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Music World

• Woodstock Music Festival in NY state
• 200,000 people
• Three days of peace, love, and music August,
  1969, High Point of Counter Culture
• Altamount Rolling Stones concert held at
  Speedway in CA
• 300,000 attend, Hells Angels used as security,
  killed a fan
• Signaled the end of the Counter Culture

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End of the War

• LBJ chooses not to run for reelection in 1968
  after Tet Offensive
• Paris Peace talks begin in May, 1968
• Richard Nixon elected president, says that US
  will turn war over to South Vietnamese Army
  (Vietnamization)
• 1968 543,000
• 1972 39,000
• 1973 Draft ended

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Invasion of Cambodia

• Nixon begins secret bombing of Cambodia in 1970
• Caused civil war in Cambodia
• Kent State (OH) students protest, Burn ROTC
  building, National Guard kills 4 students and
  wounds 9
• Jackson State (MS) similar to Kent State, 2
  killed, 9 wounded

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American Withdrawal

• 1972 Nixon launches heaviest bombing of war
• Peace is at Hand Jan, 1973 Peace Treaty
  signed
• US removes all troops
• POWs released
• Laos and Cambodia given freedom
• 17th parallel still border

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South Vietnam Falls and Legacy of War

• Without US support, South Vietnam loses war,
• April, 1975 War ends
• US costs
• 58,000 Americans killed
• 300,000 wounded
• 150 billion spent
• Millions of Vietnamese killed
• Laos and Cambodia become communist
• Pol Pot
• US after the war
• Soldiers treated poorly when they come home
• 26th Amendment 18 to vote
• Vietnam War Memorial The Wall
• US opens trade with Vietnam in 1994