There’s Something Happening Here: The Vietnam War and Student Protests | BRIdge from the Past

0:12 Hi everybody. Welcome to another episode of Bridge from the Past art across US history. I’m your host Mary and this series is for students like you to get ahead in your US. History class by looking at pictures. Because believe it or not, historical images have a lot to tell us about the past. Today we’re looking at images of the Vietnam War and student protests surrounding the war in the 1960s.

0:35 The Vietnam War opened a huge divide in US. Society. Some served in the conflict, some protested the conflict. Which was more patriotic? Could it be both? That’s what I’d like to know. Let’s jump into our images and see. Before we look at our images we need just a little bit of context to set the scene. So first of all,

0:56 these images are from the 1960s which is probably my favorite decade in US history. In the 1960s are really the best of times and the worst of times. The decade starts out with a lot of optimism. President John F. Kennedy is elected and he represents sort of this youthful new generation of leadership coming to power.

1:17 And the United States economy is doing very well after World War II. So for many Americans, it’s a time of optimism. By the end of the decade is a huge amount of division and strife. The Vietnam War is a huge contributor to that. There’s a lot of social movements going on in the 60s. You have the civil rights movement, environmental movements, movements for women’s rights.

1:38 So there’s all these movements and coalescing around changing, challenging the status quo. The economy starts to falter in the late sixty s and you have a growing distrust of politicians and government which again is going to go back to the Vietnam War. So you almost have the best of both worlds in this decade. The other thing to keep in mind before we look at these images of the Vietnam War

1:59 and protests is that this is all going on in the context of the Cold War. And you very much have to pick a side in this conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. And this Cold War is also overlapping with the time of decolonization. So countries that are trying to start a country, become independent are kind of stuck in this power struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union.

2:22 Vietnam is a great example of that. They were a French colony. They get their independence, but they’re divided between a communist north and a democratic south. So nationalists and communists who wanted a unified, independent Vietnam, especially the leader Ho Chi Minh, are extremely disappointed and they want one unified country. So pretty much right off the bat you have a struggle between a divide in Vietnam.

2:46 The United States is going to prop up the south of Vietnam because it is in theory a democratic government. But the government has a lot of problems. The leader basically rules as an autocrat. So things aren’t really as democratic as we would like them to be. The other thing that’s behind the US propping up Vietnam is something called domino theory.

3:07 And again, it’s this idea that if one country falls to communism, others will follow. China fell to communism earlier, so that’s very much on the minds of Kennedy and later presidents. So American involvement in Vietnam is only going to escalate during the 1960s. The last thing to keep in mind is that the Vietnam War is a quote unquote, living room war.

3:30 This war was documented by the media in a way that no other conflict had been. So Americans sitting at home with their televisions, which is a common thing now in the 1960s, are going to see images of the war basically every night, so they know what’s going on there. And increasingly what they see isn’t going to die with what a lot of politicians are telling them about the conflict.

3:51 And that’s going to play into this distrust and sort of upheaval later in the decade. So with all that in mind, let’s start looking at some images. My initial question was about patriotism and what does it mean to be patriotic? Is it to serve? Is it to protest? So here are some pictures of men and women

4:12 serving in the US military in the conflict in Vietnam. So this image is from 1965, and you can see the helicopters play a huge role in Vietnam. This is basically a guerrilla war. So the United States is fighting alongside the South Vietnamese government to try to combat Communist forces in the Viet Cong.

4:33 And the Viet Cong and the Communist forces know Vietnam. It’s their country, it’s their train, and they know where to hide, they know the lay of the land. So helicopters often drop soldiers into an area for combat and then come back and retrieve them. So it’s a very different sort of war than had been fought before. And the helicopter was a huge part of that.

4:54 If you think about these men basically being dropped down into like a firing zone and then having to wait for the helicopter to retrieve them, that’s pretty kind of a terrifying fight. Here’s some more images that show you what this war actually looks like on the ground. So again, the Viet Kong, North Vietnamese, you can’t see them out in the open.

5:15 They had a lot of networks of tunnels and trails where they would come and infiltrate the South Vietnamese countryside. And what you have here are what’s called tunnel rats. So you can see they’re lowering a soldier into this tunnel to look for Vietnam or North Vietnamese. And this guy’s holding a flashlight and a pistol so we can get a sense

5:36 of what’s going to happen if he actually encounters someone in this tunnel. Imagine crawling through this tunnel, possibly coming face to face with someone, and then you have to kill them again because this is a guerrilla warfare. We’re now 1968, so we’re still in Vietnam. We’re only sending more and more men to fight in Vietnam.

5:58 There’s a lot of boredom. You have this sign here, it says home is where you dig it. You have something called a road sweep. Again, we don’t know where the enemy is, so we’re just going to try to wipe out a road, try to wipe out a village where he might be. And you can see it’s pretty loud. All of the guys here on top of the vehicle, the guns firing, they’re covering their ears. This is kind of their day to day life.

6:25 The civilians caught in the crossfire of this conflict. It’s something else that Americans are seeing on TV and it’s pretty horrific. Again, this conflict has been going on in Vietnam for a very long time. And again, villages are being burned down, people are losing their homes over this fighting that’s going on. So it’s pretty intense thing to think about.

6:48 And again, Americans are seeing this on their TVs every night. And again, this Vietnam, it’s basically a jungle. So it’s swampy, it’s hot. You have here men carrying a wounded comrade through the swamp. So it’s, it’s a really difficult place to be. And it’s a fight that people are increasingly asking is this something that we should be doing now?

7:11 I’m going to switch gears and talk a little bit about protests. So in the 1960s, just, again, little context, there’s a lot of young people in colleges because of the baby boom. So after World War II, lots of people are having babies in 1960s. Now they’re in colleges. So you have a lot of students in colleges. You have a lot of students who are increasingly disillusioned with the way

7:33 they see things going on, with the Cold War, with again, the civil rights movement and the racial violence that’s happening. And a lot of them are going when Vietnam conflict is only becoming more and more of a factor in their lives. A lot of student protests coalesce around this Vietnam movement. So these images are all from one protest

7:54 of the Vietnam War which took place in Washington DC in October of 1967. It was called the March on the Pentagon and 75,000 people came to in front of the Lincoln Memorial to protest American involvement in Vietnam. So what’s interesting about these images is that these are all veterans protesting the war.

8:15 So you can see the sign to bring our GIS home. Now. You can see that they’re wearing, many of them are wearing their uniforms, their hats to show that they had served and they are protesting this war. This is sort of seen as it’s a different sort of war. It’s not our fight to fight. And of course, even today this remains pretty divisive over veterans

8:37 who spoke out against Vietnam versus who served in Vietnam. Here you have more images of the people at this protest and these are more of the student protests. And you can see in some of their placards here that there’s real anger at being called on to serve in this fight. So again, there was a draft for Vietnam.

8:57 So young men of college age would be targeted in this draft. So it was seen as, I don’t want to go and fight this war. There’s fear of being drafted. There’s anger over the causes of the war to begin with. And you kind of see it all. And you can see this is a huge group of people gathering here to protest this. And this right here, this is the reflecting pool.

9:17 So this group of people is right in front of the Lincoln Memorial, even though you can’t see it in this image. And our final image also gives you a little flavor of the 1960s. So this protest in 1967 was about gathering at the Lincoln Memorial, peaceful protest to say we’re against this conflict.

9:38 Others continued on to the Pentagon. So that’s across the Potomac River, not far from the Lincoln Memorial as the center of the US military to protest the war. And there were some elements of absurdity and theater here in these protests. And there were some people who again, had a strong moral conviction that this war was wrong. So when they get to the Pentagon,

9:58 protesters are met with military police and those in riot gear. And this is sort of the classic image of one of the protesters handing the policeman a flower. So again, this image of peace versus war, you can see some of the longer hair and the facial hair that becomes characteristic of the hippie movement. So you have a lot of a lot of voices,

10:19 really that are protesting the war for one reason or another. So now I’m going to kick it back out to you. So the Vietnam War again was hugely divisive. So is it patriotic to serve? Is it patriotic to protest? Could it? People, what do you think? I would love to know your thoughts.

10:41 That’s all we have time for on today’s Bridge from the Past. If you learned something, please like this video. Subscribe to our channel. We’re back every other Thursday with a new primary source. You can also find us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, all the places to learn about student contests and other ways to get involved. Until next time, guys. Take care.