The Significance Of The Vietnam Protest In The 1960's

It is easy to think of the nineteen sixties and a decade of reform and social activism. During the sixties it seemed that the whole nation was in revolt and there were many issues in need of desperate change. The complacency of just after World War II transitioned into fear of the Cold War and set a dark undertone to the nation. This fear carried over into the youth, who hadn 't witnessed the second World War first hand. They were just thrust into a scared nation and were going to do something about it. On the under hand, the nineteen seventies were a much more peaceful era. Riots and protests greatly faded and much of what had been set out to do in the sixties had been achieved. To say that “nothing happened” in the nineteen seventies …show more content…
Chants such as, "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?" reflected the young Americans disapproval of the Vietnam War and these protests were nationwide. The Vietnam protests were largely held at Universities across the United States. This demonstrated that it was more of a youth movement than an entire nation. Those being conscripted had never seen war, only heard of the atrocities by family members that lived through World War II. The Vietnam war didn 't have the same moral footing either, it was more a civil war across the globe than a war of nations against a common enemy. These protests began to die down in the seventies and eventually cease as politicians, such as President Nixon, began policies of “Vietnamization.” This policy involved the steady return of troops in favor of training the Southern Vietnamese army to fight for themselves, rather than the United States fight for them. This pleased the protesters and placated them until massive Vietnam War protests diminished in the early nineteen