1. G.O.D. pages 232-249
1. Those who were involved in the civil war movement were responsible for the
early Anti-war movement. Black and white activists joined to remember three
civil rights workers killed in Mississippi, and one speaker there compared
Johnson’s violence against Asia with the violence against blacks in Mississippi.
These civil rights activists were motivated to protest the war, and what motivated
them was the fact that the Vietnamese were fighting for their freedom just like
how these activists were fighting for freedom. Some of them also thought that the
Vietnam war was a “white man’s war” and Muhammed Ali was stripped of his
title as boxing and heavyweight champion because he refused to fight in the war.
But many others found the fight parallel to their fight for freedom, known as the
civil rights movement. The connection that they made is a valid argument,
because the Vietnamese people were in their land, when the Americans brought in
soldiers and started burning down their houses. The Vietnamese people could not
give in to such brutality against their people, so they were fighting for their
freedom. When African Americans were treated in almost the same way, as some
civil rights leaders had their houses bombed and many African Americans were
oppressed, they fought for their freedom like how the Vietnamese people fought
for theirs.
2. The Pentagon Papers were these documents printed in Times magazine in June
1971, after a man named Daniel Ellsberg duplicated the Department of Defense

2. history of the war in Vietnam. These once top-secret documents now became
public, and they indeed created a national sensation. They created a national
sensation because the public now saw what the real reasons were behind the
attacks on Vietnam, and the public became aware of the truths and lies that the
government was hiding from them. This made the public begin to distrust their
government. The effect that it had on the “credibility gap” was that it made the
gap larger, and the public was now aware of the secrets the government has been
keeping from them, which shocked them because they elected those people and
expected those people to tell the truth. I don’t trust our government to tell the
whole truth today. I don’t think government really ever tells the truth about some
stuff, they keep it secret among themselves it’s like a sorority or something. I
don’t believe them about the war, and how we’re pulling out troops and how
troops are being sent home, because they’re being sent home for a week and put
back in the war. I don’t trust them on the war because it’s still going on but I
don’t understand why in Iraq, there’s nothing there almost everything has been
blown up by suicide bombers.
3. African Americans protested the fact that the Vietnamese were only fighting for
freedom as they once had during the civil rights movement; many saw this war as a
white man’s war. In fact, Bruce Andrews who studied at Harvard in public opinion,
found out that African Americans were of the top groups who protested the war.
Teenagers protested the war because they felt that they should not be drafted for a
war they didn’t support and didn’t want to be involved in. Alot of these teenagers
would protest at college campuses, and a lot of teenage boys refused to get drafted. In

3. 1969 at 232 college campuses, at least 215,000 students participated in protests.
Students began protesting the ROTC, which caused a drop in college student
enrollment for officers in Vietnam. The Roman Catholic Church protested against the
war as they wanted to protect the conservatism of Catholics in the community. At
Boston College which was a Catholic school, six thousand people demonstrated
against the war in the gymnasium. War was against their religion, and if they didn’t
believe in it they felt they shouldn’t have to be drafted or see their sons go off to war.
American soldiers and vets began to denounce the war in a way never before as well.
Some soldiers would not even board the plane to go to war, and a lot of them would
be court-martialed and jailed, some even put into hard labor. Two black marines were
sentenced to prison for anti-war talk. This was definitely against the first right of
Americans. Underground newspapers also became popular amongst soldiers who
protested the war. As a teenager today, I would feel strongly to protest the fact that
we would be killing innocent people, bombing them with tons of bombs. And a lot of
the boys we sent out to fight did not want to do this, and they would come back
traumatized, or they would die at war. A lot of these men’s freedom of speech was
taken away from them, they weren’t allowed to say what they felt about going to war
and staying in the U.S. they were forced into going to war. It almost ruined a
generation.
4. The climax of protest in the spring of 1970 started when president Nixon ordered
that troops would get out of Vietnam but instead be sent to Cambodia. On May
4th, there were major protests at Kent State University. National Guard was sent

4. there, and they fired at the students. Four were killed and one was paralyzed.
After this, at 4 hundred colleges, students went on strike. Students would protest
against ROTC, they would hand out anti-war leaflets, they would demonstrate at
college campuses. These colleges might have vested interest in war because they
realize that soon, they would be going off to war, or their friend would be going
off to war. And instead of worrying about jobs and housing, they would have to
worry whether they could live free or die in Vietnam. Non-college educated
opposed the war more, and this doesn’t surprise me because they would probably
be the first to get drafted and called out to war. I think that non-college educated
people would oppose it more because they are the ones who are more oppressed
in American society, and they can see that American is oppressing the
Vietnamese, and they feel that that is wrong.
5. Ron Kovic was hit and his spine got shattered when he was 19 at the marines.
When he was sent back to America, he saw that the wounded veterans in hospitals
were not getting fair treatment at all. He proceeded to join a group called Vietnam
Veterans Against the War. He spoke freely against the Vietnam war, and he was
arrested. When him and a group of veterans went up to Nixon’s acceptance speech to
protest the bombings and war, they were sent out by Secret Service Men. This story
had such an impact because this was a man who had given his life for America to win
in the war, and when he got back he wasn’t even treated justly at all. He was injured,
and other men were injured too, and none of them were well taken care of. None of
them got the respect that they deserved, and none of them got what they deserved
when they wheeled themselves down the isle to protest President Nixon.