Introduction

The Vietnam War met with rising opposition among Americans during the second half of the 1960s. A series of left-wing organizations, largely formed by students, staged increasingly vocal protests and demonstrations. At the same time, mainstream public opinion turned increasingly against the war in the late 1960s.

Escalation of the War and Rising Opposition

In February of 1965, United States President Lyndon Johnson dramatically escalated the war in Vietnam with a sustained bombing campaign and the introduction of ground troops. Campus chapters of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) all over the country started to lead small, localized demonstrations against the war. In April of 1965, SDS organized a march on Washington for peace; about 20,000 people attended. That same week, the faculty at the University of Michigan suspended classes and conducted a 24-hour “teach-in” on the war. The idea quickly spread, and on May 15, the first national “teach-in” was held at 122 colleges and universities across the nation. Originally designed to be a debate on the pros and cons of the war, at Berkeley, the teach-ins became massive antiwar rallies. By the end of that year, there had been antiwar rallies in some sixty cities.

During the winter and spring of 1967, protests on many campuses became increasingly militant. Leaders of anti-war movements were elected to student government at a few schools. Demonstrations against the Dow Chemical Company and other campus recruiters were widespread, and the issue of the draft grew more contentious. The FBI (mainly through its secret program COINTELPRO) and other law enforcement agencies were often exposed as having spies and informers in student-led anti-war chapters.

The fall of 1967 saw further escalation of the anti-war actions of the New Left. The school year started with a large demonstration against Dow recruiters at the University of Wisconsin in Madison on October 17. Peaceful at first, the demonstration turned to a sit-in that was violently dispersed by the Madison police and riot squad, resulting in many injuries and arrests. A mass rally and student strike closed the university for several days. A coordinated series of demonstrations against the draft led by members of the Resistance, the War Resisters League, and SDS further galvanized anti-war sentiment. After the conventional civil rights tactic of peacefully picketing failed, Oakland, California's "Stop the Draft" week ended in a number of skirmishes with the police. On October 21, 100,000 people marched on the Pentagon. Hundreds were arrested and injured. 

Anti-War protests in Madison, 1965

Students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison protested the war in Vietnam in 1965. Their actions were typical of many on college campuses across the country during the 1960s. (credit: “Yarnalgo”/Flickr)

A Shift in Public Opinion

In addition to student-led protests, there was a shift in mainstream public opinion about the Vietnam War. Americans were increasingly skeptical about the way it was being handled and many opposed the war itself. Opinion polls showed a steady decline in support for the war after 1965. 

As the war escalated, the money spent to fund it also increased, leaving less to pay for the many social programs Johnson had created to lift Americans out of poverty. Dreams of racial harmony suffered, as many African Americans, angered by the failure of Johnson’s programs to alleviate severe poverty in the inner cities, protested in frustration. Their anger was heightened by the fact that a disproportionate number of African Americans were fighting and dying in Vietnam. Nearly two-thirds of eligible African Americans were drafted, whereas draft deferments for college, exemptions for skilled workers in the military industrial complex, and officer training programs allowed white middle-class youth to either avoid the draft or volunteer for a military branch of their choice. As a result, less than one-third of white men were drafted.

Many of the most outspoken political critics of the war were Democratic politicians, whose opposition began to erode unity within the party. In the election of 1968, Minnesota senator Eugene McCarthy, who had called for an end to the war and the withdrawal of troops from Vietnam, received nearly as many votes in the New Hampshire presidential primary as Johnson did, even though he had been expected to fare very poorly. McCarthy’s success in New Hampshire encouraged Robert Kennedy to announce his candidacy for presidency as well. Johnson, suffering health problems and realizing his actions in Vietnam had hurt his public standing, announced that he would not seek reelection and withdrew from the 1968 presidential race.