Speakers included Senator Wayne Morse, a Democrat from Oregon who had become a sharp critic of the Johnson Administration.
On the evening of June 8, 1965, a crowd of 17,000 paid to attend an antiwar rally held at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Protests against the war continued at various locations around the country. The newspaper described the protest as something of a genteel social event, noting "Beards and blue jeans mixed with Ivy tweeds and an occasional clerical collar in the crowd." The Washington gathering, according to the next day's New York Times, drew more than 15,000 protesters.
A leftist student organization, Students for a Democratic Society, commonly known as SDS, called for a protest in Washington, D.C., on Saturday, April 17, 1965. The effort to raise awareness and rally protests against the war picked up momentum. Using lessons from the Civil Rights Movement, groups of students began to hold "teach-ins" on college campuses to educate their colleagues about the war. That spring, a small protest movement developed, mainly among college students. Johnson sent the first American combat troops to Vietnam: a contingent of Marines, who arrived on March 8, 1965. In the years following Kennedy's death, American involvement in Vietnam deepened. Students protesting outside the White House, 1965. We can help them, we can give them equipment, we can send our men out there as advisers, but they have to win it, the people of Vietnam, against the Communists." They are the ones who have to win it or lose it. "I don't think that unless a greater effort is made by the Government to win popular support that the war can be won out there. Kennedy was careful to state that American involvement in Vietnam would remain limited: The issue of American involvement came up in an interview with President Kennedy conducted by journalist Walter Cronkite on September 2, 1963, less than three months before Kennedy's assassination. In a shocking gesture, a young Buddhist monk sat on a Saigon street and set himself on fire, creating an iconic image of Vietnam as a deeply troubled land.Īgainst a backdrop of such disturbing and discouraging news, the Kennedy administration continued to send American advisers to Vietnam.
#Movealong protest series#
And as so few Americans were involved, it wasn't a terribly volatile issue.Īmericans began to sense that Vietnam was turning into a major problem when, in the spring of 1963, Buddhists began a series of protests against the American-backed and extremely corrupt government of premier Ngo Dinh Diem. Americans were comfortable supporting the anti-communist side. In the early 1960s, most Americans would have viewed the conflict in Vietnam as a minor proxy war between the United States and the Soviet Union. Vietnam had been divided into North and South Vietnam, and American officials resolved to prop up the government of South Vietnam as it fought against a communist insurgency supported by North Vietnam. The principle of stopping the spread of communism in its tracks made sense to most Americans, and few people outside the military paid much attention to what at that time seemed like an obscure and distant land.ĭuring the Kennedy administration, American military advisers began to flow into Vietnam, and America's footprint in the country grew larger. Vietnamese monk protesting with self-immolation.Īmerican involvement in Southeast Asia began in the years following World War II.
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