Peace and Freedom. Simon Hall
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troops, but within twelve months it had risen to 181,000. Operation Rolling Thunder, a massive bombing campaign against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, was launched in February 1965; this made the war a major political issue, and it also energized a domestic peace movement that had been declining in strength since the 1963 signing of the nuclear test ban treaty. In the same month that the bombing began, the first teach-in on the war was held at the University of Michigan. Within two months hundreds more had occurred, including one at Berkeley that involved 30,000 people and lasted for 36 hours. The teach-ins consisted of lectures, debates, and discussion groups on the war, and served to legitimize dissent. As Charles DeBenedetti has stated, “the vacuum of understanding which they exposed created a market for information,” and this need was met by a cadre of academic experts who challenged national policy and established an alternative source of information.48
Any story of the antiwar movement of the 1960s must give some consideration to the emergence and development of the New Left. Not only was it a key participant in the emergent antiwar sentiment of the 1960s, but it also played an important role in forging links between the various social movements of the decade. Always an assorted coalition of different groups, and thus difficult to define, the New Left’s major characteristics were its campus base, its rejection of anticommunism, its high degree of decentralization, its advocacy of participatory democracy, and its emphasis on a politics of authenticity. As the decade progressed, the New Left changed—morphing from a reformist movement inspired by John Kennedy’s call to service into an association of various radical groups that embraced elements of an anti-American worldview and often espoused competing versions of Marxist-Leninism. By the mid-1960s the New Left had been involved in a number of progressive causes—including civil rights, anti-poverty, and campus reform (for example, the Free Speech movement had erupted on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley in the fall of 1964). Increasingly, though, student activism would center on efforts to end American involvement in the Vietnam War.49
The most important New Left organization was Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Formed in 1960 as the renamed Student League for Industrial Democracy, in 1962 it published the Port Huron Statement, a widely influential and much read manifesto for the generation of 1960s student activists. It emphasized participatory democracy and “values,” especially the need for spiritual meaning in modern society, as well as more traditional demands for civil rights, social justice, and an end to militarism. During its early years, SDS focused on the struggle for black rights and also attempted to organize an “interracial movement of the poor” through a program of community organization modeled on SNCC-style activism, known as the Economic and Research Action Project (ERAP). As Vietnam began to emerge as a national issue, however, SDS turned its attention to events in Southeast Asia.50
In December 1964, SDS decided to hold an antiwar march in Washington, D.C., the following April.51 The escalation of the war during early 1965 fueled interest in the prospective action, and SDS responded by hiring more staff to deal with the administrative burdens of staging what would be the first significant national antiwar demonstration. Endorsements were received from James Farmer, Staughton Lynd, Harvard historian and SANE leader H. Stuart Hughes, Berkeley Free Speech icon Mario Savio, veteran pacifist A. J. Muste, and Howard Zinn, among others.52 The SDS decision to adopt a nonexclusionary approach to antiwar activity, however, produced controversy and dissent. The official call stated that “we urge the participation of all those who agree with us that the war in Vietnam injures both Vietnamese and Americans and should be stopped.”
Antiwar liberals did not take kindly to the idea that they might be marching alongside communists.53 In New York, a few days before the march, Stuart Hughes, A. J. Muste, socialist Norman Thomas, and Bayard Rustin warned people away from the event because of its alleged communist taint. The group declared that they were concerned about Vietnam, but believed in “the need for an independent peace movement, not committed to any form of totalitarianism or drawing inspiration from the foreign policy of any government.”54 A New York Post editorial added fuel to the fire when it claimed that “on the eve of this weekend’s ‘peace march’ … several leaders of the peace movement have taken clear note of attempts to convert the event into a pro-Communist production.”55 Hughes and Thomas subsequently apologized to SDS for their involvement in this unsavory episode, although the issue of nonexclusion (or anti-anticommunism) would continue to be debated furiously within the peace movement.56
April 17, 1965 was “one of those flawless Washington spring days,” and it augured a successful march. Perhaps as many as 25,000 people attended, and they came from all over the country. African Americans were particularly well represented—partly the result of “conscious effort” by the SDS to get a black turnout.57 SNCC’s Bob Moses was a featured speaker, and he compared the killing in Vietnam to the killing in Mississippi. He told the crowd to ask themselves and their government whether they had the “right to plot and kill and murder in defense of the society you value?”58 Moses was perhaps the SNCC member most active in the early antiwar movement, and he frequently linked his opposition to the war with his own experiences in the Deep South. For example, he had told the audience at a Berkeley teach-in that “the South has got to be a looking glass, not a lightning rod. You’ve got to learn from the South if you’re going to do anything about this country in relation to Vietnam.”59 The influence of the civil rights movement on the anti-Vietnam War movement, and its desire to generate black support for peace actions, were evident from the start.
SDS president Paul Potter closed the rally with a fiery speech that placed the Vietnam War firmly within a wider context, and called for the building of a multi-issue movement for progressive change in the United States. Potter asked, “what kind of system is it that justifies the United States … seizing the destinies of the Vietnamese people and using them callously for its own purpose?” He continued, “what kind of system is it that disenfranchises people in the South, leaves millions upon millions of people … excluded from the … promise of American society … and still persists in calling itself free and still persists in finding itself fit to police the world?” In a memorable peroration Potter declared, “we must name that system, we must name it, describe it, analyze it and change it. For it is only when that system is changed and brought under control that there can be any hope for stopping the forces that create a war in Vietnam today or a murder in the South tomorrow.” Potter then called for the creation of a massive social movement that understood “Vietnam in all its horror as but a symptom of a deeper malaise.” After applauding Potter’s speech enthusiastically, the large crowd marched from the Washington Monument down the mall toward the Capitol, singing “We Shall Overcome,” the anthem of the civil rights movement. About 150 yards from the Capitol the crowd stopped and a small contingent handed a peace petition to a congressional aide.60
In terms of linking Vietnam with the civil rights movement, the march appeared to be a success. The SDS action had been supported by CORE’s James Farmer as well as senior SNCC representatives. Indeed, SNCC’s Executive Committee had decided “with little discussion and no dissent” to support the April march. On the eve of the action, SNCC members meeting in Holly Springs, Mississippi, had discussed both Vietnam and the SDS march. Silas Norman argued that the war was a logical extension of American imperialism, and stated that a consensus existed within the organization over supporting the march. In addition—“we have people taking an active part in the march and we have helped people get students (from the South) for it.” SNCC chairman John Lewis also spoke in favor of taking an antiwar position, arguing that the U.S. should withdraw from Vietnam.61
A group of black high school students from Mississippi were among those participating in the Washington protest. Signaling the continuity between the peace and freedom movements was the fact that all the students were veterans of the Freedom Schools that had been established during Freedom Summer. Otis Brown, a sixteen-year-old student leader from Indianola, explained that they had come to Washington “because we have to look beyond just Negro freedom. We don’t want to grow up ‘free’ at home in a country which supports this kind of war abroad.”62
The civil rights and antiwar movements were also linked by a common spirit, one SDS leader explained that the “breadth and urgency of