During the 1960s our nation was going through many important events. From the Vietnam War to national politics, and even civil rights, our country was changing a lot. In particular, the year 1968, was when our country went through a major turning point. The Vietnam War split the country, causing protest and unrest nation and worldwide. College campuses were a new place of protest and freedom.
Pres. Richard Nixon's April 30, 1970, announcement of the war's escalation into neighboring Cambodia and the shooting deaths of four students by National Guard troops at Kent State University in Ohio led to a sharp increase in protest activity. On May 4 minor damage was reported at the University of Oklahoma Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) building on the Norman campus, and the Selective Service office in Norman was
When the crowd had refused to disperse by the 4am deadline, troops began to fire on the protesters in order to clear the square for the impending visit of USSR leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The shooting continued in Beijing, and by the 5th of June, over 5000 people had died and 30,000 were injured. On that day, footage was taken of an unidentified civilian, labelled by Western media as the ‘Tank Man’ was taken. The ‘Tank Man’ became a pivotal point of student demonstrations, as he stood in fearlessly front of a line of PLA tanks. Within China, the protests caused significant political and economic upheaval.
Firstly, the Vietnam war was undoubtedly a very significant factor in the increased protests during the 60's. For example, the excessive bombing of North Vietnam lead in 1965 lead to many student protests, as so many civilians including women and children were being purposefully killed in order to ultimately, win the was by flattening Vietnam. This caused outrage amongst the student rebels. In particular, the student rebel group called Students for Democratic Society (SDS) used the Vietnam war to suggest that the US government was corrupt. The cause struck a chord with those at university more so than other groups of people due to the immense number of students that were made to go and fight.
Protest at first started in Berkeley, California in 1965. These were massive anti-Vietnam war marches, protest, sit-ins and student strikes in major colleges and cities universities cross the country. In fact the Ohio National Guardsmen murdered four peaceful students from Kent state University in Ohio during a noontime campus anti-war rally. Nine other students were shot or injured. Anti-war protests became increasingly violent in tone.
This made the shock even greater. The Tet Offensive was a military campaign during the Vietnam War that began on January 31, 1968. Forces of the National Liberation Front for South Vietnam, or Viet Cong, and the People's Army of Vietnam, or North Vietnamese army, fought against the forces of the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam), the United States, and their allies. The purpose of the offensive was to strike military and civilian command and control centers throughout South Vietnam and to spark a general uprising among the population that would then topple the Saigon government, thus ending the war in a single blow. The operations are referred to as the Tet Offensive because they began during the early morning hours of 31 January 1968, Tết Nguyên Đán, the first day of the year on a traditional lunar calendar and the most important Vietnamese holiday.
However, when President Johnson and other military advisors mixed-up events, possibly deliberately, to claim that North Vietnam had just attacked the US naval force in the Gulf of Tonkin- an incident which later proved to be a minor naval clash (Prados 1) and used this conflict as a premise to launch a full scale invasion of the communist state, the antiwar movement consolidated with great speed. This ‘military police action’ became a war overseas and instigated violence between young protesters and the government. Vietnam was not just a war zone, it was the catalyst for most of the dissent in the nation’s discourse throughout the second half of the 1960s. For the liberals of society, the
This essay will show that the Tet Offensive was a massive defeat for the US. The assessments made before the offensive by the pentagon were judged as the “Credibility Gap” that had opened in 1967 widened and eventually became a massive problem. The “Credibility Gap was a political term that came into wide use during the 1960s and 1970s. At the time, it was most frequently used to describe public scepticism about the Johnson administrations statements and policies on the Vietnam War. The damages from the battlefield continued to widen such as some of the highest casualty counts.
Several colonists were killed and this led to a campaign by speech-writers to rouse the ire of the citizenry. The presence of British troops in the city of Boston was increasingly unwelcome. The riot began when about 50 citizens attacked a British sentinel. A British officer, Captain Thomas Preston, called in additional soldiers, and these too were attacked, so the soldiers fired into the mob, killing 3 on the spot (a black sailor named Crispus Attucks, ropemaker Samuel Gray, and a mariner named James Caldwell), and wounding 8 others, two of whom died later (Samuel Maverick and Patrick Carr). On the evening of March 5, Private Hugh White, a British soldier, stood on guard duty outside the Custom house on King Street, today known as State Street.
Canyon Breazeale Mr. Tarrillion English II- 4 2/20/12 The Vietnam War More than three million people were killed during the Vietnam War, and more than half of the casualties were Vietnamese civilians ("Vietnam War"). The Vietnam War began in 1945 and ended in 1975; however, the United States did not get directly involved until 1955 (Schomp The Vietnam War 70). Throughout this relatively short time period more than one hundred and twenty billion dollars were spent all focused on furthering the war effort ("VietnamWar"). Also this large sum of money was primarily spent on one main mission, stopping the spread of communism and preventing the effects of the "Domino Theory" from becoming a reality (Mason Chickenhawk 60). During the Vietnam