Anti-War Movements of the 1960s

The generation of the 1960s followed those who had to endure World War II and the Korean conflict. Most likely, many of the younger people grew up with stories their fathers or uncles told and even some of the courses they took in school. Actually, World War II was a "just" war in the sense that Nazi Germany and Imperialist Japan had inflicted such monstrous evils on the world that the Allies were justified in fighting back and destroying opposing armies, even though the cost was high. Korea was the result of anti-Communism and the cold war. Again, the enemy was clearly defined. Yet, one can look to a specific date- 1947, when anti war protests took to the streets "In 1947 the wartime draft was abolished, but the Pentagon pressed for universal conscription. Public opposition was enough to stop the effort. On February 12, 1947, the first draft card burnings took place, at the White House and in New York. Over four hundred men destroyed their draft cards or mailed them to the president during this series of demonstrations" (Cummins 2000 5). Nevertheless, the rumblings of anti war movements began, and certainly intensified with the growth of the Vietnam conflict. It would be easy to merely point to draft-age men who did not want to go to a war they neither supported nor understood, with the fear of being killed or wounded. But, the anti-war movement was truly non-gender specific. "The first important anti-war protest of the Vietnam War came in 1964 in New York City. Fifteen hundred people heard A. J. Muste, Norman Thomas, and A. Philip Randolph speak out against the war. The first national demonstration against the war was a March on Washington organized by Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in 1965. The same year anti-war teach-ins spread throughout college campuses. In 1967 fifteen hundred young men turned in their draft cards, there was a march on the Pentagon, and youth in the counterculture came to view the whole American society as part of a war culture and simply dropped out of it in the 'Summer of Love'" (Cummins 2000 8).

The Nineteen Sixties created a generation of what later became known as "Baby Boomers." They became concerned not merely with the Cold War and with the lingering effects of the escalation of nuclear threats but also the prospect of more fighting and dying thousands of miles from the U.S. in a land most people had never heard of. At the same time, the 1960s featured not only the assassination of a President most young people admired and the murder of the Civil Rights Leader, Rev. King, but the rise of Affirmative Action. Suddenly anti-war protests seemed to recognize the unfairness of the draft- more minorities drafted, more wealthy white males exempted. "Still, when those Boomers erupted into young adulthood many behaved as if they had invented social awareness. In 1968 Jacob Brackman, writing in ESQUIRE of "My Generation," described them as "hibakusha"--the survivors of Hiroshima--and as "the first to grow in the shadow of extinction" and "the first...that could imagine declining its bid to inherit the earth" (Rosenblatt 1996 33).

There were three significant movements within the 1960s- each with a determined purpose against the war and against the unfairness of life in America as they saw it. The Black Panthers- black activists who were not above using violence, the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and the Jewish Defense League (JDL).

It is important to point out that Whites and Blacks seldom, if ever joined in anti-war protests. "During the early years of the war, traditional civil rights leaders in the black community feared challenging the president who gave them the Civil Rights Act (1964) and Voting Rights Act (1965), while a younger leadership developed on their flank that was not especially interested in working with whites to achieve black power" (Small 2006 354).

The Black Panther movement was made up of young black militants, led by Rap Brown, Stokely Carmichael, Huey Newton and Eldridge Cleaver. They had a number of items on their manifesto, but one stands out for purposes of this essay: "We want all black men to be exempt from military service. The Panthers did not want to support what they considered a racist government as it waged war against the Vietnamese, whom the Panthers considered people of color like themselves" (Cohen 1999 6).

Like most mass anti-government and anti-war activities, the Students for a Democratic Society was basically founded and of great interest to college students. "SDS's founder, a University of Michigan student named Al Haber, believed that American politicians were essentially war-mongering, racist, and greedy, and that college students held the promise to create change..." (Sawinski 2001 6). They developed a rationale for their movement, much of it based on fear of war: "When we were kids the United States was the wealthiest and strongest country in the world;... As we grew, however, our comfort was penetrated by events too troubling to dismiss... the enclosing fact of the Cold War, symbolized by the presence of the Bomb, brought awareness that we ourselves, and our friends, and millions of abstract "others" we knew more directly because of our common peril, might die at any time" (Sawinski 2001 12).

"Borrowing heavily from the black militants of the 1960s, the JDL proclaimed it would protect Jews from attack. But there was a problem: While anti-Semitism still existed in America, by 1968 physical safety was generally not at issue" (Lichtenstein 2003 M3).

Of course, the protests of the 1960s culminated in the killings of students at Kent State in 1970 by untrained National Guards troops. However, it was the tide of conservatism- followers of Richard Nixon and the admirers of Henry Kissinger's foreign policy that brought the anti-war protests and protestors to a fade-out. As one critic points out: "their substantial achievements not withstanding, the conspicuous failure of the Sixties activists and their defenders to comprehend the necessity of linking presumptively noble ends--participatory democracy, racial equality, academic reform, anti-imperialism--to honorable means ultimately unraveled much of their efforts and turned the nation against them" (Auerbach 2005 9).

Have these movements spawned anything today? Sad to say, most young people today look inward, or walk around asking WWJD (What Would Jesus Do?" Even worse, the percentage of young people voting these days is at a low point. Compared to the 1960s, this is not a] generation of agitation. There is no nationwide, unified movement- regardless of race, ethnic background, gender or political persuasion. Latinos are concerned with immigration issues, whites with rising cost of college tuition, and blacks seeing Affirmative Action no longer as valid a rallying cry. Today's young gene ration has become a gene ration of bloggers, and YouTubers.

WORKS CITED:

Auerbach, J. S.:"Means and Ends in the 1960" Piscataway NJ: Society Sept/Oct 2005, vol. 42, issue 6, p.9

Cohen, A.S. "Black Panthers" Violence in America. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1999. Reproduced in History Resource Center. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/HistRC/

Cummins, E.: "Anti-War Movements." Civil Rights in the United States. 2 vols. Macmillan Reference USA, 2000. Reproduced in History Resource Center. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/HistRC/

Lichtenstein, G.: "JEWISH DEFENSE LEAGUE; A Dead-End Movement Hits the Wall, Los Angeles Times,Feb. 3, 2002, p. M 3

Rosenblatt, R. "Come Together" Modern Maturity, Magazine of the AARP Jan/Feb 11996

Sawinski (ed) Students for a Democratic Society." Activists, Rebels and Reformers. Detroit: UXL, 2001. Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center. Thomson Gale

Small, M.: "Peace and Freedom: The Civil Rights Movements of the 1960s

The Journal of American History. Bloomington IN:: Mar 2006 .Vol. 92, Iss.. 4; pg. 1522, 1 pgs