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8th Grade Patriotism Inquiry
Is Protest Patriotic?
Jim Ryan, a photograph reflecting the idea that many wealthy men were able to get draft deferments while racial minorities and working-class men made up a disproportionate number of draftees, c1970.
Photo by Jim Ryan, 1976. Used with permission.
Supporting Questions
1. What were the main arguments of Vietnam War protesters?2. What methods were used to protest the Vietnam War?3. Why did some Americans consider the Vietnam War protesters unpatriotic?4. Why did the Vietnam War protesters consider themselves patriotic?
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Is Protest Patriotic?
Featured Source Source: Thomas Paine, a passage from an essay in The American Crisis (excerpt), December 23, 1776
Patriotism-vigorous support for one’s country
READ the below pamphlet. Come up with questions based on this document to determine whether or not protesting a war is patriotic or not.
THINK about how Thomas Paine’s words would affect you if you were a soldier during the Revolutionary War.
NOTE: Thomas Paine’s pamphlet Common Sense was the clarion call that began the American Revolution. As George Washington's troops retreated from New York through New Jersey, Paine again rose to the challenge of literary warfare. With The American Crisis, he delivered the words that would salvage the revolution.
Washington commanded that the freshly printed pamphlet be read aloud to his dispirited men; the rousing prose had its intended effect. Reciting Paine's impassioned words, the beleaguered troops mustered their remaining hopes for victory and crossed the icy Delaware River to defeat hung over Hessians on Christmas night and, on January 2, the British army's best general, Earl Cornwallis, at the Battle of Princeton. With victory in New Jersey, Washington won not only two battles but also the love and thanks of men and women.
THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated. Britain, with an army to enforce her tyranny, has declared that she has a right (not only to tax) but “to bind us in all cases whatsoever,” and if being bound in that manner, is not slavery, then is there not such a thing as slavery upon earth. Even the expression is impious; for so unlimited a power can belong only to God.
Public domain.
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Supporting Question 1- What were the main arguments of Vietnam War protesters?
Featured Source Source B: Data bank: Vietnam War statistics
LOOK at how public opinion changed about the War in Vietnam. Compare it to the chart about deaths from the war. How do they fit together?
Chart 1: Public perception of the Vietnam War.
Jodie T. Allen. “Polling Wars: Hawks vs. Doves.” Pew Research Center, Washington, DC, November 23, 2009. http://www.pewresearch.org/2009/11/23/polling-wars-hawks-vs-doves/.
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Chart 2: Chart of United States troop deaths in the Vietnam War.
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Supporting Question 1- What were the main arguments of Vietnam War protesters?
Featured Source Source C: Cleveland Plain Dealer, front-page reporting on the My Lai Massacre, November 29, 1969
How could a photograph/article like the one below sway public opinion about the war in Vietnam?
The Plain Dealer front page on November 20, 1969. Used with Permission of Landov media.
Photo: Ronald L. Haeberle. The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images.
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Supporting Question 1- What were the main arguments of Vietnam War protesters?
Featured Source Source D: John Kerry, testimony to the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee as a representative of a group of Vietnam veterans opposed to the war (excerpts), April 22, 1971
Hypocrisy-the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform
FOCUS on the reasons John Kerry gives for why people would protest the Vietnam War.
Feelings of Men Coming Back from Vietnam
...In our opinion, and from our experience, there is nothing in South Vietnam, nothing which could happen that realistically threatens the United States of America. And to attempt to justify the loss of one American life in Vietnam, Cambodia, or Laos by linking such loss to the preservation of freedom, which those misfits supposedly abuse, is to us the height of criminal hypocrisy, and it is that kind of hypocrisy which we feel has torn this country apart....
What Was Found and Learned in Vietnam
We found that not only was it a civil war, an effort by a people who had for years been seeking their freedom from any colonial influence whatsoever, but also we found that the Vietnamese whom we had enthusiastically molded after our own image were hard put to take up the fight against the threat we were supposedly saving them from.
We found most people didn’t even know the difference between communism and democracy. They only wanted to work in rice paddies without helicopters shhoting them and bombs with napalm burning their villages and tearing their country apart. They wanted everything to do with the war, particularly with this foreign presence of the United States of America, to leave them alone in peace, and they practiced the art of survival by siding with whichever military force was present at a particular time, be it Viet Cong, North Vietnamese, or American.
We found also that all too often American men were dying in those rice paddies for want of support from their allies.
We saw firsthand how money from American taxes was used for a corrupt dictatorship. We saw that many people in this country had a one-sided idea of who was kept free by our flag, as blacks provided the highest percentage of casualties. We saw Vietnam ravaged equally by American bombs as well as by search and destroy missions, as well as by Viet Cong terrorism, and yet we listened while this country tried to blame all of the havoc on the Viet Cong.
We rationalized destroying villages in order to save them. We saw America lose her sense of morality as she accepted very coolly a My Lai and refused to give up the image of American soldiers who hand out chocolate bars and chewing gum.
We learned the meaning of free fire zones, shooting anything that moves, and we watched while America placed a cheapness on the lives of Orientals.
We watched the U.S. falsification of body counts, in fact the glorification of body counts. We listened while month after month we were told the back of the enemy was about to break. We fought using weapons against “Oriental
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human beings,” with quotation marks around that. We fought using weapons against those people which I do not believe this country would dream of using were we fighting in the European theater....
Request for Action by Congress
We are asking here in Washington for some action, action from the Congress of the United States of America, which has the power to raise and maintain armies, and which by the Constitution also has the power to declare war.
We have come here, not to the president, because we believe that this body can be responsive to the will of the people, and we believe that the will of the people says that we should be out of Vietnam now....
Public domain. Available at the faculty page of Dr. Ernest Bolt, University of Richmond: https://facultystaff.richmond.edu/~ebolt/history398/johnkerrytestimony.html.
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Supporting Question 1- What were the main arguments of Vietnam War protesters?
Featured Source Source E: Image Bank: Escalation into Cambodia
Fighting in Vietnam spilled into the neighboring country of Cambodia.
The cartoon shows President Nixon holding a sign behind is back while standing in front of a gravestone. Nixon won the 1968 election saying he would restore peace in Vietnam.
Image 1: Herblock, political cartoon critical of US involvement in the Vietnam War, “Now, as I Was Saying Four Years Ago,” 1972.
Herblock, cartoon critical of US involvement in the Vietnam War, “Now, as I Was Saying Four Years Ago,” 1972
A 1972 Herblock Cartoon, © The Herb Block Foundation. Used with permission.
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Image 2: Taylor Owen, map represented bombing sites, “Sites Bombed,” 2006.NOTE: Despite not being directly involved in the Vietnam War, neighboring Cambodia was the scene of extensive military action. North Vietnamese troops used areas of Cambodia as bases for their military, and the United States regularly bombed these western Cambodia bases. In 1970, President Nixon ordered the secret invasion of
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Cambodia. This map, produced by Taylor Owen in 2006, highlights sites in Cambodia that were bombed by the United States military.
Map © Taylor Owen. Used with permission. The map accompanied the article “Bombs over Cambodia,” by Taylor Owen and Ben Kiernan, The Walrus, October 2006. Available at “The Cambodian Genocide Project,” Yale University: http://www.yale.edu/cgp/Walrus_CambodiaBombing_OCT06.pdf.
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Supporting Question 2- What methods were used to protest the Vietnam War?
Featured Source Source F: Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong, lyrics from a 1960s pop song, “War,” 1969
War, huh, yeah
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing, oh hoh, oh
Oh, war, I despise
‘Cause it means destruction of innocent lives
War means tears to thousands of mothers’ eyes
When their sons go off to fight and lose their lives
I said
War, huh, good God y’all
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing, just say it again
War, it ain’t nothin’ but a heartbreak
War, friend only to the undertaker
Oh war, is an enemy to all mankind
The thought of war blows my mind
War has caused unrest within the younger generation
Induction, then destruction, who wants to die?
War, good God y’all
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing, say it, say it, say it
War, it ain’t nothin’ but a heartbreaker
War, it’s got one friend, that’s the undertaker
Oh, war has shattered many young man’s dreams
Made him disabled, bitter and mean
Life is much too short and precious to spend fighting wars these days
War can’t give life, it can only take it away, ooh
War, huh, good God y’all
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing, say it again
War, it ain’t nothin’ but a heartbreaker
War, friend only to the undertaker
Peace love and understanding tell me
Is there no place for them today?
They say we must fight to keep our freedom
But Lord knows there’s got to be a better way
War, huh, good God y’all
What is it good for?
You tell ‘em, say it, say it, say it, say it
War, good Lord, huh
What is it good for?
War. Words and Music by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong. © 1970 (Renewed 1998) JOBETE MUSIC CO., INC. All Rights Controlled and Administered by EMI BLACKWOOD MUSIC INC. on behalf of STONE AGATE MUSIC (A Division of JOBETE MUSIC CO., INC.) All Rights Reserved International Copyright Secured Used by Permission. Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard Corporation.
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Supporting Question 2- What methods were used to protest the Vietnam War?
Featured Source Source G: Source bank: Vietnam War protests
Source 1: Jim Ryan, a photograph reflecting the idea that many wealthy men were able to get draft deferments while racial minorities and working-class men made up a disproportionate number of draftees, c1970.
Photo by Jim Ryan, 1976. Used with permission.
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Source 2: Fred Lonidier, photograph of young men burning their draft cards. The Supreme Court ruled that the burning of draft cards, unlike the burning of American flags, was not a constitutional right, c1970.
© Fred Lonidier. Used with permission.
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Source 3: Nihon Denpa News, photograph taken of perhaps the most notorious antiwar protester of her generation—actress Jane Fonda, 1972.
© AP Photo/ Used with permission.
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Clay Guilty in Draft Case; Gets Five Years in Prison
U.S. Judge Also Fines the Boxer $10,000 for Refusing Induction
By MARTIN WALDRON
Houston, June 20--Cassius Clay, later known as Muhammed Ali, the deposed heavyweight champion, was convicted by a jury tonight of violating the United States Selective Service laws by refusing to be drafted.
Federal District Judge Joe E. Ingraham sentenced Clay to five years in prison and fined him $10,000. This was the maximum penalty for the offense, which is a felony.
The judge's sentence was pronounced immediately at Clay's request.
"I'd appreciate it," the 25-year-old boxer said, "if the court will do it now, give me my sentence now, instead of waiting and stalling for time."
His lawyers said he "wants to be able to sleep tonight" without worrying what the sentence would be.
Clay, who had contended that his status as a Black Muslim minister made him exempt from the draft, stood passively in front of the judge's bench as the judge pronounced sentence.
Every eye in the crowded courtroom was on him as he stared straight ahead, saying, "No, sir," firmly when the judge asked him if he wanted to say anything that might go toward mitigating his sentence.
Lawyer Morton Susman said that Clay, as an athlete, had brought honor to the United States by winning in the Olympics in Rome in 1960, and had brought credit to himself by becoming heavyweight champion of the world.
"He became a Muslim in 1964 after defeating Sonny Liston for the title," said Mr. Susman. "In my opinion, his trouble started with that--this tragedy and the loss of his title can be traced to that."
After Clay had refused in April to take the Army induction oath, the World Boxing Association and the New York Athletic Commission stripped him of his title.
Mr. Susman said that he had studied the Muslim order "and it is as much political as it is religious."
There were a number of Muslim members in the courtroom for the verdict and the subsequent sentencing, but there was no outcry and no disturbance. A number of special agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation were watching the audience along with Federal marshals.
The jury, six men and six women, all white, stayed in the jury box during the sentencing.
Clay's attorneys, Hayden C. Covington of New York City and Quinnan A. Hodges of Houston, took exception to Mr. Susman's remarks about the Muslims.
Denies Muslim Influence
Mr. Covington, who has won civil rights suits for Jehovah's Witnesses, a religious sect, in a number of constitutional cases, said: "I take exception to remarks that this man is under the influence of the Muslims in any way."
Clay, he said, is one of the finest men he has ever met and acted from "sincerity and honesty" when he refused last April 28 to step forward and be inducted into the armed services at Houston.
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Both Mr. Covington and Mr. Hodges asked Judge Ingraham to put Clay on probation. Failing that, said Mr. Covington, the former champion should not be given a sentence more severe than those given in a similar cases. "That's 18 months," he said.
Judge Ingraham, after being told that Clay's attorneys would appeal, said that now was not the time to ask for mercy. If the conviction should be thrown out on appeal, "the sentence would be nil," he said, but if it should be upheld, that would be the time to seek a reduction in sentence or to seek probation.
Clay, who had known both applause and boos in his seven years as a boxer, did not seem downcast at today's turn of events.
His step was as jaunty as ever as he walked from the courtroom after being released on $5,000 bond. He held hands with two young women who had been with him during intermissions in the trial and he smiled at the crowd that gathered around. He allowed the television cameramen to surround him and shuffle him off down the street.
Pays No Attention
Clay paid no attention to the legal maneuvering during the day. He sat at the defense table, drawing and chewing gum.
During recesses, while Clay stood out in the corridors in the Federal Courthouse and signed autographs for children, one of his attorneys showed reporters some of the drawings that Clay had made. One showed an airplane flying over a heavily wooded mountain range toward the rising sun. Another portrayed a ship sailing head-on into a fjord between two mountain ranges.
Clay himself exhibited other drawings--mystic symbols, clouds and so forth. One was an elaborate sketch of the words "Muhammad Ali," which is his Muslim name.
In all, the jury heard only an hour or so of testimony, most of it from government witnesses.
Source 4: Martin Waldron, article about Cassius Clay (later Muhammad Ali) being found guilty of avoiding the draft, New York Times, June 21, 1967.
From the New York Times, June 21, 1967 © 1967 The New York Times. All rights reserved. Used by permission and protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States. The printing, copying, redistribution, or retransmission of this Content without express written permission is prohibited. h ttp://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0620.html#article .
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Source 5: Bernie Boston, photograph of peaceful war protesters who were also part of the counterculture movement and were nicknamed “hippies,” The Washington Post, October 22, 1967.© Getty Images/© The Washington Post.
Source 6: Spencer Grant, photograph of antiwar protester at a Boston rally waving the Viet Cong flag at the State House to protest the Kent State University shootings, c1970.© Getty Images/© Spencer Grant.
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Supporting Question 2- What methods were used to protest the Vietnam War?
Featured Source Source H: Image bank: Weather Underground
Image 1: Photographer unknown, photograph of damage from a Weather Underground bomb set off in a women’s bathroom in the Air Force wing of the Pentagon, May 19, 1972. Bathroom Bomb at the Pentagon © Corbis.
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Image 2: Artist unknown, poster reflecting the planned demonstrations by the Weather Underground, a faction of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in Chicago from October 9 to 11, 1969.Special Collections Library at the University of Washington, [email protected].
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Image 3: Federal Bureau of Investigation, most wanted bulletin with 20 people connected to the Weather Underground faction of the Students for a Democratic Society, c1970.Public domain.
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Supporting Question 3- Why did some Americans consider the Vietnam War protesters unpatriotic?
Featured Source Source I: Robert Meloon, newspaper article about student protests against the Vietnam War at the University of Wisconsin, “Legislators Demand Stiff Penalties for Dow Chemical Protesters,” The Capital Times (excerpts), October 1967
While reading, FOCUS on some of the quotes people said about the protestors. Think of the names they call them and the penalties they wish to give them.
NOTE: Soon after student protests against Dow Chemical (manufacturers of napalm) turned violent, University of Wisconsin officials were called to the state house. Legislators suspected the university of housing communists, inciting treasonous behavior, and importing activists from other parts of the nation to stir things up.
Strict disciplining of campus demonstrators was demanded Wednesday by state legislators after they received a report on the violence from Lt. Gov. Jack Olson.
The Assembly adopted 94 to 5 a resolution calling for stiff penalties for the students and expulsion “whenever necessary.”
The resolution called the protests “a flagrant abuse and perversion of the treasured traditions of academic freedoms....”
In his talk to the legislators, Lt. Gov. Olson also called for a get-tough policy at the University.
“Anyone who has taken part in this type of riot has no place in the University,” he said.
In the Senate, Sen. Leland McParland (D-Cudahy) said he was “sick of students running the University.”
“We should shoot them if necessary,” McParland said. “I would, I would, because it’s insurrection,” he added....
“Communism is on that University campus and it’s operating today,” [Sen. Gordon] Roseleip [(R-Darlington)] said. He called for a legislative investigation of the demonstrations.
Sen. Ernest Keppler (R-Sheboygan) cautioned the senators that “we are dealing with only a small percentage of the student body.”
“But we should deal with them severely,” he added....
Assemblyman Edward Mertz (D-Milwaukee) called the students “long-haired, greasy pigs” and insisted the Legislature should take over running the University....
[Assemblyman Harvey] Dueholm [(D-Luck)] called the Assembly’s action “mass hysteria.”
“Let the law take its course but we shouldn’t sit here and tell them what to do,” he said. “I think the Regents can run the University.”
© Capital Newspapers. Used with permission. Available at “Two Days in October,” The American Experience, PBS website: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/twodays/filmmore/ps_legislators.html.
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Supporting Question 3- Why did some Americans consider the Vietnam War protesters unpatriotic?
Featured Source Source J: Richard Nixon, speech about the progress of the Vietnam War, “Address to the Nation on the War in Vietnam” (excerpts), November 3, 1969
THINK about the problems Nixon has with protestors and why he has those problems.
In speaking of the consequences of a hurried withdrawal, I mentioned that our allies would lose confidence in America.
Far more dangerous, we would lose confidence in ourselves. Oh, the immediate reaction would be a sense of relief that our men were coming home. But as we saw the consequences of what we had done, inevitable remorse and divisive blame would scar our spirit as a people.
We have faced other crises in our history and have become stronger by rejecting the easy way out and taking the right way in meeting our challenges. Our greatness as a nation has been our capacity to do what had to be done when we knew our course was right.
I recognize that some of my fellow citizens disagree with the plan for peace I have chosen. Honest and patriotic Americans have reached different conclusions as to how peace should be achieved.
In San Francisco a few weeks ago, I saw demonstrators carrying signs reading: "Lose in Vietnam, bring the boys home."
Well, one of the strengths of our free society is that any American has a right to reach that conclusion and to advocate that point of view. But as President of the United States, I would be untrue to my oath of office if I allowed the policy of this nation to be dictated by the minority who hold that point of view and who try to impose it on the nation by mounting demonstrations in the street.
For almost 200 years, the policy of this Nation has been made under our Constitution by those leaders in the Congress and the White House elected by all of the people. If a vocal minority, however enthusiastic its cause, prevails over reason and the will of the majority, this Nation has no future as a free society.…
I know it may not be fashionable to speak of patriotism or national destiny these days. But I feel it is appropriate to do so on this occasion.
Two hundred years ago this Nation was weak and poor. But even then, America was the hope of millions in the world. Today we have become the strongest and richest nation in the world. And the wheel of destiny has turned so that any hope the world has for the survival of peace and freedom will be determined by whether the American people have the moral stamina and the courage to meet the challenge of free world leadership.
Let historians not record that when America was the most powerful nation in the world we passed on the other side of the road and allowed the last hopes for peace and freedom of millions of people to be suffocated by the forces of totalitarianism.
And so tonight — to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans — I ask for your support.
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I pledged in my campaign for the Presidency to end the war in a way that we could win the peace. I have initiated a plan of action which will enable me to keep that pledge.
The more support I can have from the American people, the sooner that pledge can be redeemed; for the more divided we are at home, the less likely the enemy is to negotiate at Paris.
Let us be united for peace. Let us also be united against defeat. Because let us understand: North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that.
Public domain. Available at “Nixon,” The American Experience, PBS website: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/primary-resources/nixon-vietnam/.
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Supporting Question 3- Why did some Americans consider the Vietnam War protesters unpatriotic?
Featured Source Source K: Source bank: Hardhat rallies
READ the excerpts from the construction workers and figure out why they felt the protests were unpatriotic.
--from the New York Times, May 21, 1970
On May 20, 1970, between 60,000 and 150,000 construction workers and others paraded through downtown New York to show support for President Nixon's Vietnam war policies. The parade was organized by the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York (led by Peter Brennan) in part to counteract the widespread media images of rampaging construction workers from May 8 with images of peaceful political protest. A blizzard of tickertape drifted down on the marchers from the windows of Wall Street offices.
This article is not news coverage of the march but rather "a random sampling of some marchers and their views." This is a valuable historical source for uncovering what the "hardhats" themselves thought and who they were. It is important to keep in mind, though, that the reporter and editors selected the marchers and views they found most newsworthy or representative.
Robert Geary, 50, an office worker for the Colonial Hardware Corporation: I'm very proud to be an American, and I know my boy that was killed in Vietnam would be here today if he was alive, marching with us....I know he died for the right cause, because in his letters he wrote to me he knew what he was fighting for: to keep America free and to avoid any taking over by Communists--atheistic Communists, by the way.
I think most of them [college dissenters] are influenced by a few vile people...I'll tell you one person who smudged the name of my son and that was Mayor Lindsay. When he stands up and says men who refuse to serve in the armed forces are heroic, then I presume by the same category that my son that was killed in Vietnam is a coward, the way he thinks.
Eighty per cent of the people are behind America and the flag...I believe that what we're fighting for is worth it, yes, but nobody likes war.
Of the flag: It's me. It's part of me. I fought for it myself two or three years in the Second World War...It's the greatest country in the world. All they [dissenters] have to do is move out.
Mrs. Allison Greaker, 411 100th Street, Brooklyn, marching with her children, Richard Nixon Greaker, 1, and Allison, 2: We're part of the silent majority that's finally speaking--and in answer to the creeps and the bums that have been hollering and marching against the President.
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I think he's doing everything he can to bring about an honorable peace. I think my kids are going to live better with Nixon in the White House.
To stop Communist aggression [the war] has been worth it, yes...If they had listened to Gen. Douglas MacArthur from the very beginning and gone into Manchuria, we wouldn't have had the problems we have. We would have put the Communists down back in 1952. I have a lot of faith in the college kids...I think they're being heard enough, and we're answering right now today....They've tried to take over education, the Communists have, and I think this is where [the students are] getting their viewpoints from.
Collection of views expressed by during a Hard Hat rally in New York City, “For the Flag and for Country, They March” (excerpts), New York Times, May 21, 1970.
From The New York Times, May 21, 1970 © 1970 The New York Times. All rights reserved. Used by permission and protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States. The printing, copying, redistribution, or retransmission of this Content without express written permission is prohibited. http://chnm.gmu.edu/hardhats/forflag.html .
Photographs by Gary Winograd of the Hard Hat rally in San Francisco are available on-line at:https://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/Collection/art-object-page.164190.html
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Supporting Question 4- Why did the Vietnam War protesters consider themselves patriotic?
Featured Source Source L: Paul Potter, speech in opposition to the Vietnam War, “Naming the System” (excerpt), April 17, 1965
THINK about the reasons BOTH Paul Potter and Martin Luther King, Jr. considered themselves patriotic for protesting the war.
NOTE: Paul Potter, president of the Students for a Democratic Society, spoke in front of 25,000 people who had participated in a march on Washington, DC, on April 17, 1965m to urge an end to the war in Vietnam.
There is no simple plan, no scheme or gimmick that can be proposed here. There is no simple way to attack something that is deeply rooted in the society. If the people of this country are to end the war in Vietnam, and to change the institutions which create it, then the people of this country must create a massive social movement-and if that can be built around the issue of Vietnam then that is what we must do.
By a social movement I mean more than petitions or letters of protest, or tacit support of dissident Congressmen; I mean people who are willing to change their lives, who are willing to challenge the system, to take the problem of change seriously. By a social movement I mean an effort that is powerful enough to make the country understand that our problems are not in Vietnam, or China or Brazil or outer space or at the bottom of the ocean, but are here in the United States. What we must do is begin to build a democratic and humane society in which Vietnams are unthinkable, in which human life and initiative are precious. The reason there are twenty thousand people here today and not a hundred or none at all is because five years ago in the South students began to build a social movement to change the system. The reason there are poor people, Negro and white, housewives, faculty members, and many others here in Washington is because that movement has grown and spread and changed and reached out as an expression of the broad concerns of people throughout the society. The reason the war and the system it represents will be stopped, if it is stopped before it destroys all of us, will be because the movement has become strong enough to exact change in the society. Twenty thousand people, the people here, if they were serious, if they were willing to break out of their isolation and to accept the consequences of a decision to end the war and commit themselves to building a movement wherever they are and in whatever way they effectively can, would be, I’m convinced, enough.
To build a movement rather than a protest or some series of protests, to break out of our insulations and accept the consequences of our decisions, in effect to change our lives, means that we can open ourselves to the reactions of a society that believes that it is moral and just, that we open ourselves to defaming and persecution, that we dare to be really seen as wrong in a society that doesn’t tolerate fundamental challenges.
Used with permission.
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Supporting Question 4- Why did the Vietnam War protesters consider themselves patriotic?
Featured Source Source M: Martin Luther King Jr., speech in opposition to the Vietnam War, "A Time to Break Silence,” April 4, 1967
NOTE: The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University website contains a transcript and audio recording of Dr. King’s New York speech in opposition to the Vietnam War
Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation’s history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the forecasting of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm opposition based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movement, and pray that our inner being may be sensitive to its guidance. For we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.
Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path.
And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond in compassion, my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the ideologies of the Liberation Front, not of the military in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I think of them, too, because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and hear their broken cries.
They must see Americans as strange liberators. The Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence 1945 after a combined French and Japanese occupation and before the communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. Instead, we decided to support France in its reconquest of her former colony. Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people were not ready for independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long. With that tragic decision we rejected a revolutionary government seeking self-determination and a government that had been established not by China—for whom the Vietnamese have no great love—but by clearly indigenous forces that included some communists. For the peasants this new government meant real land reform, one of the most important needs in their lives.
These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wounds of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. We in the West must support these revolutions.
We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.
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http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/documentsentry/doc_beyond_vietnam/.
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