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Vietnam - French Colony • Vietnam was originally part of a larger French colony called Indochina. • The French tried to regain (from Japan) firm control of their colony after WWII ended. • By 1950, the Vietnamese had no desire to be a French colony any longer. • A vicious war of independence (AKA the First Indochina War 1950-1954) erupted between the Vietminh, the Vietnamese Communist-Nationalist (Independence) Movement, and the French forces. • The US sent $2.6 Billion to support France’s war effort …Why?
Dien Bien Phu • The climactic confrontation of the First Indochina War between the French Union's French Far East Expeditionary Corps and Vietminh communist-nationalist revolutionaries • In other words, it’s the siege battle which caused the French to surrender Vietnam in 1954 • The Geneva Accords of May, 1954 granted, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam independence from France and divided North (communist) and South (anti-communist) Vietnam at the 17th parallel, with the guarantee of 1956 free elections to unify Vietnam.
Ho Chi Minh • Leader of the Việtminh independence movement from 1941 onward, establishing the communist-ruled Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1945 and defeating the French in 1954 at the battle of Điện Biên Phủ.. • Communist • Vietnamese National Hero
Why does the US Care? • Eisenhower’s Domino Theory: If Vietnam falls to Communism so will the other nations in Asia! • Question: What policy emerged early in the Cold War that set the stage for the Domino theory?
So What Did the US Do? • President Eisenhower 1952-1960 gave lots of money to South (Non-Communist) Vietnam to resist the Vietminh. • 1954 SEATO was formed to contain communism in Southeast Asia • President Kennedy 1960-1963 sent (15,000+) troops to keep the anti-communist South Vietnamese leader, Ngo Dinh Diem, in power. Kennedy called them military “advisers” or consultants.
Why Was This a Problem? • Diem was not popular at all: • Very restrictive/controlling • Devout Catholic in a Buddhist country • Refused to participate in free 1956 elections, because he would have lost. • A group of communist rebels in the South (Vietcong)began an insurgency against this South Vietnamese government • Diem was eventually assassinated (with the help of US operatives and with Kennedy’s knowledge) in 1963… the same year as Kennedy.
Kennedy Presidency1961-1963 US Senator From Massachusetts/ Democrat Winning a very close election, Kennedy brought youth and a sense of energy and optimism to the White House --The Prince of “American Royalty”. Creation of the Peace Corps and his pledge to get to the Moon were notable moments in Kennedy’s Presidency, but he is best known for Foreign Policy: Bay of Pigs (April, 1961) Cuban Missile Crisis (October, 1962) Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (1963) and buildup of conventional military arms/forces by the US Initial US Military Involvement/Buildup in Vietnam (1960-1963) Assassinated in Dallas Texas on November 22, 1963
Martin Luther King, Jr. 1929-1968 • Baptist minister and black community leader in Montgomery, Alabama • Led the Montgomery Bus Boycott, making a national name for himself as a result of the boycott and became the nationally recognized leader of the Civil Rights Movement, who remained committed to the non-violent protest. • Founded SCLC in 1957 (next slide) • April,1963 “Letter From a Birmingham Jail”- will Kennedy support a tougher civil rights bill before his death in late 1963? • August, 1963 - March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom: in support of this civil rights bill.“I Have a Dream” speech.
SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference) • MLK helped establish (in 1957) this group of ministers who worked to nonviolently end segregation. • Included Ralph Abernathy, a close associate of King’s, who will take up the leadership after King’s death • During its early years, SCLC struggled to gain footholds in black churches and communities across the South. Social activism in favor of racial equality faced fierce repression from police, White Citizens' Council and the Ku Klux Klan. Only a few churches had the courage to defy the white-dominated status-quo by affiliating with SCLC, and those that did risked economic retaliation against pastors and other church leaders, arson, and bombings. • SCLC's advocacy of boycotts and other forms of nonviolent protest was controversial among both whites and blacks. Many black community leaders believed that segregation should be challenged in the courts and that direct action excited white resistance, hostility, and violence. Traditionally, leadership in black communities came from the educated elite—ministers, professionals, teachers, etc.—who spoke for and on behalf of the laborers, maids, farm-hands, and working poor who made up the bulk of the black population. Many of these traditional leaders were uneasy at involving ordinary blacks in mass activity such as boycotts and marches.
Early 1960s • Among young African Americans, there was a swell of popular support for civil rights, partly rising out of frustration for the slow movement of change • Sit-ins (wade-ins, read-ins) all over the south • SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) formed in Spring, 1960 at Shaw University. • In 1964, the SNCC Freedom Summer project to register African American voters in Mississippi resulted in the murder of 3 civil rights workers February 1, 1960 Woolworth’s Counter Sit-in in Greensboro, NC
Freedom Riders • Meant to force the Federal Government to enforce their decision to desegregate interstate commerce. • Two buses full of people traveled around the south defying segregation laws. • One bus was firebombed; the other attacked by a white mob in Birmingham, Alabama • Summer of 1961
Kennedy pushed for civil rights • JFK vocally supported civil rights, especially in his later 1963 speeches (after Birmingham, Al. & MLK arrest). • His brother, Robert, pushed for civil rights legislation in his position as Attorney General and when he ran for President in 1968. Birmingham, Alabama
Kennedy assassinated November 1963 • Johnson used Kennedy’s death to push the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through Congress. • Outlawed segregation in public places and discrimination in employment on the basis of race, sex, color or national origin. –-- prosecute-able by Federal Justice Department
Johnson’s (1963-1969)Domestic Policy Johnson was determined to (1) wage a War on Poverty, (2) expand the social reforms of the New Deal (the Great Society), and (3) further the Civil Rights Movement: Office of Economic Opportunity (OEC) was created and given a billion-dollar budget to create self-help programs, such as Head Start for preschoolers; Job Corps for vocational education; literacy programs and legal services for the poor.
Selma Alabama • Selma Alabama March was met with massive violence against non-violent protesters. Televised news reports shocked the nation on March 7,1965. President Johnson made a televised speech calling for strong federal (rather than states’) voting rights laws. • Voting Rights Act of 1965 • Outlawed literacy tests and allowed the federal government to oversee voter registration • 24th Amendment (ratified 1964) • No poll taxes for voting
Urban Riots • 1965-67 –huge riots rocked large American cities. • Los Angeles (Watts), Detroit, Newark,, etc. • How different did daily life actually look for most Black Americans? FRUSTRATION over continued black poverty and discrimination • Violence beginning to replace non-violence in the civil rights movement…
The New Militancy • Malcolm X (Born Malcolm Little) in 1925 in Omaha, Nebraska) had a difficult early life, including drugs and crime, but turned away from all that, after converting to Islam. • Would become an important, though controversial civil rights leader, criticizing King’s nonviolence and advocating black violence in self-defense to counter white violence: “We declare our right on this earth to be a man, to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary.” - Malcolm X, 1965 (the year he was assassinated)
Black Panthers • Political party • Would arrange armed patrols of black neighborhoods. • Led to violent confrontations with the police in many cities. • Became the vocal advocate of “Black Power” (Stokely Carmichael’s term), rather than integration. Huey P. Newton Stokely Carmichael Bobby Seale
MLK shot And Killed in Memphis April 4, 1968, Leaving an Unfinished Civil Rights Movement and Anger and frustration among African-Americans In the North and the south. • By 1968, American attention was moving on to other issues, such as women’s rights, and most particularly the Vietnam War… Moments after being shot by James Earl Ray
Johnson “Inherited” Vietnam • Thought all communists are the same, so predisposed to be aggressive against N. Vietnam • August 2, 1964 -North Vietnamese ships attacked an American destroyer patrolling in the Gulf of Tonkin. • Gulf of Tonkin Resolution: Congress authorized the President to “take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the US armed forces and to prevent further aggression” - Allowed the President to commit further troops without having to go back to Congress for a Declaration of War. (LBJ: Resolution is like ” Grandma’s Nightshirt”)
The War By the Numbers • 1963; 10,000 American advisers in Vietnam • 1965: 180,000 American Soldiers in Vietnam. • 2.7 million Americans served in Vietnam • Average age of the 58,148 US killed in Vietnam was 23.11 years • In 1973, the United States listed 2,646 Americans as unaccounted for from the entire Vietnam War. By April 2013, 1649 Americans remained unaccounted for, of which 850 were listed as Killed In Action – Body not recovered and 749 are listed as a presumptive finding of death • Year in which the highest number of American deaths were reported in Vietnam: 1968 (16,592 deaths reported) • The estimated number of Vietnamese deaths—military and civilian from both sides of the struggle—between 1965 and 1975: 1 million (However, some sources estimate 2 million; the Vietnamese government estimates 3.1 million war deaths • Approximately 12,000 helicopters saw action in Vietnam (all services). http://www.shmoop.com/vietnam-war/statistics.html
The US Strategy: Attrition • If the US killed enough of the enemy hopefully, they would stop coming… • Used our advantages: • Massive Firepower • Incredible technological advantage. • Airpower “You will kill 10 of our men, and we will kill 1 of yours, and in the end it will be you who tire of it.” - Ho Chi Minh
Operation Rolling Thunder • Johnson ordered the operation in early 1965. • We dropped 800 tons of bombs on North Vietnam per day for almost three years. 3x more bombs than all of WWII combined) • Four objectives of the operation were to: • boost the sagging morale of South Vietnam; • persuade North Vietnam to cease its support for the communist insurgency in South; • destroy North Vietnam's transportation system, industrial base, and air defenses, breaking the North Vietnamese will to fight; and • cease the flow of men and material into South Vietnam.
Vietminh/Vietcong Strategy • Guerilla Warfare • Could decide when and where to attack then melt back into the jungle or into hiding in “plain sight” • Using ambushes and hit and run tactics the Vietcong and North Vietnamese troops slowly defeated the American will to fight, matching each American troop increase with one of its own.
Ho Chi Minh Trail Was used to bring supplies into South Vietnam on foot. Went to every part of South Vietnam.
Why Did the Vietnam War Make the Government and the US look bad? • The Endless War…No matter how much firepower, no matter how many troops were sent, no matter how much money was spent, there seemed to be no end in sight. • Use of The huge monetary costs of the war were prohibiting money from being spent on domestic issues and were causing economic problems • Misinformation by military and civilian leaders to the American people, along with Johnson’s reluctance to speak frankly regarding the scope and costs of the war created a “credibility gap” • Napalm and Agent Orange… • All caught on film and brought nightly into the American Living Room.
Questions • Describe the background to domino theory in the context of the larger cold war era. • Looking at civil rights and the Vietnam war together what impact did these two events have on American youth and larger society in the 1960s? • Compare and contrast Martin Luther King with Malcom X. • Summarize the US strategy in Vietnam and its failings.
