Download The Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam Era

HIST212
Units 8 & 9 Assessment: “The Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam Era”
Guide to Responding
1. In both conflicts, the United States sent troops to these countries to stop communist
expansion in accordance with the Cold War policy of containment. In the case of the
Korean War, the United States sent troops to Korea with a United Nations mandate
after North Korean communist forces had invaded South Korea in 1950. In the case of
the Vietnam War, the U.S. Congress passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution in 1964 after
North Vietnamese forces allegedly attacked a U.S. naval vessel in the Tonkin Gulf. This
resolution authorized President Lyndon Johnson to dispatch American forces to protect
American military advisors in South Vietnam beginning in 1965, resulting in the
“escalation” of the war. In both conflicts, the United States conducted a “limited war.” In
the Korean War, President Truman refused to attack military bases in China even
though Chinese forces were conducting military operations in Korea as allies of North
Korea. In the Vietnam War, U.S. forces did not invade the Soviet ally, North Vietnam,
even though North Vietnam was supplying troops and war materials to the Vietcong
guerillas fighting U.S. troops in South Vietnam. In both wars, the United States wished
to avoid a direct military confrontation with the Soviet Union. The Korean War involved
large-scale military operations such as the Inchon landing in 1950, whereas the Vietnam
War largely consisted of smaller scale “search and destroy” missions directed against
Vietcong insurgents. In general, the American public was supportive of the war aims in
both conflicts, while not always satisfied with the government’s conduct of the war.
Presidential elections in 1952 during the Korean War and in 1968 and 1972 during the
Vietnam War witnessed victories for candidates (Eisenhower: 1952; Nixon: 1968, 1972)
who promised to bring these wars to a successful conclusion. American voters in these
elections rejected the party in power in the White House (Democratic administrations of
Truman and Johnson), whose conduct of the war was largely criticized. The Vietnam
War, unlike the Korean War, was especially unpopular on college campuses and
spawned a mass, grassroots, antiwar movement. Both wars ended with a cessation of
hostilities which maintained the status quo with an armistice, concluding the Korean
War in 1953 and the Paris Peace Accords ending U.S. military involvement in the
Vietnam War in 1973. The armistice in Korea still remains in effect, whereas North
Vietnamese forces overran South Vietnam in 1975. The communist victory in Vietnam
in 1975 was a tremendous blow to the international prestige and status of the United
States.
2. Both the civil rights and the antiwar movements consisted of mass protests involving
many college students and young people. The civil rights movement enjoyed strongest
support among the African American community but especially among African American
as well as white college students, who in 1960 organized the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to work with Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern
Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to organize mass demonstrations and
protests. The antiwar movement was active on college campuses. The years 1968 and
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1970 saw waves of protests on college campuses across the country. However, the
civil rights movement was focused on achieving equal rights for African Americans by
ending legal segregation and achieving voting rights. The antiwar movement was less
focused and closely intertwined with the Counterculture, viewing its opposition to the
Vietnam War as part of a broader movement to transform the country. For example, the
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) spearheaded protests against the war on
college campuses but viewed the war as a result of the “military-industrial complex,”
which they hoped to overthrow. The Yippies, who were involved in antiwar protests in
Chicago in 1968 during the Democratic Convention, advocated drug use and “free love”
and rejected traditional American religion and values. In both the civil rights and antiwar
movements, activists were inspired by Martin Luther King Jr.’s call for nonviolent civil
disobedience to protest injustice. In the civil rights movement, demonstrators openly
violated segregation laws in “sit-ins,” and in the antiwar movement, demonstrators
illegally occupied college facilities to protest the war. In both movements, a minority
advocated violence, such as the Black Panther Party, organized in 1966 among African
American radicals, or the Weathermen, an offshoot of SDS, which, in 1968, advocated
terrorism. Both the civil rights and antiwar movements sponsored mass protests that
sometimes resulted in violent confrontations with local authorities such as the violent,
heavy-handed suppression of civil rights protesters in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963
and the shooting of four protesters at Kent State University by the Ohio National Guard
in 1970. The civil rights movement, unlike the antiwar movement, enjoyed measurable
success. The passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act ended
legal segregation and job discrimination and extended voting rights to African
Americans. President Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” (1964–1966) included popular
programs such as Medicaid and Head Start, which were designed to assist poor
Americans, whose ranks included disproportionally many African Americans. In the
case of the antiwar movement, Congress refused President Gerald Ford’s request for
military assistance to South Vietnam after the North Vietnamese invasion in 1975, but it
is difficult to say whether Congress acted due to the success of the antiwar movement
in winning public support or due to public apathy and exhaustion regarding the issue of
Vietnam.
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