Vietnam War Era

In August 1964, the U.S. military invaded Vietnam, escalating a conflict which it had been quietly involved in since the end of World War II. Vietnamese peasants, like the Allied forces, had been fighting to drive the Japanese army out of Vietnam. It was he communist-lead peasant army, the Vietminh, that succeeded in ousting the Japanese. This gave many peasants a new sense of their own power, and they would not let the Allies reassert either French imperial rule or American proxy control.

Here are some key New Jersey events in the mass anti-war mobilizations that unfolded from 1964 until American withdrawal.

The Teach-Ins
 To educate students about the history of American militarism in southeast Asia, college professors began hosting teach-ins. This happened first in Michigan, in March 1965 (Markoff). In New Brunswick, Rutgers and Douglass professors put together a panel for a teach-in on April 23.

 One professor, Lloyd Gardner, described the campus as eerilly quiet that night, as he walked over to Scott Hall to join the panel – the silence made him think the teach-in “would be a flop,” until he went inside and saw over a thousand students filling the lecture hall (Markoff). The teach-in was orderly, for the most part, with just one ROTC colonel interrupting and starting a brief shouting match with anti-war students. The panel speakers themselves didn't agree on what should be done in Vietnam, and there was debate on stage as much as off.

One professor called the invasion necessary to save “western civilization.” Another in turn challenged him to define that term – standing up and giving an inpromptu speech in which he accidentally smashed his watch on the podium – and got a two minute standing ovation from the audience. Later, Professor Eugene Genovese spoke, giving the only overtly socialist perspective of the evening. “I do not fear the impending Vietcong victory,” he said. “I welcome it.” (Markoff)

Though this was controversial, it wasn't the main focus of the event. Many students came away from the teach-in electrified by it and wrote letters and editorials in the college paper calling it a landmark event. They seemed more interested in other speakers than in Genovese, but the next month, conservatives belatedly seized onto the professor's words. They called for him to be fired.

The Young Republicans lead the charge against Genovese, the New York Times picked up the story on June 23, and two state legislators pressured Rutgers president Mason Gross to dismiss Genovese. In the meantime, two more teach-ins were held at Rutgers that fall. SDS had formed a chapter there by then, and organized the second one in October.

At the October event, conservatives protested outside the gymnasium where the panel gathered. Inside, a woman who supported the war hit a speaker in the face, and he hit her back. The Asbury Park Press elevated the scene to a near-riot, and the teach-in was also controversial because two more professors said they agreed with Genovese (Markoff). Ultimately, Genovese was not fired – Gross and the university Board of Governors ruling that he had the right to make such political arguments at events like teach-ins, just not in college classes (Markoff).

More Early Activity
 In Princeton, a New York Times article shows dissent when President Johnson visited in the spring of 1966. He considered the Ivy League school a prestigious and suitable place to address the nation's scholars. He cared about their influence enough to plead with them to be “responsible,” and support the war. Around 300 protesters picketed outside (Sullivan). That same day in Chicago, 350 students – about half women – occupied their administration's offices, demanding that they stop cooperation with the draft board ( Wehrwein).

Then, in July, 56 New Jersey religious leaders marched from the city of Orange to Fort Lee, over the course of two days. They called themselves the Emergency Committee of Concerned Clergy. They then marched over the George Washington Bridge into New York. “We should be waging war against poverty, ignorance, and disease,” they told the press when they got there (Vietnam Protests Erupt...).

GI's Against the War
The number of GI's actively rebelling against the Vietnam War rapidly increased. New forms of resistance formed – in 1967, the first GI Coffeehouse, a site for soldiers to plan anti-war action and distribute subversive literature, was founded. Called the UFO, in South Carolina, it became a model for the rest of the country (Kindig). Both the coffeehouses and the underground newspapers became widespread.

One major military base was Fort Dix, in southern Jersey, about seventeen miles southeast of Trenton. Soldiers there started publishing a newspaper called Shakedown. It ran for several years, and is listed in the archives of Rutgers' Special Collections. But when I went there, the archivists couldn't locate it. I did, however, find one copy of a similar paper, published by ROTC cadets at the same time.

That paper, Cadet Ball, called itself an “above-ground newspaper for the freeks at Rutgers.” It voiced solidarity with anti-imperialists not only in Vietnam, but in Cuba, Jamaica, and elsewhere. It satirized the arguments of those opposed to coeducation – Rutgers and Douglass were still gender-segregated at the time, Douglass being the women's college, though that was about to end.

As for Shakedown, some of its articles are preserved on the website [http://sirnosir.com/archives_and_resources/galleries/cover_pages/shakedown.html “Sir! No Sir!”] (See the site's library for more.) Similarly, it supported liberation movements in many third-world countries, and loudly denounced gender roles as dehumanizing (Return to Ft. Dix). One article captured the mood of a key moment of revolt in the fort.

Ft. Dix also held a stockade prison, and growing numbers of GI's were jailed there for not cooperating. They were denied food and water at times, forced to stand for long periods, and otherwise treated brutally by the officers. So, on June 5, 1969, the jailed men rioted. The New York Times placed the number of rioters at 150 (150 Riot at Fort Dix...) while the GI press said 238 were involved (GI's Struggle Against Oppression). They tore up beds and equipment, smashed windows and armed themselves with footlockers and other objects to fight guards. 38 were put on trial afterward.

Then in September 1970, Vietnam Veterans Against the War in north Jersey launched Operation Rapid American Withdrawal. Around 150 of them marched southwest from Morristown armed with fake guns, and staged mock battles along the way. They worked with Nurses for Peace, and planted actors in the crowds who they would approach in “interrogations” and “search and destroy patrols.” (Gilmour) They proceeded for four days, from New Jersey to Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, stopping in more than a dozen towns to stage “incidents” along the way. Veteran Al Hubbard explained that they were making it “as realistic as possible without actually shooting anyone.” (Sullivan)

The Vliets couple, married with five children, hosted the marchers in their backyard outside Morristown. Mrs. Vliets spoke about the political atmosphere of the small, quiet town, far removed from urban and industrial centers. She wanted people to know the conservatism associated with the area wasn't the whole picture. “There is a peace movement here,” she said. “It's small, but it's active.”

Reaction to the march was mixed. Police heavily surveilled it the whole way, state troopers following in helicopters and FBI agents taking notes. Many people appreciated the veterans' intent – showing the madness of military occupation to the public – though there were some angry people who called them “traitors,” and a 48-year-old veteran in Bernardsville blocked them briefly in the road, holding a flag and calling them a “disgrace.” The march ended with a celebration in Valley Forge where the veterans ceremoniously destroyed their arms. Gaining Ground

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in">In 1973, one dissident won his case against the military, after being charged with draft evasion in 1969. Clarence David Toledo, a Navajo man living in Montclair, argued he could not join any war effort unless his family, loved ones, or homeland was threatened. He explained how the American military had posed just such a threat – how its cavalry had killed his great-grandfather, and how he'd been sent to a Gallup, New Mexico mission school at the age of six. The charges against him were finally dismissed (Rudolph).

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in">The student movement at the time was gaining some ground – the same day the Star Ledger reported on the veteran's march, it also reported that the army was phasing out its ROTC program at Princeton. The program had been active since 1919, but military spokesmen said that it would now be closed within a year because it no longer “enjoy(ed) acceptance by faculty and students.”

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in">By 1971, over 17% of soldiers in the country were AWOL, and the army worried about its ability to continue its campaigns (Zinn 496).

The Catholic Left and the Camden 28
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in">In 1971, twenty men and women broke into Camden's draft board one night, destroying records, draft cards, and other documents. After an hour, FBI agents arrested them. Eight other people were arrested soon afterwards for their involvement in planning the break-in.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in">As it turned out, there was an informant among them – one of the Camden 28, Bob Hardy, had made a secret deal before the break-in, tipping off the FBI in exchange for having all charges against him dropped.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in">The Camden 28 were part of the Catholic Left, and there were four priests and a minister in their ranks. Many of them were social workers and anti-poverty activists as well. Like Newark, Camden's poverty was intensified when white and middle class people either moved away or had their neighborhoods rezoned as separate municipalities.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in">When the defendants were put on trial, the jury deliberated for three days. They decided, in the end, to acquit all of those charged – reflecting the country's mood of revulsion with the war and unwillingness to prosecute those who opposed it (Zinn 501). One juror, an Atlantic City cab driver and World War II veteran named Samuel Braithwrite, wrote a letter to the defendants.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in">“To you, the clerical physicians with your God-given talents, I say, well done,” he wrote. “Well done for trying to heal the sick irresponsible men, men who were chosen by the people to govern and lead them. These men, who failed the people, by raining death and destruction on a hapless country… You went out to do your part while your brothers remained in their ivory towers watching.”