The American Antiwar Movement in 1960s

The movement against the involvement of the United States in the Vietnam War started off small with Peace Activists and left leaning intellectuals but became popular especially on College Campuses. Although it started off small, by 1965 the antiwar movement started to gain real traction and prominence after the United States started bombing the North of Vietnam.

Antiwar marches and protests started to gain even more popularity due to groups such as the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) attracting a wider base of support and backing in the three years after the start of the United States campaign in Vietnam, this reached its height with the TET Offensive by the Northern Vietnamese in 1968 showing that the war was not going to come to an end anytime soon.

In 1967, one of the largest demonstrations took place at the Lincoln Memorial which saw around 100,000 protesters take to the streets, some 30,000 carried on to the Pentagon that night. They were confronted by U.S Marshals and Troops who were protecting the building itself, hundreds were arrested.

In February 1967, 32% of Americans polled agreed that becoming involved in the war had been a mistake. After Tet, that figure rose to 50% [1].  Although the Antiwar Movement in the United States in the sixties was not the reason the Vietnam War was concluded it has to be said that the widespread public opposition to the war also is what helped in March to convince Johnson's Wise Men, a bipartisan advisory group of former government officials and Wall Streeters, that the game was up in Vietnam [1].

Despite the Vietnam era antiwar movement remaining one of the largest, most intense movements in American history it is often disregarded by social-movement scholars. This could be argued to be due to the fact that the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that led to a dramatic escalation in American involvement in Vietnam was passed by congress on August 1964, a visible antiwar movement only coalesced the following year. And even though the United States remained deeply enmeshed in Vietnam until the fall of Saigon in 1975, domestic contention over that involvement dropped to almost none following the Paris Peace Accords in 1973. [2].

In the same vein, although the antiwar movement was growing during the Sixties, a silent majority of American citizens still supported the Vietnam War effort, many Americans agreed that US involvement in Vietnam was a mistake but the idea of a US military defeat was completely off the table.

[1] The Doves Ascendant: The American Antiwar Movement in 1968
[2]The War at Home: Antiwar Protests and Congressional Voting, 1965 to 1973

Joe Keeley