Describe the connection between student unrest and the Vietnam War and how did they affect

each other. Explain political and social outcomes of the end of the Vietnam War. Use at least 2 sources to support the response; one related to the connection of student unrest and the war and another related to the political and social outcomes of the war. Must be at least 1050 words.

During almost every major conflict in United States history there have been protests against involvement in that conflict. However, it was not until the Vietnam Police Action of the 1960s and 1970s that so much popular student protests coalesced into such a popular uprising that it had a significant effect upon foreign policy. However, it was not only the Vietnam conflict that students were protesting it was reaction to the past two decades of middle class growth, and, as some scholars have indicated, the product of social changes that occurred after World War II. Among these, a large surge in births, meaning more younger people during the 1960s; more permissive social mores in terms of child rearing, television and popular culture teaching this demographic that happiness was important (e.g. this was the first generation to grow up with television as a part of their formative years); and the media allowing them to experience major world events first hand (Boren, 2001). Additionally, it was not just the United States that had a great deal of Student Protests during the era, although the Civil Rights Movement, and the idea that change could occur from the bottom up was most popular on American college campuses, typically a hotbed for new ideas, coupled with the cultural changes of the 60s, finally turning into a ferment for such movements as the Peace Movement, the Anti-Nuclear Movement, The Feminist Movement, and the entire embrace of New Left Politics (distrust of the conservative government, leanings toward social programs, a grasp of the veneer of life in America versus reality think Leave It To Beaver or Ozzie and Harriet and then the actual reality of life at the time (Gitlin, 1993). And, while this essay will focus on the student movements of the 1960s, protests in the United States were not new, of course, and it often seemed like younger people, being more idealistic and involved (at least those in college) were sometimes at the forefront of those protests. If, in general, for instance, one wishes to look at the last five decades, we can see a historiographic pattern of student activity and protests that may indeed culminate in the antiVietnam movement in the 1960s. For example: 1930s The American left had a very successful time during the Great Depression. Communist and Socialist undergraduates were very active in Americas campuses, and during the peak years of 1936-39, as things were bleakest in the American economy, the movement mobilized about million students (actually about half of the collegiant population) in an annual one-hour strike against war and capitalistic excesses. We must remember, though, that the terms communist and

socialist did not have the same meaning as today. Stalins excesses were unknown at the time, and Americans were suffering a great deal economically. Jobs were hard to find, especially for young people, and the ideas of socialism seem far more equitable. However, as President Roosevelts programs began to take hold, and as the rising tide of fascism became more apparent in Europe, some of the movement died down, especially after the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact (Cohen, 1993 and Pagan, 1982). (Sidenote: It was many of the younger intellectuals of the 1930s, who, by the 1950s were part of the corporate or governmental management culture, that were called to testify by HUAC (House un-American Activities Committee) as communists).

1940s Of course, the decade of the 1940s was centered around World War II and its immediate aftermath, there were nevertheless those who protested U.S. involvement in European affairs and war in general. In addition, there were more and more protests from African Americans, at least calling attention to facts of inequality, rights to education, and general malaise within the structured community. The war, though, did have a profound effect on protests, especially after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Japanese citizens were locked up, coastal watches set up, and the focus turned from an inward idea of equality and world-justice to a very real fear of invasion and the possibility that fascism would win in Europe and Asia. Shortages of goods, daily reports of casualties, and the continuing media coverage of the war caused most Americans to shun protestors as being Anti-American and unpatriotic. Indeed, this seemed to be quite similar to the protest movements of the World War I era, in that it was pacifism, not idealism, which caused most of the limited protesting (Antiwar Movements).

1950s The war was over, a new war begun (the Cold War). Americans were concerned with the rise of communism and the media was rife with that fear in both factual reporting of Soviet and Red Chinese successes, and in the fictional cinema focusing on invasion. There were, however, a few major trends for student activism in the 1950s: the atom/hydrogen bomb and civil rights. By the mid-1950s, students were rallying against the atom bomb. Albert Einstein died in 1955 and two years later the great humanitarian Albert Schweitzer made a public declaration against the use of nuclear weapons, thus inciting students even more. The continual buildup of arms in both the United States and Soviet Union fueled this fervor and students and young intellectuals seemed at the center of this debate. In terms of Civil Rights, however, the 1950s were far more successful, both on and off campus (Beck, 2004).

Many scholars believe that the struggle for civil rights in the 1950s was a natural outcome of World War II. In the War, women and minorities served their country, and many soldiers who had never been exposed to alternative ideas or other cultures came back more worldly realizing that the strength of America was in its diversity. The early 50s also brought

attention away from minority prejudices in some ways by focusing on anti-Communist sources, which in some ways the African American Civil Rights movement had used in the 1920s and 30s since socialism offered equal rights for all. So many things happened in the 1950s to contribute to the spreading view that it was time to do something about racial inequality; Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-56, the desegregation of Little Rock and resulting media attention of 1957, and the continual media presence of erudite, professional quality speakers of all races who were pro-Civil Rights. It was the media attention, however, and a national landmark decision, a decision that affected most American families, that brought the Civil Rights Movement into the living rooms of most Americans (Davis, 1999). However, within the United States 1930-1975, the seminal most important era of protests that actually changed the course of American Politics were the Student Protest Movement (epitomized here with the Kent State Riots of 1968, and the Anti-War Movement which evolved out of the college campus to enfold more of society. The Kent State Riot, also known as the Kent State Massacre was captured on dramatic film, even a Pulitzer Prize winning photograph by John Filo epitomizing a student shot by the National Guard: It is perhaps because of this shot, shown round the world, or the subsequent media coverage, that this event seem to coalesce groups that were disparate, wide-ranging demographically, and even political enemies, into a group that said, enough. As we have reviewed, protests did make the news in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. And, weve argued the Civil Rights protests of the 1950s did result in change. But the changes fraught after Kent State had political, social, cultural and economic effects far more reaching than ever imagined (Van Dyke, 2003). Kent State was a crux, and what happened there resulted in a domino effect felt around the nation being repeated in Berkely, most of the major campuses, and thus can be seen as a typical example of the coalescing of the anti-war and anti-police fervor of the time. Figure 1 The Infamous Kent State Photograph http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0309/lm15.html

At Kent State, briefly, there were a group of students who were actively protesting the American invasion of Cambodia, seen as President Nixons illegal escalation of the War. This bombing was announced on April 30, 1968, and the protests became active between Friday and Monday, May 1-4. On Friday there were about 500 protestors, widespread anger, and at midnight many students left the bars and began to throw bottles and break shop windows, etc. On Saturday, fearing escalation, Kents Mayor declared a state of emergency and requested the National Guard to maintain order and by Sunday there were 1,000 Guardsmen on campus. The college and town administration reacted badly to the idea of protest, but the addition of a military presence made the situation even more volatile, and many students joined the protests simply to prove that they had the right to demonstrate. A Monday, noon, mass protest was scheduled, during which

about 2500 people gathered in the center of the Campus. However, the US Court of Appeals had ruled that the Guard had the legal right to disperse the crowd, the crowd refused, the Guard used tear gas, students began getting violent and throwing rocks and shouting, Pigs off campus. Within a small amount of time, it became clear that the crowds would not disperse and the situation deteriorated into shooting and bayoneting, culminating in four deaths, and nine injuries among the protesters, as well as minor injuries to Guardsmen (Michener, 1982). This, of course, is a brief overview, but is used as an example to show the complexity of the Student Protest movement in this time period. With national media attention, protests began in earnest all over the nations colleges, causing a national student strike of more than 450 campuses, and within days of the event, 100,000 people, both students and others, marched in Washington against the War, serious enough that the President was evacuated and his Chief Speechwriter reflecting that this wasnt a protest, it was Civil War (See The History Channel Production of: Nixon A Presidency Revealed, 2007) But, it emphasized to the administration that the nation had had enough, and that without something swift and national, the administration could only expect more of the same nationwide, much as it did during the Chicago Democratic Convention of 1968. Thus, it can be reasonably argued that the seriousness of the activities at Kent State had major consequences to American foreign policy, society, and even the very fabric of the way middle-America viewed the war. It forced the National Guard to reexamine crowd control, the FBI to examine its role in domestic surveillance, and, as an outgrowth, a greater desire to see peaceful change and a more forceful view of students and middle-class Americans protesting the Vietnam war. Politically and socially, the end of the War had numerous consequences domestically and internationally. The United States did lose face internationally as the world power who could never lose a war, some thought it was an invitation for Communism to spread; but it also showed that there was social power within the masses, and that the changes brought about during the 1960s would forever change the way Americans thought about themselves, and the world. The very idea, for Vietnam Veterans, to come home to less than enthusiastic welcomes rattled the very fabric of young men wanting to serve in the military and what many saw in SE Asia continues to affect them, even today. After Vietnam, America was not the same place; there was, and partially because of the Nixon Watergate scandal, a mistrust of the Presidency, and of elected officials in general. Even the military experienced doubt about its tactics, but was clear that a war should be fought militarily rather than politically. And, it must not be forgotten, there was a huge fiscal cost to the war, $120 billion (over $700 billion in adjusted dollars) resulting in a large budget deficit. This demonstrated that even a superpower had limited resources, and most importantly, political and social backing are necessary to win a war, not just military might (Wright, 1995).

References:

AntiWar Movements, Encyclopedia of Chicago, cited in: http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/56.html

Beck, C., et.al. (2004), The Archaeology of Anti-Nuclear Protests, Paper For The Society of Applied Anthropology, cited in: http://www.bris.ac.uk/archanth/staff/schofield/nevada.pdf.

Davis, T. (1999), Weary Feet, Rested Souls: A Guided History of The Civil Rights Movement, Norton.

Boren, Mark (2001), Student Resistance: A History of An Unruly Subject, Routledge.

Cohen, R. (1993), When The Old Left Was Young: Student Radicals and Americas First Mass Student Movement, 1929-41, Oxford University Press.

Davis, T. (1999), Weary Feet, Rested Souls: A Guided History of The Civil Rights Movement,

Norton.

Gitlin, Todd (1993), The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage, Bantam.

Michener, James, (1982), Kent State: What Happened and Why, Fawcett.

Nixon A Presidency Revealed (2007), The History Channel.

Paga, E., (1982), Class, Culture, and the Classroom: The Student Peace Movement of the 1930s, Temple University Press.

VanDyke, N. (2003), Crossing Movement Boundaries: Factors that Facilitate Coalition Protests by American College Students, 1930-1990, Social Problems, 50, 2: 226-50.

Wright, David, (1995), The Vietnam War: Causes and Consequences, Evans Bros.