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In the early 60s, during the Kennedy administration, there are repeated insurgent attempts to overthrow this US-backed South Vietnamese government by the newly formed, largely Communist National Liberation Front (NLF). The military arm of this political group is known as the Vietcong. In response, the Kennedy administration substantially expands military aid, increases the number of US military advisers, and authorizes them to take part in combat.

By December 31st, US forces in Vietnam number 900 [Bowman, p. 20]

May 13, 1960: Several hundred Berkeley students protest the hearings of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in San Francisco. When the demonstrators are barred from the hearing room, a loud scuffle breaks out. The police turn on high-pressure fire hoses and blast the crowd down the marble steps. Officers arrest 64 people, including 31 Berkeley students, but instead of discouraging the protest, the confrontation becomes a call to arms. The next day 5,000 people protest the HUAC hearings at San Francisco City Hall. [Rosenfeld, 2002]

See Free Speech Movement Veterans website for a description of these events

Fall 1960: The UC Berkeley campus chapter of the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) and the campus Ad Hoc Committee to End Discrimination pickets Berkeley businesses identified as engaging in racially discriminatory hiring practices.

View footage from the Berkeley/San Francisco anti-discrimination demonstrations captured by Harvey Richards
(Courtesy of Estuary Press. © Paul Richards, 1991. All rights reserved)

See Free Speech Movement Veterans website for a description of these events

1960: Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) is founded. The SDS, which grew out of earlier left-wing student organizations, including the Student League for Industrial Democracy (SLID), was to become the most important white radical organizations of the 1960s.

The SDS Constitution (1969) describes the organization as "an association of young people of the Left. It seeks to create a sustained community of educational and political concerns; one bringing together liberals and radicals, activists and scholars, students and faculty. It maintains a vision of a democratic society, where all levels of people have control of the decisions that affect them and the resources which they are dependent. It seeks a relevance through the continual focus on realities and on the programs necessary to effect change at the most basic levels of economic, political, and social organization. It feels the urgency to put forth a radical, democratic program whose methods embody the democratic vision." [Heath, pp. 8-10, 219]

The Port Huron Statement, 1962

January 20, 1961: John F. Kennedy becomes the 35th U.S. president.

May 11, 1961: Kennedy authorizes American advisers sending 44 Special Forces Troops and other military advisers to aid South Vietnam against the forces of North Vietnam. [Bowman, p. 21]

1961: California Senate's Fact-Finding Subcommittee on Un-American Activities charges in a report that UC President Kerr "had opened the campus gates to communists." [sfgate.com Campus Files]

January 12, 1962: The U.S. Army Air Force lauches Operation Ranch Hand. The operation involves dropping a strong defoliant chemical (dioxin) known as Agent Orange. The purpose of the product is to deny an enemy cover and concealment in dense terrain by defoliating trees and shrubbery where the enemy could hide (in army-speak: "a modern technological area-denial technique") [NYT 1/12/62; Boettcher, pp. 257-59; Ranch Hand]

At a January 15th press conference, Kennedy denies that US combat troops are fighting in Vietnam. [NYT, 2/15/62]

February 4, 1962: The first US helicopter is shot down in Vietnam, one of 15 ferrying troops in attack against the village of Hong My. [NYT, 2/5/62]

October 22, 1962: In a televised speech, President John F. Kennedy announces that U.S. spy planes have discovered Soviet missile bases in Cuba. Kennedy announces that he has ordered a naval blockade of Cuba to prevent Soviet ships from transporting any more offensive weapons to the island. The president terms Cuban military activities a "clandestine, reckless, and provocative threat to world peace."

Listen to excepts of this speech online (via John F. Kennedy Library)

Text of Kennedy's Cuban Missile Crisis speech

June 29, 1962: In Los Angeles, the UC Regents vote to end compulsory student service in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC)beginning with the fall semester of 1962. University President Clark Kerr states that the action was taken "responsive to student petitions", but added that the proposal had confronted the Regents since 1877.

"The Fight Against Compulsory ROTC" (via FSM web site)

January 1-2, 1963: Forces of the North Vietnamese National Liberation Front (NLF) (also known as the Vietcong) defeat the South Vietnamese Army (ARVN) in Battle of Ap Bac, sixty-five kilometers southwest of Saigon in the Mekong Delta. This was the first major combat victory for the Vietcong against the South Vietnamese regular army.

May 8, 1963: South Vietnamese troops, enforcing a ban on the Buddhist multicolored flag, fire upon 20,000 Buddhists at Hue. The attack begins a series of intensifying protests by Buddhists against the government. [NYT, 5/10/63; Bowman, p. 27]

August 21, 1963: Troops loyal to South Vietnamese, US-backed President Ngo Dinh Diem dress up as regular troops and attack Buddhist temples and sanctuaries throughout the country. A member of the Catholic Vietnamese minority, Diem continues to pursue pro-Catholic policies that antagonize Buddhist groups. President Kennedy denounces the attacks. Buddhist groups continue to stage increasingly intense protests, including individual instances of self-immolation. The most widely publicized instance occurs on on June 16, 1963, when Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc immolates himself in downtown Saigon [NYT, 6/13/63; King, 2000]

November 1, 1963: With tacit approval of the United States, operatives within the South Vietnamese military overthrow South Vietnamese government. President Diem and his brother Nhu are shot and killed in the aftermath [NYT, 11/2/63; NYT, 11/2/63a]

The White House Tapes: Eavesdropping on the President. Disc 3: President Johnson discussing the Diem coup in Vietnam in 1963. [sound recording] Media Resources Center Sound/D 169

November 22, 1963: President Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas. Kennedy's death meant that the problem of how to proceed in Vietnam fell squarely into the lap of his vice president Lyndon Johnson.

October 1963 to Summer 1964: Students from UC Berkeley and San Francisco State University participate in picketing of the Sheraton Palace Hotel in San Francisco in protest of racially discriminatory hiring practices. Over 170 demonstrators are arrested.

See Free Speech Movement Veterans website for a description of these events

View footage from the Berkeley/San Francisco anti-discrimination demonstrations captured by Harvey Richards
(Courtesy of Estuary Press. © Paul Richards, 1991. All rights reserved)

June 1962, 1963: At a convention in Port Huron, Michigan, SDS delegates draft their first official manifesto, a document that would become known as The Port Huron Statement. Growing out of a draft statement prepared by Tom Hayden, University of Michigan student and one of SDS' founding members, the Port Huron Statement articulated a political philosophy of participatory democracy and political activism that was to have wide impact on the 60s generation: "We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit."

"The Port Huron Statement at 40."

"The Port Huron Statement." In: Heath, 1976. pp: 216-19.

May 4, 1964: Trade embargo imposed on North Vietnam in response to attacks from the North on South Vietnam.

July 16, 1964 : Senator Barry Goldwater (AZ) is nominated by the Republican Party to run for president. In his acceptance speech he makes reference to Vietnam: "Yesterday it was Korea; tonight it is Vietnam. Make no bones of this. Don't try to sweep this under the rug. We are at war in Vietnam. And yet the president, who is the commander in chief of our forces, refuses to say-refuses to say, mind you-whether or not the objective over there is victory, and his secretary of defense continues to mislead and misinformation the American people, and enough of it has gone by." [americanrhetoric.com]

August 2, 1964: Three North Vietnamese PT boats allegedly fire torpedoes at the U.S.S. Maddox, a destroyer located in the international waters of the Tonkin Gulf, some thirty miles off the coast of North Vietnam. The attack comes after six months of covert U.S. and South Vietnamese naval operations. A second, even more highly disputed attack, allegedly takes place on August 4. [NYT, 8/3/64; NYT, 8/5/64 ]

Lyndon Johnson Whitehouse Tapes regarding the Gulf of Tonkin incident. (Whitehousetapes.org; Miller Center for Public Affairs)

August 7, 1964: Congress approves the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution which allows the president to take any necessary measures to repel further attacks and to provide military assistance to any South Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) member. Senators Wayne L. Morse of Oregon and Ernest Gruening of Alaska cast the only dissenting votes. President Johnson orders the bombing of North Vietnam. [NYT, 8/8/64] [(See also May 21-23, 1965 Berkeley Teach-In for a speech by Gruening)

The White House Tapes: Eavesdropping on the President. Disc 5: President Johnson discusses The Gulf of Tonkin Incident and the bombing of North Vietnam with Robert McNamara, [sound recording] Media Resources Center Sound/D 169 [See also online extracts of these conversations at Whitehousetapes.org]

Transcript of Johnson's address to Congress, August 5, 1964 via Yale Law School Avalon Project)

U.S. Senate Debate on the Resolution, August 5, 1964

Gulf of Tonkin Notebook

May 2, 1964: The first major student demonstrations against the Vietnam take place in New York City. 400-1000 students march through Times Square to the United Nations to protest what was then called "US intervention" in Vietnam. On the same day, more than 700 students and young people march through San Francisco. In Boston, Madison, Wisconsin, Seattle, there are simultaneous smaller demonstrations. [NYT, 5/3/64]

"What Is the May 2nd Movement?" (via The Sixties Project)

September-December 1964: UC Berkeley student activists, many of whom had recently returned to college from a summer of civil rights activities in the South, come into conflict with university administration over the right to use university facilities for political advocacy. Under the informal leadership of student Mario Savio, the Free Speech Movement arose out of debates, protests, sit-ins, and other activities from October to December of 1964. The Free Speech Movement is often cited as a starting point for the many student protest movements of the 1960s and early 1970s.

For audio recordings of various Free Speech Movement activities and events, see UC Berkeley Library Social Activism Sound Recording Project: The Free Speech Movement and Its Legacy ]

Videos in the Media Resources Center related to the Free Speech Movement

Free Speech Movement Project (Bancroft Library

Free Speech Movement Archives

February 24, 1965: The US implements Operation Rolling Thunder, a series of intense bombing campaigns lasting from February 1965 until October 1968. The operation begins primarily as a diplomatic signal to impress Hanoi with America's determination and as a means of bolstering the sagging morale of the South Vietnamese. Curtis LeMay, the commander of the US Air Force, comments: "My solution to the problem [of North Vietnam] would be to tell them frankly that they've got to draw in their horns and stop their aggression, or we're going to bomb them back into the Stone Age. And we would shove them back into the Stone Age with Air power or Naval power, not with ground forces." [Lemay, p. 565; Herring, pp. 173-79]

President Johnson seems to have been less confident about the effectiveness of this campaign. In a phone conversation to Secretary of State Robert McNamara, Johnson said: "Now we're off to bombing these people. We're over that hurdle. I don't think anything is going to be as bad as losing, and I don't see any way of winning." [as quoted in Dallek, 2002]

March 8, 1965: The first U.S. combat troops (3,500 Marines) reach South Vietnam, landing in the coastal city of Danang. [NYT, 3/7/65]

March 9, 1965: President Johnson authorizes the use of Napalm, a petroleum-based substance mixed with a thickening agent into a gel that would burn continuously and stick to anything it touched. A Business Week article (February 10, 1969) termed the chemical "the fiery essence of all that is horrible about the war in Vietnam."

May 1965: The Gallup Poll shows that only 48% of the US respondants feel that the US Government is handling the Vietnam conflict effectively; 28% feel that the situation was being handled badly; the balance have no opinion. [LAT, 7/18/65; NYT, 8/8/65] A June 1965 Harris Poll indicates that over 60% of the Americans queried support both the infusion of additional troops into Vietnam and the retaliatory bombing of North Vietnam. [LAT, 6/28/65]

June 28-30, 1965: General William C. Westmoreland launches the first purely offensive operation by American ground forces in Vietnam, sweeping into Vietcong territory northwest of Saigon. 3000 American troops along with 800 Australian soldiers and a Vietnamese airborne unit assault a jungle area 20 miles northeast of Saigon.

July 28, 1965: President Johnson announces that he has ordered an increase in US military forces in Vietnam from the present 75,000 to 125,000. To accomplish this, the monthly draft call is raised from 17,000 to 35,000. [NYT, 7/29/65]

August 5, 1965: CBS airs a report by Morley Safer (CBS Evening News With Walter Cronkite) that shows Marines lighting the thatched roofs of the village of Cam Ne with Zippo lighters, and includes critical commentary on the treatment of the villagers. The story generates an angry reaction from Lyndon Johnson, who is certain that Safer must be a Communist and orders a security check. Informed that Safer wasn’t a Communist, just a Canadian, he comments, “Well, I knew he wasn’t an American.” [Vietnam on Television; Wolfe, Essays; CNN: Cold War]

Morley Safer: The Burning of Cam Ne (via PBS)

The Safter broadcast - included in The Vietnam War with Walter Cronkite: Volume 1. [videorecording] DVD 2400

October 26, 1965: New York City Council approves designating an official Support American Vietnam Effort day by a vote of 28-to-2.

November, 1965: The first conventional battle of the Vietnam war takes place as American forces clash with North Vietnamese units in the Ia Drang Valley. [LAT, 11/22/65]

December 31, 1965: US military personnel in Vietnam totals over 180,000. General Westmoreland has made it clear that he wants another 250,000 during the coming year. American war casualities for the year total 1350 killed, 5300 wounded, and at least 150 missing. [Bowman, p. 82]

1965: A California poll reveals that the majority of those queried disapprove of UC political demonstrations (LAT. 4/13/65)

January 18, 1965: One month before his assassination, Malcolm X denounces United States involvement in Vietnam: "It shows the real ignorance of those who control the American power structure. If France, with all types of heavy arms, as deeply entrenched as she was in what was called Indochina, couldn't stay there, I don't see how anybody in their right mind can think the U.S. can get in there -- it's impossible. So it shows her ignorance, her blindness, her lack of foresight and hindsight; and her complete defeat in South Vietnam is only a matter of time." [Malcolm X Talks to Young People]

February 10, 1965: Tran Van Dinh Addresses Students at UC Berkeley

Tran was the head of the Vietnamese Embassy in Washington

Listen to this recording (56: 02 min.)

Originally broadcast on KPFA, 10 1965. Archive # BB2218.21

© Pacifica Radio, 1968. All rights reserved.

March 24-25, 1965: Students for a Democratic Society organize the first teach-in on the Vietnam war, at the University of Michigan. [NYT 3/25/65]. The event is attended by about 2,500 and consists of debates, lectures, movies, and musical events aimed at protesting the war. Thirty-five other universities follow suit (see UC Berkeley Teach-In, May 21-23, 1965)[Menashe and Radosh, pp. 3+]

April 17, 1965: A coalition of Students for Democratic Society (SDS) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)and other activists organizes a massive anti-war march on Washington, D.C. Organizers had expected about 2000 marchers. The actual count was about 25,0000. This was the largest anti-war protest to ever have been held in Washington DC at that time, with the number of marchers approximately equal ling the number of US soldiers in Vietnam. [NYT, 4/18/65]

SNCC Position Paper on Vietnam (date uncertain)

May 5, 1965: Several hundred UC Berkeley students march on the Berkeley Draft Board and present the staff with a black coffin. Forty students burn their draft cards. Students also protest the April 1965 US military invasion of Dominican Republic. [LAT, 5/6/65]

Spring 1965: Vietnam Day Committee (VDC)is formed in Berkeley by ex-grad student (sociology) Jerry Rubin, Professor Stephen Smale (Mathematics), and others.

May 21-23, 1965: : Vietnam Day Committee organizes the largest Vietnam teach-in to date at UC Berkeley. The 36 hour event is held on a playing field where Zellerbach Auditorium is now located. About 30,000 people turn out. [NYT, 5/23/65]

The State Department is invited to send a representative, but declines. UC Berkeley professors Eugene Burdick (Political Science)(see also May 21, 1975) and Robert A. Scalapino (Political Science), who had agreed to speak in defense of President Johnson's handling of the war, withdraw at the last minute. An empty chair is set aside on the stage with a sign reading "Reserved for the State Department" taped to the back. A food vendor at the event offers "Chicken Scalapino" on its menu. [Rorabaugh, pp. 91-94]

Participants include: Dr. Benjamin Spock; veteran socialist leader Norman Thomas; novelist Norman Mailer; independent journalist I.F. Stone.

Other speakers include: California Assemblymen Willie Brown, William Stanton and John Burton; Dave Dellinger (political activist); James Aronson (National Guardian magazine); philosopher Alan Watts; comedian Dick Gregory; Paul Krassner (editor, The Realist); M.S. Arnoni (philosopher, writer, political activist); Edward Keating (publisher, Ramparts Magazine); Felix Greene (author and film producer); Isadore Zifferstein (psychologist); Stanley Scheinbaum (Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions); Paul Jacobs (journalist and anti-nuclear activist); Hal Draper (Marxist writer and a socialist activist); Levi Laud (Progressive Labor Movement); Si Casady (California Democratic Council); George Clark (British Committee on Nuclear Disarmament); Robert Pickus (Turn Toward Peace); Bob Parris and Bob Moses (Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee); Jack Barnes (National Chair of the Young Socialist Alliance); Mario Savio (Free Speech Movement); Paul Potter (Students for a Democratic Society); and Mike Meyerson (national head of the Du Bois Clubs of America). British philosopher and pacifist Bertrand Russell sends a taped message to the teach-in.

Faculty participants include: Professor Staughton Lynd (Yale); Professor Gerald Berreman (Chair, UCB Anthropology Dept.); Professor Aaron Wildavsky (Political Science and Public Policy

Performers includes: folk singer Phil Ochs; improv group, The Committee and others.

The Teach-In at the University of California Berkeley: A Refusal to Attend (Professor Robert Scalapino)

Rebuttal to Professor Scalapino by Professors Morris Hirsch and Stephan Smale and Jerry Rubin

Interview with Professor Burdick regarding his refusal to participate in the teach-in

Listen to a clip from Phil Och's song "I Ain't Marchin' Anymore" (1965)

Dr. Benjamin Spock

Listen to this recording (30 min.)

Originally broadcast on KPFA, 13 August 1965. Archive # BB2218.21

© Pacifica Radio, 1968. All rights reserved.

I.F. Stone

Listen to this recording (55 min.)

Photo of I.F. Stone at UCB teach-in (by Ron Enfield)<

Originally broadcast on KPFA, 3 July 1965. Archive # BB2218.04

© Pacifica Radio, 1965. All rights reserved.

Norman Mailer

Listen to this recording (52 min.)

Originally broadcast on KPFA, 21 May 1965. Archive # BB1332

© Pacifica Radio, 1965. All rights reserved.

Transcript of an excerpt from this speech

Norman Thomas

Listen to this recording (52 min.)

Originally broadcast on KPFA, 9 July 1965. Archive # BB2218.10

© Pacifica Radio, 1965. All rights reserved.

Senator Ernest Gruening

Senator Guening, former Territorial Governor of Alaska from 1939 to 1953, was selected Senator of Alaska in 1956, 1968, and 1962. Gruening was one of only two Senators voting against President Johnson's Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (the other being Wayne Morse of Oregon).

Listen to this recording (52 min.)

Originally broadcast on KPFA, 6 July 1965. Archive # BB2218.06

© Pacifica Radio, 1965. All rights reserved.

Mario Savio

Contents: 1. Introduction by Professor John Searle (4 min.) 2. Talk by Mario Savio (28 min.) Produced by KPFA, Berkeley, 28 June 1965. (Note: First several minutes of program are poorly recorded)

Listen to this recording (55 min.)

Transcript of an excerpt from this speech

Originally broadcast on KPFA, 28 June 1965. Archive # BB2218.02

© Pacifica Radio, 1965. All rights reserved.

Isaac Deutscher

Speech by journalist, historian and political activist Isaac Deutscher. Deutscher was a leading authority on Soviet affairs. The upsurge of left-wing sentiment that accompanied the Vietnam War (see The Sixties) made Deutscher a popular figure on university campuses in both Britain and the United States.

Listen to this recording (69 min.)

Transcript of excerpt of this talk

Originally broadcast on KPFA, 26 August 1965. Archive # BB2218.09

© Pacifica Radio, 1965. All rights reserved.

Paul Potter

President of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)speaks about the war and student activism. Potter's remarks are an extended version of a speech he gave at the April 17, 1965 march on Washington: "...now the war in Vietnam...has provided the incredibly sharp razor, the divider, that has finally separated thousands and thousands of people from the illusions about the decency and morality and integrity of this country's purpose internationally."

Listen to this recording (34:33 min.)

Originally broadcast on KPFA, 10 July 1965. Archive # BB2218.11

© Pacifica Radio, 1965. All rights reserved.

Dick Gregory

Gregory was a popular topical comedian and civil rights activist. [See Also Gregory biography from AfricanAmericans.com] "...Yeah, I called LBJ the other day to try to discuss the Vietnam crisis with him. Oh, I call him every now and then. It's very important to me because--I'm going to be honest with you--I'm not about to fight them Red Chinese. ...When you stop and think that Red China got 688 million people, if them cats ever start singing 'We Shall Overcome', they gonna do it, baby!"

Listen to an excerpt from Gregory's talk (7:05 min.)

Originally broadcast on KPFA, 1965. Archive # ?

© Pacifica Radio, 1965. All rights reserved.

Paul Krassner

Krassner was "editor and ringleader" of the satirical magazine Ramparts. In his talk, Krassner takes a few hilariously low blows at Professor Eugene Burdick, particularly Burdick's critical comments about the Teach-In [See interview with Burdick]

Listen to an excerpt from Krassner's talk (5:13 min.)

Originally broadcast on KPFA, 1965. Archive # ?

© Pacifica Radio, 1965. All rights reserved.

Bob Parris

Robert Moses Parris was an important African American civil rights leader involved with organizations including SNCC and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). In the early to mid-1960s, Parris participates in several rallies against the Vietnam War, but by the end of 1965 he ends his relations with white activists. In 1966, Parris flees to Canada to avoid the draft. In June 1968 Moses and his second wife settled in Tanzania. They return to the United States in 1976. [Biographical Dictionary of the American Left]

Listen to an excerpt from Parris' talk (4:06 min.)

Originally broadcast on KPFA, 1965. Archive # ?

© Pacifica Radio, 1965. All rights reserved.

M.S. Aroni

Aroni, a Holocaust survivor and outspoken human rights advocate, was publisher of the alternative magazine, Majority of One ("An Independent Monthy for an American Alternative, Dedicated to the eradication of all restrictions of thought." "In the present life-and-death struggle of the Vietnamese people there must be among America's youth some who are sufficiently sensitive to justice, sufficiently outraged by the conscienceless actions of their government, and sufficiently courageous, to join the people of Vietnam in their heroic self-defense..."

Listen to an excerpt from Aroni's talk (5:41 min.)

Originally broadcast on KPFA, 1965. Archive # ?

© Pacifica Radio, 1965. All rights reserved.

UC Berkeley Professors Eugene Burdick and Morris Hirsch Discuss the Berkeley Vietnam Teach-in

Part I: Studio interview with Professor Burdick (a supporter of the Johnson administration's Vietnam policies)

Part II: Recording of Professor Morris Hirsch (Department of Mathematics) addressing the May 21-23 Berkeley Vietnam Teach-in. Hirsch reads a statement from the Vietnam Day Committee signed by himself, VDC co-chair Professor Stephen Smale (Department of Mathematics) and VDC chair Jerry Rubin

Listen to this recording (55 min.)

Transcript of an excerpt from Burdick interview

Originally broadcast on KPFA, 8 July 1965.

© Pacifica Radio, 1965. All rights reserved.

UC Berkeley Professor Aaron Wildavsky, Assistant Professor of Political Science

Wildavsky was the only speaker at the Teach-In to state unqualified support of the U.S. position in Vietnam. This excerpt from his remarks in the debate with Robert Scheer (see below). "My position is that...American policy is highly moral on every count. The only question is whether we have the will, the resources, the resolve, and the courage to do our duty and stay as we should."

Listen to an excerpt from Wildavsky's talk (5:27 min.)

Originally broadcast on KPFA, 1965. Archive # ?

© Pacifica Radio, 1965. All rights reserved.

Robert Scheer

Scheer was the Foreign Editor of Ramparts Magazine.

Listen to an excerpt from Scheer's talk (6:03 min.)

Originally broadcast on KPFA, 1965. Archive # ?

© Pacifica Radio, 1965. All rights reserved.

Professor Staughton Lynd

Lynd was an Assistant Professor of History at Yale and a civil rights, anti-war, and labor activist. "The entire educational world looks back now on those few professors who protested what was happening in Nazi Germany with gratitude. And I predict that someday the entire academic community of this country will look back on the few professors who have publicly protested our Vietnam policy and say, "They kept the spirit of truth alive." [See Also November 11, 1967]

Listen to an excerpt from Lynd's talk (10:35 min.)

Originally broadcast on KPFA, 1965. Archive # ?

© Pacifica Radio, 1965. All rights reserved.

UC Berkeley Faculty Debate on Vietnam (1965)

Part I: Dr. Franz Schurmann (Department of Sociology), Robert Scalapino (Chair, Department of Political Science)

Part II: William Bundy (coauthor of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution; foreign policy advisor to Lyndon Johnson), and Edmund Clubb (United States Foreign Service).

Part I: Listen to this recording (1hr)

Part II: Listen to this recording (52 min.)

Archive # BB2218.12

© Pacifica Radio, 1965. All rights reserved.

May 12, 1965: The California State Senate's Byrne Committee releases another report calling the Berkeley campus a haven for communists. Candidate for California governor, Ronald Reagan, announces that if elected governor, he will appoint former CIA Director John McCone to investigate the campus unrest at UC Berkeley. [NYT, 5/22/65; LAT, 5/22/65]

May 22, 1965: At the conclusions of talks at the Berkeley teach-in around midnight, several hundred participants, led by members of the Young Socialist Alliance, march to the Berkeley draft board where they hang Lyndon Johnson in effigy, and burn 19 draft cards. (Rorabaugh, p. 92)

June 16, 1965: A planned anti-war march on the Pentagon turns into a five-hour teach-in on the steps and inside of the facility. In two days, more than 50,000 leaflets are distributed without interference at the entrances and inside the building. (BBC War/Protest Timeline)[NYT, 6/17/65]

July 1965: Several years before Martin Luther King publicly opposes the war (See March 25, 1965), the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party circulates a leaflet entitled "The War on Vietnam: A McComb, Mississippi, Protest" which outlines "five reasons why Negroes should not be in any war fighting for America." Among the reasons: "No one has a right to ask us to risk our lives and kill other Colored People in Santo Domingo and Vietnam, so that the White American can get richer. We will be looked upon as traitors by all the Colored People of the world if the Negro people continue to fight and die without a cause." [Grant, 1968]

August 1965: Organized by the Vietnam Day Committee, several hundred people try on several occasions to stop troop trains on the Santa Fe railroad tracks in West Berkeley and Emeryville by standing on the tracks. Conservative Alamedia County Board of Supervisors member Joseph Bort says of the events: "The manner in which these people protest is tentamount to treason." Among UC Berkeley faculty, opinions are sharply divided regarding the VDC's tactics. (Rorabaugh, p. 94; NYT, 8/7/65)

August 12, 1965: Rioting breaks out the predominantly African American neighborhood of Watts, Los Angeles. During the riots, 34 people are killed, 1,100 people are injured, 4,000 people are arrested, and an estimated $100 million in damage is caused. [LAT, 8/12/65]

August 13, 1965: Counterculture newspaper The Berkeley Barb is started by Max Scherr.

October 15, 1965: Anti-Vietnam war rallies are held in four U.S. cities, the largest in New York and Berkeley. In New York, police make the 1st arrest under a new Federal draft card-burning law. [NYT, 10/16/65]

At UC Berkeley, a Teach-In on campus is followed by a march on the Oakland Army induction center. "That evening, some 15,000 demonstrators left the campus marching toward Oakland. Marchers include children, grandmothers, and a busload of Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters along with college and high school students. The Oakland and Berkeley authorities had refused a parade permit. As the marchers approached the Oakland city limit they could see about 400 Oakland police wearing riot helmets, brandishing special riot weapons, blocking the way. The march stopped less than a hundred yards from the police line. As spectators and a group of about 100 right-wing counterdemonstrators filled the gap between the march and the police, a previously agreed-to subcommittee held a swirling, confused discussion on what to do. ... [After negotiation, the march proceeded to Oakland Civic Center Park , where the teach-in was continued and another march called for the next day." [Halstead, p. 87; Rorabaugh, pp. 96-97]

The following day (October 16), the marchers return. (About 100 had remained in the park overnight). When the two to five thousand protesters reach the Oakland City line, they are stopped by police. The police ask the protestors to sit down in the street to avoid violent confrontations. Poet Allen Ginsberg chants "Hare Krishna" at the front of the march. The Hell's Angels motorcycle gang appears, rips down banners, and attacks protestors, yelling, "Go back to Russia you fucking communists!" The police attack the Angels. When the Angels threaten to attack the next peace march, Ginsberg, Keasy, and Pranksters subsequently visit the home of Angels president Sonny Barger to discuss the situation and share some LSD with Barger and his friends. By dawn the two groups had chanted together. [Barlow. Intrepid Trips: "Allen"; LAT, 10/17/65]

Footage from the October 15 Berkeley/Oakland march taken by Harvey Richards
(Courtesy of Estuary Press. © Paul Richards, 1991. All rights reserved)

Live report from Oct 15-16 demonstration (6: 39 min.)

Originally broadcast on KPFA, October 1965. Archive # BB2440

© Pacifica Radio, 1965. All rights reserved.

November 2, 1965: Norman Morrison, a devout Quaker and ardent pacifist, drives from Baltimore to Washington and burns himself to death at the Pentagon. Shortly before his death, he writes to his wife, "For weeks even months I have been praying only that I be shown what I must do. This morning with no warning I was shown... Know that I love thee but must act...." [King, 2000]

November 20, 1965: A permit is finally granted to the VDC. On November 20, from 6,000 to 10,000 protestors march to DeFremery Park in Oakland. The day before the march the Angels call a press conference and distribute a news release: "Although we have stated our intention to counter-demonstrate at this despicable un-American activity, we believe that in the interest of public safety and the protection of the good name of Oakland, we would not justify the VDC (Vietnam Day Committee) by our presence ... because our patriotic concern for what these people are doing to a great nation may provoke us into violent acts." [People's Almanac; Rorabaugh, p. 98; NYT, 11/21/65; Wollenberg]

Photo of Demonstrators and Counter-demonstators at the November 20 march in Berkeley (API)

November 27, 1965: Between 15,000 and 25,000 anti-war demonstrators rally at the White House during an SDS-organized March on Washington for Peace in Vietnam. The march had garnered a long list of celebrity sponsors, including novelists Saul Bellow and James Hersey; playwright Arthur Miller; artist Alexander Calder; actors Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee and Tony Randall; doctors Benjamin Spock and Albert Sabin (developer of the oral polio vaccine). During the march, Spock, Martin Luther King, and others held formal discussions with three Administration offials to air their concerns about the war. [NYT, 11/28/65]

SDS call for a march on Washingon (1965)

January 7, 1966: Time Magazine names General William Westmoreland "Man of the Year."

January 31, 1966: Air strikes against North Vietnam resume after a five-week pause, in an effort to deprive Vietnamese communist forces of essential military supplies. Lyndon Johnson in his address announcing this action contends that "Our air strikes from the beginning have been aimed at military targets and have been controlled with the greatest of care." [NYT, 1/31/66]

Listen to Lyndon Johnson's announcement of the resumption of air strikes against North Vietnam

May 6, 1966: A California State Senate subcommittee issue a 153 page report that accuses University of California President Clark Kerr for having permitted the infiltration of communists, leading to "left wing domination of the Berkeley campus." According to the New York Times article about the report, the campus portrayed by the five member subcommittee was a "montage of obscene entertainment, marijuana smoking, homosexuality, and plotting, much of it by nonstudents, against the war in Vietnam. [NYT, 5/7/66]

June 29, 1966: US bombers attack fuel storage installations near Hanoi and Haiphong, destroying an estimated 50 percent of Vietnam's fuel supply. These are the first raids in the immediate vacinity of the two cities and constitutes a major escalation in the war. [NYT, 6/30/66]

December 31, 1966: US military personnel in Vietnam totals over 280,000; there are also approximately 60,000 American military personnel aboard ships operating off the Vietnamese mainland. American war casualities for the year total 5008 killed, 37,738 wounded. [Bowman, p. 98]

Early 1966: A Gallup Poll indicates that 47% of US college students support President Johnson's conduct of the war.[Heineman]

February 5, 1966: The White House rebuffs a group of about 100 war veterans and former servicemen who had traveled from New York to return medals and honorable discharge and separation papers as a protest against the Vietnam war. [NYT, 2/6/66]

March 25, 1966: U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Arthur Goldberg receives an honorary degree from UC Berkeley at the campus' annual Charter Day. In his acceptance speech, Goldberg delivers a defense of the Johnson administration's Vietnam policies. The crowd of those attending the ceremonies--around 14,000--is full of anti-war placards bearing slogans such as "Arthur Goldberg, Doctor of War." After the ceremonies, about half the audience moves to Harmon Gymnasium where Goldberg has agreed to discuss the issues with the Faculty Peace Committee. A vote is called for a show of approval or disapproval of the Administration's handling of the war. About 100 vote for approval; 7,000 stand for disapproval. [Halstead, p. 142; LAT, 3/25/66; NYT, 3/26/66]

Spring 1966: A majority of students vote for immediate US withdrawal from Vietnam in a campus-wide VDC-initiated referendum. Graduate student TA's use their discussion sections to talk about the war in one third of all classes. [People's History of Berkeley]

April 10, 1966: At an SDS National Council meeting the group devises a "counter-examination"--a "National Vietnam Exam"--which would be circulated in an effort to reach nearly a half-million college students expected to take the first Selective Serive deferment test on May 14. The Exam was designed to publicize SDS' opposition to the war. 350,000 exams were distributed on 820 campuses. [Heath, 52-3]

A bomb explodes in the Berkeley office of the Vietnam Day Committee, slightly injuring four. The VDC incident is the second bombing of a Bay Area activist organization in two months. A militant faction within the VDC responds by mounting a street demonstration on Telegraph Avenue which is forcibly broken up by Berkeley police. Several are injured. [NYT, 4/10/66;NYT, 4/14/66]

June 1966: A Gallup poll indicates that the number of respondants supporting the US handling of the war in Vietnam has slipped to 41%; 37% express disapproval; the balance have no opinion. [LAT, 6/8/66]

June 19, 1966: The U.S. Senate Internal Security Subcommittee charges that communists have played a key role in anti-war demonstrations ("The Communist Party U.S.A. brand can be found on every phase of the rallies"). [NYT, 6/20/66]

June 30, 1966:Three army privates from Fort Hood, Texas, James Mora, James A. Johnson, and David A. Samas (the "Fort Hood 3"), refuse to ship out to Vietnam on the grounds that the war is "illegal and immoral." In September, the three are court-martialed and sentenced from three to five years hard labor. The sentence is later reduced to a two year term. [NYT, 7/12/66; NYT, 9/10/66]

July 4, 1966: The national convention of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) adopts two resolutions: one calling for withdrawal of US troops; the other attacking the draft as placing a "heavy discriminatory burden on minority groups and the poor." [Bowman, p. 89]

August 1966: Vietnam Day Committee is banned from the Berkeley campus.

November 30, 1966: Fifty to 100 students stage a sit-down protest around a Navy recruiter table in the UC Berkeley Student Union. (The VDC, SDS, and other student radical groups had been prohibited by the Berkeley ASUC from setting up tables in the Union). Six protestors (including ex-students Mario Savio and Jerry Rubin) are arrested. [LAT, 12/1/66; NYT, 12/1/66]

UC Berkeley Student Strike 1966

A recording of the meeting held in Pauley Ballroom on the campus of UC Berkeley following a sit-in and arrests of students for blocking the Navy recruiting table outside the student store (see November 30). The Strike Committee along with the audience decided to initiate a formal, all-out strike. This recording is a portion of the 6 hour deliberations related to this action.

"Just as in 1964 the Free Speech Movement was incited by the power structure's attempt to crack down on the Civil Rights Movement, the present conflict stems from the continuing attempt to crush the anti-war movement in this country. The right of dissent is imperative to the continuance of opposition to American suppression of self-determination in Vietnam, and it is a fundamental right upon which any democratic enterprise must be based." (Vietnam Day Committee statement in support of strike)

Part 1 speakers include Joel Gire (?), Karen Lieberman and Ira Ruskin (re campus administration's refusal to negotiate with groups supporting the strike) Mario Savio, Al Jacobs and Karl Davidson (Students for a Democratic Society), David Harris (student body president, Stanford University), and others.

Part 2 speakers include Professor Robert Moore (Mathematics), Professor Bernard Diamond (Law; Psychiatry), and student speakers.

Listen to Part 1 (45: 45 min)

Listen to Part 2 (20: 44 min)

Discussion of the future of UC Berkeley student movements (September 16, 1966)

Note: Question and answer portion in part 4 is poorly recorded

Listen to Part 1(36: 15 min)

Listen to Part 2(33: 12 min)

Listen to Part 3 (59: 38 min)

Listen to Part 4 (19: 31 min)

Recording courtesy of Lynne Hollander and Michael Rossman.

October 10, 1966: The first of many university campus protests against the presence of recruiters for Dow Chemical (manufacturers of napalm) takes place at UC Berkeley.

1967

The War | Anti-War/Political Activism

The War

January 1967: In a major ground war effort dubbed Operation Cedar Falls, about 16,000 US and 14,000 South Vietnamese troops set out to destroy Vietcong operations and supply sites near Saigon. [NYT, 1/12/67]

February 3, 1967: 10,000 US troops sent to the Cambodian border (Operation Big Spring) [NYT, 8/4/67]

April 28, 1967: General William Westmoreland addresses Congress on America's expanding military role in the Vietnam conflict: "[The enemy] believes in force, and his intensification of violence is limited only by his resources, and not by any moral inhibitions." [NYT, 4/29/67]

Listen to excerpt from Westmoreland's address

May 19, 1967: First U.S. air strike on Hanoi. [NYT, 5/20/67]

July 30, 1967: A Gallup poll reports that 52% of the American people disapprove of President Johnson's handling of the war; 41% think that the US made a mistake in sending troops to Vietnam; over 56% think that US is losing the war or at an impasse. [Bowman, p. 108]

December 31, 1967: US military personnel in Vietnam totals over 500,000. In 1967, 9353 American troops were killed; 99,742 troops were wounded. Since Februrary 1965, the US and South Vietnam have dropped more than 1.5 million tons of bombs on North and South Vietnam. [Bowman, p. 82]

Anti-War and Political Activism

1967:A group of American independent filmmakers and photographers forms a collective in NY to document and chronicle politically significant events of the time. The films, often roughly shot and bearing no individual credits, focus particularly on political demonstrations, acts of political resistance, and what the filmmakers considered to be abuses of governmental power, both in the US and globally. The group calls itself simply Newsreel. The organizational idea eventually spread to other cities including Boston and San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

For a sampling of Newsreel clips see

Newsreel film logo

October 1967 March on Washington

1968 Columbia University takeover

March 1969 demonstrations at Chicago 8 trial

Berkeley People's Park events

Roz Payne Archives

January 14, 1967: The first "Human Be-In" (aka "A Gathering of the Tribes") is held in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. The event is a prelude to the San Francisco "Summer of Love", which made the Haight-Ashbury district a household word as the center of an American counterculture and introduced the word 'psychedelic' to Suburbia. Participants in the event, which drew over 30,000 celebrants, include Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Richard (Ram Dass) Alpert, Dick Gregory, Lenore Kandel, and Jerry Ruben. The Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service and others bands provided the sound track..

Be-in photographs by Lisa Law

Be-in photographs by Larry Keenan

Haight-Ashbury in the 1960s

March 25, 1967: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. leads 5,000 people down State Street in Chicago to protest the war in Viet Nam--the first anti-war march in which Dr. King had participated.

On April 4, 1967 King delivers his "Beyond Vietnam" speech at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City.

Audio and Text of the "Beyond Vietnam" speech

On April 30, 1967, King delivers a sermon entitled "Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam" at Riverside Church in New York.

Listen to King's Riverside Church sermon

Transcript of King's Riverside Church sermon

Photos of MLK at the March 25 Chicago anti-war March (JoFreeman.com)

April 15, 1967: Spring Mobilization to End the War (MOBE). 400,000 march in Anti-Vietnam War protest from Central Park in New York to the United Nations building. [NYT, 4/16/67]

In San Francisco, 100,000 people march from Second and Market Streets to Kezar Stadium at Golden Gate Park. Vietnam veteran David Duncan gave the keynote speech. Afternoon performers include: Judy Collins, Big Brother & The Holding Company, Quicksilver Messenger Service. Also appearances from Julian Bond, Eldridge Cleaver, Morris Evenson, Rabbi Abraham Feinberg, David Harris, and Mrs. Martin Luther King, actor Robert Vaughn, and Robert Scheer, editor of Ramparts Magazine. [LAT, 4/15/67]

Footage from the April 15 San Francisco march taken by Harvey Richards
(Courtesy of Estuary Press. © Paul Richards, 1991. All rights reserved)

Newsreel of the April 15 march in New York and San Francisco; demonstrations in Rome, Italy.
(Courtesy of Internet Movie Archive. Public Domain

Social Activism and the Counterculture (National Museum of American History)

Photo April 15 march in San Francisco (AP Photo)

Photo April 15, 1967 march in San Francisco (AP Photo)

Photo April 15, 1967 march in San Francisco (AP Photo)

April 24, 1967: Abbie Hoffman leads a group in a guerrilla theater gesture against capitalism and the war at the New York Stock Exchange. The pranksters throw fistfuls of real and fake dollars onto the trading floor, causing complete chaos as the traders scrambled to scoop them up. [NYT, 8/25/67]

April 28, 1967: Boxing champion Muhammad Ali (Cassius Clay) refuses induction into the armed forces, citing religious reasons. He tells reporters that "I ain't got no quarrel with them Vietcong." He would also later comment "I've no beef with the Vietcong. No Vietcong ever called me nigger." Ali receives a five year prison sentence (reversed by the Supreme Court in June 1971 [NYT 6/29/71]. The World Boxing Association revokes his title and license. [ NYT, 4/29/67]

May 1967: A Gallup poll of US students indicates that 49% of the respondants consider themselves "hawks" (in favor of the war) and 35% consider themselves "doves" (opposed to the war); the balance have no opinion. [LAT, 5/28/67]

May 31, 1967: 600 facaulty members at California colleges and universities, including 138 faculty and staff at UC Berkeley, sign a "declaration of conscience" in which they pledge "full and active support" to "all who determine that they will not participate in this war." [LAT, 5/31/67]

Summer 1967: Racial tensions escalate into full-scale urban riots in Detroit, Newark (NJ), New York; Cleveland, Washington, D.C., Chicago, and Atlanta.

June 1967: Six Vietnam veterans, including Jan "Barry" Crumb, Mark Donnelly, and David Braum, who had march together at the Spring Mobilization to end the War, found the organization Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW)to both protest the war and fight for veterans' rights. At the height of its effectiveness in the late 1960s, VVAW claims over 40,000 members. VVAW participated in and organized antiwar demonstrations, public education efforts, militant actions, and public hearings. (See Also: Winter Soldier Investigations)

October 16-20, 1967: Stop the Draft Week organizers lead 3000 marchers to the Oakland Army Induction Center on October 16, 1967. The sitting protesters force draftees to climb over them in order to get inside the building. As inductees enter protesters hand them leaflets, ask them to change their minds and to refuse induction and join the protest. When marchers refuse police orders to leave, police attack them with nightsticks, injuring 20. Forty demonstrators are arrested, including the folk singer Joan Baez.

On the second day, demonstrators return to the induction center; 97 are arrested. On the third day, 10,000 protesters arrive, this time retreating in orderly fashion but also successfully blocking streets as they depart. On Friday the 20th there are large-scale confrontations with police as the protesters use "mobile tactics" and fight back. Seven activists (Reese Eherlich, Terence Cannon, Mike Smith, Steve Hamilton, Bob Mandel, Jeff Segal, Frank Bardacke) - the Oakland Seven - are charged with conspiracy following the demonstration, they are all acquitted on March 28, 1969. [See also January 26, 1968][NYT,10/18/67; LAT 10/21/67; Rorabaugh, pp: 116-120]

Photo of Joan Baez at the 10/17/67 Oakland march (AP Photo)

BBC - On This Day (October 16, 1967) (includes brief video clip)

BBC - On This Day (October 20, 1967)(includes brief video clip)

October 16, 1967: Hundreds of anti-war demonstrators protest outside of the Selective Service Office in San Francisco; 119 are arrested, including folksinger Joan Baez, her sister Mimi Farina, and Ira Sandperl, co-founder with Baez of the Institute For The Study Of Nonviolence in Carmel, California. [NYT, 10/17/67]

October 1967: The University of Wisconsin-Madison chapter of the SDS organizes a demonstration against Dow Chemical recruiting. Activists lead several hundred students into the university's Commerce building where Dow was recruiting. University administrators call in the police, who attack the demonstrators, breaking windows and hauling students out through the broken glass. [Baily, 2003]

Photo October 1967 demonstration against Dow Chemical (University of Wisconsin-Madison) (API)

October 21-22, 1967: Massive march on Washington, D.C., initiated and organized by the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, a loose coalition of 150 activist groups. David Dellinger, Mobe co-ordinator, asks Jerry Rubin to be project director for the march. An estimated 70,000-100,000 demonstrators participate in the event. Events during the two day demonstration include numerous speeches and performances by folksingers Peter, Paul and Mary, and Phil Ochs. A group of hippies lead by Abbie Hoffman encircles the Pentagon in an attempt to exorcise it. The plan was for people to sing and chant until the building levitated and turned orange, driving out the evil spirits and ending the war in Viet Nam. A total of 647 are arrested during the two days. [NYT,10/21/67]

In writing about the assembled crowd, novelist Norman Mailer commented that they looked "like the legions of Sgt. Pepper's Band...assembled from all the intersections between history and the comic books, between legend and television, the Biblical archetypes and the movies." [Mailer, pp. 108-109]

Senator John Stennis (D-Miss) comments about the Pentagon march: "It is clear from the evidence that I have that this is a part of a move by the Communists, especially of North Vietnamese government, to divide the American people, disrupt our war effort, discredit our government before the entire world. The leaders of North Vietnam consider the March on the Pentagon tomorrow as much of their war effort as the guerrilla warfare in South Vietnam and the North Vietnamese army assaulting our troops on the battlefield. Those who participate in these demonstrations tomorrow will be, in effect, cooperating with and assisting our enemy." [Vietnam: A Television History - Homefront USA (PBS)]

Photo of Pentagon march (AP Photo)

From Protest to Resistance (program about the October 21 March) (45 min.)

Produced by Steve Bookshester in 1967. Archive # BB4403

© Pacifica Radio, 1965. All rights reserved.

View clip from 1967 Pentagon march (Newsreel, 1967)
(Courtesy of Roz Payne Archives)

See JoFreeman.Com website for a description and photographs of these events

Photo of the Oct. 21 demonstration (API)

Photo of the Oct. 21 demonstration (API)

Senator Eugene McCarthy at UC Berkeley, 1967

Speech calling for a rejection of President Johnson and his support of the vietnam War. In November 1967, McCarthy would announce his Democratic Party candidacy for the US presidency.

Listen to this recording (43 min.)

Originally broadcast on KPFA, 26 October 1967. Archive # BB1320

© Pacifica Radio, 1967. All rights reserved.

November 11, 1967: The Vietnamese National Liberation Front (Vietcong) hand three US war prisoners over to a deligation headed by anti-war activist Tom Hayden in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. [LAT, 11/11/67] In December 1965, Hayden, along with professors Staughton Lynd (Yale) and Herbert Aptheker (American Institute for Maxist Studies) had made a private trip to Hanoi on a "fact finding mission." The junket was made without State Department approval. [LAT, 12/28/65] The effort is subsequently severely criticized by the SDS as "frivolous". [LAT, 1/2/66] [See also: New Left Travellers, 1968]

November 30, 1967: Senator Eugene McCarthy officially enters the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, running on an antiwar platform.

December 4, 1967: An estimated 500 people gather at the San Francisco Federal Building to protest the draft. 88 draft cards are collected and destroyed.

Photo of December 4, 1967draft protest, San Francisco (AP Photo)

December 31, 1967: Activists partying at Abbie Hoffman's New York loft resolve to hold a "Festival of Life" during the Democrats' "Convention of Death." Paul Krassner (editor of the popular counterculture magazine The Realist) christens the group "Yippies." Plans for the festival are formally announced at a March 17, 1968 press conference.

Hoffman along with Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman were to become to most outlandish and well-known Yippie spokesmen. The Yippies would become infamous for political and media pranks, such as running a pig ("Pigasus the Immortal") for candidate for President in 1968. [See also: Chicago 8] In January 1968, the Yippies issue a "Statement from Yip" urguing activists to come to the Chicago Democratic convention. [Linder]

Yippie publicity film

© unknown

Listen to Jerry Rubin addressing a Yippie rally in Chicago (August 1968)

© unknown

FBI file on Abbie Hoffman

1968

The War | Anti-War/Political Activism

The War

January 21, 1968: North Vietnamese troops surround the Khe Sanh combat base and begin a seventy-seven day siege of the 6,000 U.S. Marines stationed there. [LAT, 1/25/68; LAT, 1/28/68]

January 30, 1968: North Vietnamese launch what has become known as the Tet Offensive. During Vietnamese New Years, NLF forces strike the six major cities in the South, including Saigon, where they take the American Embassy. US and South Vietnamese troops eventually succeed in repelling the NLF, but the psychological and political impact in the US is tremendous. [NYT, 1/1/68; NYT, 1/31/68]

View video clips of the Tet Offensive

February 1968: A Gallup poll indicates that 35% of the respondants approve of President Johnson's handling of the war; 50% disapprove; the balance have no opinion. [NYT, 2/14/68] In March, a Gallup poll reports that 49% of the respondants felt that involvement in Vietnam was an error. [NYT, 3/10/68]

February 1, 1968: Richard Nixon enters the race for the Republican nomination for President.

A suspected NLF officer is summarily executed by General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, a South Vietnamese National Police Chief. Loan shoots the suspect in the head on a public street in front of journalists. The execution is both filmed and photographed (most notably by photographer Eddie Adams), and provides one of the iconic images that eventually helped sway public opinion in the United States against the war.

Eddie Adams website

Interview with Eddie Adams regarding his work in Vietnam (via Newseum)

February 27, 1968: CBS evening news anchor Walter Cronkite, in a special report entitled "Who, What, When, Where, Why?", provides editorial observations based on his recent trip to Vietnam to observe the Tet Offensive. At the end of the news broadcast, Cronkite says, "For it seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate." After watching Cronkite's broadcast, LBJ was quoted as saying. "That's it. If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost middle America." [Cronkite, 2001]

Cronkite CBS editorial after Tet - included in The Vietnam War with Walter Cronkite: Volume 1. [videorecording] DVD 2401

Transcript of Cronkite broadcast

March 16, 1968: Under the command of Lt. William Calley, U.S. troops (Charlie Company) kill between 200 and 500 unarmed civilians, mostly women, children and elderly, in the hamlet of My Lai. The village is located in a heavily mined region known as a Vietcong guerrillas stronghold. [See also March 29, 1971]

View video clips of events during the Calley courts martial

Vietnam Online

The My Lai Courts-Martial

Murder in the Name of War (BBC)

Transcript of telephone conversation between Henry Kissinger (Secretary of State) and Melvin Laird (Secretary of Defense) regarding My Lai (November 9, 1969) (this document also available via the National Security Archive)

My Lai, Lt. Calley, and Public Opinion

Wright Institute (Berkeley) research psychologist Edward Option is interviewed by Betty Segal concerning his investigation of public opinons in Oakland, California about My Lai and the war.

Listen to this recording (29 min.)

Originally broadcast on KPFA, 29 April 1971. Archive # BB0033

© Pacifica Radio, 1971. All rights reserved.

March 25-26, 1968: By March 1968, Johnson has decided that the size of the U.S. effort in Vietnam has grown as large as could be justified. Prompted by a request from Westmoreland and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Earle G. Wheeler for 206,000 more men, the president asks his new secretary of defense, Clark Clifford, for a thorough policy review. On March 25-26, Johnson also constitutes an advisory body of current and retired presidential advisors (later known as the "Wise Men"), including generals Omar Bradley and Matthew Ridgway; State Department pundits Dean Acheson, George Ball, and McGeorge Bundy. After two days of deliberation, the group advises Johnson against further troop increases and recommends that the administration seek a negotiated peace. Johnson is furious and fumes: "The establishment bastards have bailed out!" [Morris, p. 44; Gardner, pp. 451-455; Anderson, Oxford Companion, ]

March 31, 1968: President Johnson delivers a live, evening television address announcing steps to limit the war in Vietnam. He closes the speech by announcing to the American people that he will not seek another term in office, saying, "With America's sons in the fields far away, with America's future under challenge right here at home, with our hopes and the world's hopes for peace in the balance every day, I do not believe that I should devote an hour or a day of my time to any personal partisan causes or to any duties other than the awesome duties of this office--the Presidency of your country. Accordingly, I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President."

Audio and text of speech (via americanrhetoric.com)

Report from Vietnam, March 19, 1968. Reporter Dale Minor.

"Pacifica reporter Dale Minor has been in Vietnam for the past few weeks, and he has spent much of that time in the First Core area which consists of the five northernmost provinces of South Vietnam. The first core, which is sometimes known as I-Corps...includes the cities of Danang, Hue, and Quang Tri, as well as Khe Sanh, Con Thien, Camp Carroll, and Dong Ha, which are all Marine outposts located just below the formerly Demilitarized Zone. Last week, Dale Minor did some travel ling in the First Corps area, and on Saturday he sent us the following report from the American base at Danang." [Program introduction]

Listen to this recording (10: 53 min.)

Originally broadcast on WBAI, 18 March 1968. Archive # BB1324

© Pacifica Radio, 1968. All rights reserved.

April 4: Martin Luther King is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was to lead a march of sanitation workers protesting against low wages and poor working conditions.

Online BBC news recording (audio) of events following the King assassination

April 11, 1968: Congress enacts the Civil Rights Act of 1968. Title 18 of the Act makes it a felony to "travel in interstate commerce…with the intent to incite, promote, encourage, participate in and carry on a riot…."

May 10, 1968: Peace talks open in Paris with Averell Harriman representing the U.S. and Xan Thuy representing North Vietnam. Talks soon deadlock over the North Vietnamese demand for an end to all U.S. bombing of North Vietnam. [NYT, 5/10/68]

June 5, 1968: Senator Robert Kennedy is assassinated in Los Angeles moments after declaring victory in the California Democratic presidential primary.

Online BBC news recording (audio and video) of events surrounding and following the Robert Kennedy assassination

September 16, 1968: Perhaps as part of a strategy to capture younger voters, Richard Nixon appears on NBC's popular comedy show "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-in". The show features quickly-paced sketch comedy and a mildly "anti-establishment" viewpoint. Nixon's appearance consists of stiffly uttering one of the show's catch-phrases: "Sock it to me!" The producers offer the same opportunity to Nixon's opponent, Hubert Humphrey, but he declines.

Nixon/Agnew Presidential Campaign Commercials 1968

Brief television spots for the 1968 Nixon/Agnew campaign addressing law and order and the Vietnam war.

View It

Anti-War and Other Political Activism

January 5, 1968: A grand jury indicts Dr. Benjamin Spock, 64; the Rev. William Sloane Coffin Jr., 43, Yale chaplain; Michael Ferber, Harvard graduate student; Mitchell Goodman, a writer; and Marcus Raskin, co-director of the Institute for Policy Studies, on charges of encouraging draft evasion. On June 22 Raskin is acquitted and the other four are convicted; their convictions are overturned on appeal in July 1969. In reaction to the announcement of his indictment, Spock public ally announced that he hoped "that 100,000, 200,000 or even 500,000 young Americans either refuse to be drafted or to obey orders if in military service." [See also February 4, 1968][NYT, 1/6/68 ]

January 11, 1968: Hundreds of demonstrators picket the Fairmount Hotel in San Francisco, where Secretary of State Dean Rusk (one of the war's principal architects and apologists) is speaking. Police in riot gear are called in and violently quell the demonstration.

According to Karen Wald, a reporter for the SDS publication New Left Notes, "the fear was too great for any attempt to rescue . . . anyone who was grabbed." The following day, Wald realized, like many of her fellow activists, that this was repression at its most raw. The days were "long gone when you had to be seeking arrest . . . in order to be busted." No longer, she wrote, would the state allow forms of protest it did not agree with. No longer would the state treat those whom it considered dangerous as anything less than dangerous. [Wald, 1968; NYT, 1/12/68]

January 24, 1968: US Supreme Court rules 6 to 1 in the case of United States v. O'Brien (391 U.S. 367 [1968]) that a criminal prohibition against burning a draft card did not violate the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech. [NYT, 1/25/68]

January 26, 1968: Rally for the Oakland Seven. Includes speeches by Bobby Seale (Black Panther Party), Bettina Apthecker (Free Speech Movement), Robert Scheer (Managing Editor, Ramparts Magazine), Bob Avakian (Peace & Freedom Party), and John Kelly (Professor of Mathematics, UC Berkeley) [See October 16-20, 1967]

Listen to this recording (50 min.)

Transcript of Robert Scheer's speech

Originally broadcast on KPFA, 20 February 1968. Archive # BB1783

© Pacifica Radio, 1968. All rights reserved.

The Activist: Hell no, Nobody Goes: Mike Smith and the Oakland 7 [videorecording] Media Resources Center VIDEO/C 3797

John Wells at UC Berkeley Rally, January 1968

Draft resister and UC Berkeley student John Wells discusses his reasons for refusing to join the Army Reserves as he was ordered.

Listen to this recording (10: 53 min.)

Originally broadcast on KPFA, 1 February 1968. Archive # 1628

© Pacifica Radio, 1968. All rights reserved.

Dr. Benjamin Spock - Berkeley Community Theater, February 4, 1968

Introductions by Paul Jacobs.

Spock is introduced by James Forman, former head of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Forman is introduced by Carlos Marcello, chairman of the Black Caucus of the National Conference for New Politics (NCNP).

Listen to Forman's introduction (29 min.)

Listen to Spock's talk (29 min.)

Originally broadcast on KPFA, 11 February 1968. Archive # BB1631

© Pacifica Radio, 1971. All rights reserved.

February 8, 1968: Three black students are killed and twenty-seven are wounded in Orangeburg, South Carolina, when State Troopers fire at demonstrators demanding the integration of the local bowling alley. The incident is known as the "Orangeburg Massacre." [NYT, 2/8/68; Nelson, 1984]

March 15-17, 1968: Official founding convention of the Peace and Freedom Party, which runs an energetic 1968 campaign in many states with Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver as candidate for President. Cleaver is on the ballot in over 19 states and gets 200,000 votes.

Peace & Freedom Party web site

UCB Social Activism Sound Recording Project: The Black Panther Party

March 26, 1968: Folk singer and anti-war activist Joan Baez marries David Harris, anti-war activist and ex-student body president of Stanford University, in New York. [NYT, 3/27/68]

April 4, 1968: Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. Riots break out in more than a hundred cities. On the west side of Chicago, nine African Americans are killed and twenty blocks are burned. Riots erupt in Washington D.C., Boston, and other cities [NYT, 4/6/68]

April 23, 1968: Students takeover the administration buildings of Columbia University in response to a number of grievances, including the University's plans to build a gym in the adjoining African American community, and the University's continuing ties to the Institute for Defense Analysis. The takeo