📩 The draft
Men aged 18 to 26 could be called up to fight. About 2.2 million were drafted during the war. This made Vietnam personal. It could take you, your brother or your boyfriend.
Other Protest Movements: Students, Women, Anti-Vietnam » The Anti-Vietnam War Movement
What you'll learn this session
Study time: 30 minutes
Edexcel spec: Paper 1, Depth study 7, Key topic 4
- Why the war in Vietnam and the draft turned so many students into protesters
- How the movement protested: teach-ins, marches and draft-card burning
- What happened at Kent State University in May 1970
- How much impact the anti-Vietnam War movement had
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Unlock This CourseWhy students turned against the war
From the 1950s the USA backed South Vietnam against Communist North Vietnam. In March 1965 President Johnson sent the first American combat troops. By 1968 more than half a million were there, and in the end about 58,000 Americans died.
Students were already organised and already questioning those in charge, as you saw in Student Protest: Berkeley, the SDS and the Hippies. The war gave them their biggest cause.
🎓 An unfair system
Full-time college students could put off the draft while they studied. So the fighting fell most heavily on poorer white and black men who were not at college. Many students felt guilty about this, and they knew their own turn could come when they left.
📺 A war on television
Every evening the news showed fighting, burning villages and dead civilians. Many young people decided that the war was not just a mistake but morally wrong.
✊ Links to civil rights
In April 1967 Martin Luther King spoke out against the war in New York. He said it took money away from fighting poverty at home. In the same month the boxer Muhammad Ali refused to be drafted. He had said, 'I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong.' He was stripped of his world title.
Key terms:
- The draft: the system that made young men join the armed forces by law. Another word for it is conscription.
- Deferment: official permission to put off being drafted, for example while at college.
- Teach-in: a long meeting at a college where teachers and students gave talks and debated the war instead of holding normal classes.
- Draft dodger: a man who avoided the draft illegally, for example by leaving the country.
How the movement protested
- Teach-ins: the first was at the University of Michigan on 24 to 25 March 1965. About 3,000 students and teachers stayed up all night for talks and debates on the war. The idea was copied at more than 100 colleges that year. Teach-ins gave students the facts and arguments to challenge the government.
- Marches: in April 1965 the SDS brought about 20,000 people to Washington. In October 1967 around 50,000 marched on the Pentagon, the headquarters of the armed forces, and nearly 700 were arrested. While Johnson was President, marchers chanted, 'Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?' (LBJ was Lyndon B. Johnson.) On 15 October 1969 about two million people across the USA joined a day of protest called the Moratorium. A month later about half a million marched in Washington.
- Draft-card burning: every man of draft age had to carry a draft card. Burning it in public was a simple, shocking way to refuse. In August 1965 Congress made it a crime, with up to five years in prison. In October 1965 David Miller burned his card at a rally in New York and became the first man convicted under the new law. Others shouted, 'Hell no, we won't go!' Tens of thousands of draft dodgers left for Canada.
Protest sometimes turned violent. In August 1968 police beat anti-war protesters outside the Democratic Party's convention in Chicago, live on television.
The Kent State shootings, 1970
Richard Nixon became President in January 1969 and began bringing troops home. Then, on 30 April 1970, he announced that American soldiers had gone into Cambodia, the country next to Vietnam. To students it looked as if he was making the war bigger, not ending it. Protests broke out on campuses across the country.
- Kent State University, Ohio: after trouble in the town, the mayor of Kent asked the Governor of Ohio, James Rhodes, for help. He sent in the Ohio National Guard, part-time soldiers under his command. On the night of 2 May the army training building on campus was burned down as the guardsmen arrived.
- 4 May 1970: around 2,000 people gathered for a midday rally. The guardsmen used tear gas to break it up. Then some of them opened fire. In 13 seconds they fired 67 shots.
- The victims: four students were killed and nine were wounded. Two of the dead had not been protesting at all. They were walking to class.
- The photograph: a picture by the student John Filo, showing a girl kneeling and screaming over one of the bodies, went around the world.
The reaction was huge. About four million students went on strike and hundreds of colleges closed, some for the rest of the term. On the night of 14 to 15 May police shot dead two young black men, a student and a schoolboy, at Jackson State College in Mississippi.
But the country was split. In a Gallup poll, 58 per cent of Americans blamed the students for the deaths and only 11 per cent blamed the National Guard. On 8 May building workers in New York attacked a student march in the 'Hard Hat Riot'. A government report called the shootings 'unnecessary, unwarranted, and inexcusable', but no guardsman was ever convicted.
What impact did the movement have?
✅ It mattered
It made the war the main issue in politics. On 31 March 1968 Johnson announced that he would not stand for President again. Nixon knew he had to wind the war down. He brought troops home and ended the draft in 1973. In 1971 the Twenty-sixth Amendment lowered the voting age from 21 to 18. The argument was simple: old enough to fight, old enough to vote.
❌ Its limits
It did not end the war quickly. American troops fought on until 1973. Many Americans disliked the protesters and saw them as unpatriotic. In November 1969 Nixon asked for the support of 'the great silent majority' of Americans, and polls showed that most people backed him. The movement divided the country, often parents against their own children.
Common mistakes
Don't write that the protests ended the war. They put pressure on two presidents, but military failure and the cost of the war mattered too. And don't say that all Americans were shocked by Kent State. Most people who were asked blamed the students.
Exam-style question
Explain two effects of the Kent State shootings (1970) on the USA. [8 marks]
Model answer
One effect was the biggest student protest in American history. On 4 May 1970 the Ohio National Guard killed four students and wounded nine, and two of the dead had only been walking to class. John Filo's photograph of a girl screaming over a body was printed around the world. Because students everywhere could see that it might have been them, about four million went on strike and hundreds of colleges closed. This showed Nixon how costly it was to widen the war into Cambodia.
A second effect was to deepen the split in American society. Many older and working-class Americans thought the students had brought it on themselves. A Gallup poll found that 58 per cent blamed the students and only 11 per cent blamed the National Guard, and on 8 May building workers attacked a student march in New York in the 'Hard Hat Riot'. So the shootings hardened both sides, with the young angrier at the government and Nixon's 'silent majority' angrier at the protesters.
What lifts this to the top level: two separate effects, each with precise facts, and each one linked back to the shootings with 'because' or 'so'.
Exam tip
An effect is what happened because of the shootings, so don't spend your time telling the story of 4 May. Give two effects in two paragraphs. One effect alone, however well explained, cannot score more than 4 of the 8 marks.