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Gale - Vietnam War Reference Library Volume 1 - Biographies (2001) PDF
Gale - Vietnam War Reference Library Volume 1 - Biographies (2001) PDF
Biographies
Volume 1: A–K
Vietnam War
Biographies
Kevin Hillstrom
and Laurie Collier
Hillstrom
Diane Sawinski, Editor
Contents
Reader’s Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
Vietnam War Timeline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii
Words to Know. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxv
Volume 1: A-K
Spiro T. Agnew . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Joan Baez . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Daniel Berrigan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
McGeorge Bundy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
William Calley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Ramsey Clark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Richard J. Daley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
David Dellinger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
Jeremiah Denton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
Daniel Ellsberg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Diane Carlson Evans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Bernard Fall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Frances FitzGerald . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Jane Fonda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
v
J. William Fulbright . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
Barry Goldwater . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
David Halberstam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Tom Hayden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Michael Herr . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Ho Chi Minh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
Abbie Hoffman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Lyndon B. Johnson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
John F. Kennedy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
Robert F. Kennedy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
Martin Luther King, Jr. . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
Henry A. Kissinger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
Ron Kovic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
Volume 2: L-Z
Edward Lansdale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
Le Duan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
Le Duc Tho . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
Le Ly Hayslip . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
Maya Lin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
Henry Cabot Lodge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
Lon Nol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
Graham Martin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
John McCain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
George McGovern . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
Robert McNamara . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
Bobby Muller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
Ngo Dinh Diem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
Madame Ngo Dinh Nhu (Tran Le Xuan) . . . . 296
Nguyen Cao Ky . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
Nguyen Thi Dinh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311
Nguyen Van Thieu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
Richard M. Nixon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323
Tim O’Brien . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332
Tim Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339
Pham Van Dong . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 346
Phan Thi Kim Phuc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 352
Pol Pot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359
Contents vii
Reader’s Guide
ix
Phuc, a nine-year-old Vietnamese girl who was photographed
running naked down a country road after suffering terrible
burns from a U.S.-ordered napalm attack in her village; and Jan
Scruggs, an American veteran who led the drive to create the
Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.
Vietnam War: Biographies also features sidebars con-
taining interesting facts, excerpts from memoirs, diaries, and
speeches, and short biographies of people who are in some
way connected with the leading figures of the era. Within each
full-length biography, cross-references direct readers to other
individuals profiled in the two-volume set. More than seventy
black and white photographs enhance the text. In addition,
each volume contains a timeline that lists significant dates and
events of the Vietnam War era, a glossary, further readings, and
a cumulative subject index.
Acknowledgments
The authors extend thanks to U•X•L Senior Editor Diane
Sawinski and U•X•L Publisher Tom Romig at the Gale Group for
their assistance throughout the production of this series.
Reader’s Guide xi
Vietnam War Timeline
1890
The Battle of Wounded
Knee ends the last 1929
1861–65 major Indian resistance Onset of the 1939–45
U.S. Civil to white settlement Great World
War in America Depression War II
xiii
1941 The Communist-led Vietnamese nationalist organiza-
tion known as the Viet Minh is established.
March 1945 Emperor Bao Dai proclaims Vietnam an inde-
pendent nation under Japan’s protection.
April 1945 U.S. president Franklin Roosevelt dies; Harry S.
Truman takes office.
August 1945 Japan surrenders to end World War II.
August 1945 Bao Dai is removed from power in the August
Revolution.
September 1945 Ho Chi Minh establishes the Democratic
Republic of Vietnam and declares himself president.
September 1945 U.S. Army Major A. Peter Dewey becomes
the first American soldier to die in Vietnam.
March 1946 France declares Vietnam an independent state
within the French Union.
November 1946 The First Indochina War begins with a Viet
Minh attack on French forces in Hanoi.
Ho Chi Minh. 1949 France creates the independent State of Vietnam under
Bao Dai.
January 1950 Communist countries China, Yugoslavia, and
the Soviet Union formally recognize the Democratic
Republic of Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh.
February 1950 Democratic countries Great Britain and the
United States formally recognize the State of Vietnam
under Bao Dai.
May 1950 The United States begins providing military and
economic aid to French forces in Vietnam.
June 1950 Truman sends U.S. troops into Korea to begin the
Korean War.
1944
Anne Frank and family are 1946
captured by the Nazis after The Cold War 1949
two years in hiding and between the United People’s Republic 1950
taken to the concentration States and the Soviet of China proclaimed Korean War
camp at Auschwitz Union begins by Mao Tse-tung begins
1954
1953 Egypt and Britain 1956 1959
James Watson conclude a pact on Soviet troops Ruth and Eliot
and Francis Crick the Suez Canal, ending suppress a Handler, owners
decipher the 72 years of British revolution in of Mattel, unveil
structure of DNA military occupation Hungary the Barbie Doll
Timeline xv
1960 Le Duan is elevated to secretary general of the Com-
munist Party, making him one of the most powerful
men in North Vietnam during the Vietnam War.
November 1960 Rebels try to overthrow the Diem government.
November 1960 John F. Kennedy becomes president of the
United States.
November 1960 The National Liberation Front is established
in North Vietnam to overthrow Diem and reunite the
two parts of Vietnam.
Robert McNamara.
Reproduced by permission of 1961 Kennedy offers military assistance to Diem and sends
AP/Wide World Photos. the first U.S. advisors to South Vietnam.
January 1963 The Battle of Ap Bac brings American public
attention to Vietnam.
April 1963 Buddhists begin demonstrating against the Diem
government.
June 1963 The suicide of a Buddhist monk draws interna-
tional attention to the situation in Vietnam.
September 1963 President Kennedy sends military advisor
Maxwell Taylor and Secretary of Defense Robert McNa-
mara to Vietnam to conduct a study of the escalating
situation between South Vietnam and the Viet Cong.
November 1963 Ngo Dinh Diem and other members of his
government are assassinated; the Military Revolution-
ary Council takes control of South Vietnam.
November 1963 President Kennedy is assassinated; Lyndon
Johnson takes office.
July 1964 Senator Barry Goldwater loses to Lyndon Johnson
in one of the most lopsided presidential elections in
American history.
Lyndon B. Johnson.
Reproduced by permission August 1964 North Vietnamese patrol boats reportedly attack
of AP/Wide World Photos. American warships in the Gulf of Tonkin.
1960
Theodore Maiman 1961 1962
builds the first CIA-backed invasion Television satellite
working laser of Cuba at the Telstar put into orbit
Bay of Pigs by U.S.A.
1964 1965
The Civil Rights Act, which forbids Former British prime
1963 employers and other businesses minister Winston
Freedom March held from discriminating against Churchill dies
in Washington, D.C. minorities, is signed into law
Timeline xvii
nam. The hearings are widely credited with increasing
public skepticism about the Johnson administration’s
handling of the Vietnam War.
February 1967 French journalist Bernard Fall is killed by a
land mine while covering the war in Vietnam.
April 1967 Civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., speaks
out against the Vietnam War.
September 1967 Nguyen Van Thieu becomes president of
South Vietnam.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Reproduced by permission of October 1967 The March on the Pentagon draws 50,000 anti-
National Archives and Records. war protesters to Washington, D.C.
October 1967 Navy pilot John McCain’s fighter plane is shot
down over Hanoi. He becomes a prisoner-of-war
(POW) for more than five years in North Vietnam.
January 1968 The Siege of Khe Sanh begins.
January 1968 North Vietnamese forces, headed up by Vo
Nguyen Giap, launch the Tet Offensive.
January 1968 The Battle for Hue begins.
February 1968 Clark Clifford replaces Robert McNamara as
U.S. secretary of defense.
March 1968 U.S. troops kill hundreds of Vietnamese civilians
in the My Lai Massacre.
March 1968 Johnson announces he will not seek reelection.
April 1968 Civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., is assas-
sinated.
May 1968 The United States and North Vietnam begin peace
negotiations in Paris.
Robert F. Kennedy.
Library of Congress. May 1968 Catholic priest Daniel Berrigan burns military
draft files in Catonsville, Maryland, to protest the
Vietnam War.
Timeline xix
May 1970 The National Guard kills four student protestors
during an antiwar demonstration at Kent State Uni-
versity in Ohio.
June 1970 U.S. troops withdraw from Cambodia.
October 1970 Antiwar groups hold the first Moratorium Day
protests.
November 1970 Nixon makes his “Silent Majority” speech.
November 1970 The My Lai Massacre is revealed to the Amer-
Bobby Seale. ican people.
Reproduced by permission of November 1970 Lt. William Calley is put on trial for his role
AP/Wide World Photos. in the My Lai Massacre.
December 1970 The U.S. Congress repeals the Tonkin Gulf
Resolution.
February 1971 Daniel Ellsberg leaks the top-secret Pentagon
Papers to reporter Neil Sheehan.
June 1971 The New York Times begins publishing the Penta-
gon Papers.
1972 Actress Jane Fonda makes a controversial visit to North
Vietnam.
1972 American journalist Frances FitzGerald publishes Fire
in the Lake, which looks at the war from a Vietnamese
perspective.
1972 American journalist David Halberstam publishes The
Best and the Brightest, about the U.S. officials who
developed the government’s policy toward Vietnam.
March 1972 North Vietnamese troops, under the leadership
of Vo Nguyen Giap, begin the Easter Offensive.
Vo Nguyen Giap. June 1972 Republican agents associated with Nixon break
Reproduced by permission of into the Democratic presidential campaign headquar-
Archive Photos. ters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C.
1971
The Twenty-sixth
Amendment, which
lowers U.S. voting age 1972
from 21 to 18, is ratified President Nixon makes 1973
historic visit to China Artist Pablo Picasso dies
1974
Anthropologists discover “Lucy,” 1976
a hominid skeleton more than 1975 Viking I and Viking II
three million years old Bill Gates organizes space probes land
Microsoft Corp. on Mars
Timeline xxi
April 1975 The U.S. embassy in Saigon is evacuated by mili-
tary helicopters.
April 1975 North Vietnamese forces capture the South Viet-
namese capital of Saigon to win the Vietnam War.
April 1975 Communist Khmer Rouge rebels capture the capi-
tal of Phnom Penh and take control of Cambodia.
May 1975 Khmer Rouge forces capture the U.S. merchant ship
Mayaguez.
Joan Baez. August 1975 The Communist-led Pathet Lao take control of
Reproduced by permission Laos, removing prime minister Souvanna Phouma
of Jack Vartoogian. from rule.
1976 Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic publishes his memoir Born
on the Fourth of July.
July 1976 Vietnam is reunited as one country under Commu-
nist rule, called the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
Pham Van Dong becomes premier of the newly formed
country.
November 1976 Jimmy Carter is elected president of the
United States.
1977 Carter pardons most Vietnam War draft evaders.
1977 Journalist Michael Herr publishes Dispatches, based on
his experiences reporting on the war in Vietnam.
1978 Thousands of refugees known as “boat people” flee
from Vietnam, creating an international crisis.
1978 Vietnam invades Cambodia and takes control of the
government away from the violent Khmer Rouge.
1978 Veteran Bobby Muller cofounds the support organiza-
tion Vietnam Veterans of America.
1979 China reacts to the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia
by invading northern Vietnam.
1977
Steven Jobs and 1980
Steve Wozniak 1979 Former Beatle
1978
found the Apple Political action group John Lennon is
U.S. Senate ratifies
Computer Co. “Moral Majority” is shot and killed
Panama Canal
Agreement founded by Jerry Falwell
1986
1981 1984 U.S. space shuttle 1988
Acquired Immune Olympic Games at Los Challenger explodes seconds Colin Powell
Deficiency virus Angeles, California, are after takeoff, killing seven becomes first black
(AIDS) is identified boycotted by Soviet astronauts including teacher 4-star general in
bloc countries Christa McAuliffe U.S. Army
Timeline xxiii
1989 Vietnam withdraws its troops from Cambodia.
1989 Le Ly Hayslip publishes When Heaven and Earth
Changed Places, her memoir about growing up in South
Vietnam during the Vietnam War.
1990 Tim O’Brien publishes The Things They Carried, which
is regarded as the single greatest work of literature ever
written about the American experience in Vietnam.
1992 Bill Clinton is elected president of the United States.
Le Ly Hayslip. 1993 The United Nations sponsors free elections in Cambo-
Reproduced by permission dia; Norodom Sihanouk regains his position as king.
of AP/Wide World Photos.
1993 The Vietnam Women’s Memorial is dedicated in Wash-
ington, D.C.
1993 Nguyen Thi Binh, the second-ranking negotiator for
the North Vietnamese side in the Paris peace talks, is
elected vice president of Vietnam.
1994 President Clinton ends the economic embargo against
trade with Vietnam.
1995 The United States restores full diplomatic relations
with Vietnam.
1995 Former secretary of defense Robert McNamara pub-
lishes In Retrospect, in which he reveals his personal
Nguyen Thi Binh.
doubts about U.S. actions in Vietnam.
Reproduced by permission
of Corbis Corporation. 1998 Pol Pot, former leader of the Cambodian Communists
known as the Khmer Rouge, dies under mysterious cir-
cumstances.
A
ARVN: The South Vietnamese army, officially known as the
Army of the Republic of South Vietnam. The ARVN
fought on the same side as U.S. troops during the Viet-
nam War.
B
Buddhism: A religion based on the teaching of Gautama Bud-
dha, in which followers seek moral purity and spiritual
enlightenment.
C
Cambodia: Southeast Asian nation located on the western
border of South Vietnam. During the Vietnam War,
Cambodia experienced its own civil war between its
pro-U.S. government forces and Communist rebels
known as the Khmer Rouge.
xxv
Cold War: A period of intense rivalry between the United States
and the Soviet Union as both nations competed to
spread their political philosophies and influence around
the world after the end of World War II. The climate of
distrust and hostility between the two nations and their
allies dominated international politics until the 1980s.
Colonialism: A practice in which one country assumes politi-
cal control over another country. Most colonial powers
established colonies in foreign lands in order to take
possession of valuable natural resources and increase
their own power. They often showed little concern for
the rights and well-being of the native people.
Communism: A political system in which the government
controls all resources and means of producing wealth.
By eliminating private property, this system is
designed to create an equal society with no social
classes. However, Communist governments in practice
often limit personal freedom and individual rights.
Coup d’etat: A sudden, decisive attempt to overthrow an exist-
ing government.
D
Dien Bien Phu: A French fort in northwestern Vietnam that was
the site of a major battle in the Indochina War in 1954.
Domino Theory: A political theory that held that the fall of
one country’s government to communism usually trig-
gered similar collapses in neighboring countries, as if
the nations were dominoes falling in sequence.
E
Escalation: A policy of increasing the size, scope, and intensity
of military activity.
G
Great Society: A set of social programs proposed by President
Lyndon Johnson designed to end segregation and
reduce poverty in the United States.
H
Hanoi: The capital city of Communist North Vietnam. Also an
unofficial shorthand way of referring to the North
Vietnamese government.
I
Indochina: The name sometimes given to the peninsula
between India and China in Southeast Asia. The term
narrowly refers to Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam,
which were united under the name French Indochina
during the colonial period, 1893-1954.
Indochina War: Later known as the First Indochina War (the
Vietnam War became the Second Indochina War), this
conflict took place between France and Communist-
led Viet Minh forces in Vietnam, 1946-54.
K
Khmer Rouge: Communist-led rebel forces that fought for
control of Cambodia during the Vietnam War years.
The Khmer Rouge overthrew the U.S.-backed govern-
ment of Lon Nol in 1975.
L
Laos: A Southeast Asian nation located on the western bor-
der of North Vietnam. During the Vietnam War, Laos
experienced its own civil war between U.S.-backed
forces and Communist rebels known as the Pathet Lao.
M
MIAs: Soldiers classified as “missing in action,” meaning that
their status is unknown to military leaders or that their
bodies have not been recovered.
N
Nationalism: A feeling of intense loyalty and devotion to a
country or homeland. Some people argued that
nationalism, rather than communism, was the main
factor that caused the Viet Minh to fight the French for
control of Vietnam.
North Vietnam: The Geneva Accords of 1954, which ended
the First Indochina War, divided the nation of Vietnam
into two sections. The northern section, which was led
by a Communist government under Ho Chi Minh, was
officially known as the Democratic Republic of Viet-
nam but was usually called North Vietnam.
NVA: The North Vietnamese Army, which assisted the Viet
Cong guerilla fighters in trying to conquer South Viet-
nam. These forces opposed the United States in the
Vietnam War.
O
Offensive: A sudden, aggressive attack by one side during a war.
P
Paris Peace Accords: A peace agreement, signed on January
25, 1973, between the United States and North Viet-
nam that ended direct American involvement in the
Vietnam War.
Pentagon Papers: A set of secret U.S. Department of Defense
documents that explained American military policy
toward Vietnam from 1945 to 1968. They created a
controversy when they were leaked to the national
media in 1971.
Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSS): A set of psychologi-
cal problems that are caused by exposure to a danger-
S
Saigon: The capital city of U.S.-supported South Vietnam. Also
an unofficial shorthand way of referring to the South
Vietnamese government.
Silent Majority: A term used by President Richard Nixon to
describe the large number of American people he
believed quietly supported his Vietnam War policies.
In contrast, Nixon referred to the antiwar movement
in the United States as a vocal minority.
Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV): The country created in
1976, after North Vietnam won the Vietnam War and
reunited with South Vietnam.
South Vietnam: Created under the Geneva Accords of 1954,
the southern section of Vietnam was known as the
Republic of South Vietnam. It was led by a U.S.-sup-
ported government.
T
Tonkin Gulf Resolution: Passed by Congress after U.S. Navy
ships supposedly came under attack in the Gulf of
Tonkin, this resolution gave President Lyndon John-
son the authority to wage war against North Vietnam.
V
Veteran: A former member of the armed forces.
Veterans Administration: A U.S. government agency respon-
sible for providing medical care, insurance, pensions,
and other benefits to American veterans of Vietnam
and other wars.
Viet Cong: Vietnamese Communist guerilla fighters who
worked with the North Vietnamese Army to conquer
South Vietnam.
W
Watergate: A political scandal that forced U.S. President
Richard Nixon to resign from office in 1974. In June
1972, Republican agents associated with Nixon’s
reelection campaign broke into the Democratic cam-
paign headquarters in the Watergate Hotel in Wash-
ington, D.C., to gather secret information. Nixon and
several members of his administration attempted to
cover up the burglary.
1
(1939–1945). He served during the war as a captain in an
armored division, earning a Bronze Star medal.
After the war ended in 1945, Agnew returned home to
Baltimore. He resumed his education, earning a law degree
from Baltimore Law School in 1947. He established a success-
ful law practice in the city’s suburbs, but as the years passed he
expressed increasing interest in seeking a new career in poli-
tics. By the late 1950s Agnew had established himself as one of
the state’s promising young Republican leaders. In 1962 he
upset his Democratic opponent to win election as Baltimore
County Executive.
Four years later, Agnew won the Republican nomina-
tion for governor of Maryland. He then defeated the state’s
Democratic governor in a big upset. Agnew’s victory was due in
large part to strong support from Baltimore’s black community,
which opposed his Democratic opponent’s support for segrega-
tion (keeping members of different races separated in society).
Governor of Maryland
When Agnew became governor of Maryland in early
1967, most residents of the state viewed him as a moderate
Republican. They believed that he did not hold radical or
extreme views on the Vietnam War, civil rights, and other
issues that were dividing many American communities. In
April 1968, however, riots broke out in Baltimore’s black
neighborhoods following the assassination of civil rights
leader Martin Luther King, Jr. (see entry). The riots infuriated
Agnew. He harshly criticized the city’s black community lead-
ers for permitting—or in some cases, encouraging—the vio-
lence to take place. Agnew’s reaction angered some segments
of Maryland’s black community. But it pleased Republican
conservatives across the nation who were appalled by the riots.
In 1968 Republican presidential nominee Richard M.
Nixon selected Agnew as his vice presidential running mate
after his first two choices (Robert Finch and Gerald Ford)
declined his offer. Nixon and his advisors correctly predicted
that the selection of Agnew would meet with approval from
various groups within the Republican Party. The party’s mod-
erate wing did not actively oppose his selection, and conser-
vatives expressed outright enthusiasm for Agnew.
Spiro T. Agnew 3
larly tough treatment. He labeled antiwar protestors as “an
effete [feminine and weak] corps of impudent [disrespectful]
snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals.” At other
times, he referred to members of the antiwar movement as
“Communists” and “vultures” who transformed “honest con-
cern” about the war into “something sick and rancid [decayed
and offensive].” At one point, Agnew stated that the United
States would be better off without the people who made up the
antiwar movement. “We can . . . afford to separate them from
our society with no more regret than we should feel over dis-
carding rotten apples from a barrel,” he said. These attacks
made him deeply hated within the antiwar movement. But
they transformed Agnew into an immensely popular figure
among conservative Americans who supported U.S. involve-
ment in Vietnam.
Agnew also became well known in late 1969 and 1970
for his attacks on America’s news media. He claimed that U.S.
journalists purposely provided negative coverage of the war
because they opposed it. He charged that the media was “a
small and unelected elite” that did not represent the views of
ordinary Americans. These speeches further added to Agnew’s
popularity among conservatives.
Spiro T. Agnew 5
Sources
Agnew, Spiro. Go Quietly . . . or Else. New York: William Morrow, 1980.
Cohen, Richard M., and Jules Witcover. A Heartbeat Away: The Investiga-
tion and Resignation of Vice President Spiro T. Agnew. New York: Viking
Press, 1977.
Lukas, Anthony J. Nightmare: The Underside of the Nixon Years. New York:
Viking Press, 1976.
Safire, William. Before the Fall: An Inside View of the Pre-Watergate White
House. New York: Doubleday, 1975.
Small, Melvin. Johnson, Nixon, and the Doves. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers
University Press, 1988.
T hroughout her career Joan Baez has used her talent and
fame as a folk singer to bring attention to social causes,
including ending world hunger and gaining civil rights for
“I do think of myself as a
symbol of following
through on your beliefs,
African Americans. During the Vietnam War, she focused her
using your talents to
energy on protesting U.S. involvement in the conflict. By the
late 1960s Baez was a well-known and highly influential anti- do so.”
war activist. Her music and her visible presence at demonstra-
tions encouraged many young Americans to speak out against
the war. “Her songs . . . helped mobilize young people to take
an interest in the world around them for the first time,” Jeffrey
Heller wrote in Joan Baez: Singer with a Cause.
7
did not bother to correct the error, and that is how she is
known today.
Joan’s father held a doctoral degree in physics. He
could have earned a lot of money designing bombs and other
weapons for the U.S. government. But he believed that war was
wrong, so he took a lower-paying job as a college professor
instead. “We would never have all the fine and useless things
little girls want when they are growing up,” Baez said of her
father’s career decision in her memoir A Voice to Sing With.
“Instead we would have a father with a clear conscience.
Decency would be his legacy to us.”
In 1951 Alberto Baez took a job with the United
Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO). The job involved building a physics lab in Bagh-
dad, Iraq. Joan and her family spent a year in Baghdad, where
they saw terrible poverty and hunger for the first time. In her
memoir Baez recalled seeing “people rooting for food in our
family garbage pails, and legless children dragging themselves
along the streets on cardboard . . . begging for money.” Her
year in Iraq helped her develop great sympathy for poor and
hungry people around the world.
When the Baez family returned to the United States,
they settled in California. Joan began expressing her social and
political views in school, and they did not always make her
popular with fellow students. At this time, the United States
and the Soviet Union were involved in an intense rivalry
known as the Cold War. Both nations competed to increase
their military strength and to spread their political influence
around the world. Many Americans became caught up in the
Cold War and strongly supported the government’s efforts to
wipe out communism.
But Baez felt that the United States would never
achieve world peace by trying to build more destructive
weapons than the Soviet Union. In high school she staged a
personal protest against the country’s military buildup. One
day, her teacher informed the class that the school was con-
ducting an air-raid drill. The school would pretend that the
United States was coming under attack from Soviet missiles.
The students were supposed to leave school calmly and return
home. But Baez knew from her father that if a real attack
occurred, the students would never have enough time to make
Joan Baez 9
Phil Ochs (1940–1976)
One of the best-known singers and learned by heart and repeated over and
writers of antiwar protest songs during the over.” Ochs took up the guitar and began
Vietnam War was Phil Ochs. Ochs was playing at folk clubs in New York City,
born on December 19, 1940, in El Paso, alongside such rising stars as Joan Baez
Texas. Growing up in New York and Ohio, and Bob Dylan. In 1963 he appeared at
he learned to play the clarinet and showed the prestigious Newport Folk Festival in
a great deal of musical talent. He first Rhode Island.
began writing songs as a student at Ohio
Ochs released his first album, All
State University. He also became interested
the News That’s Fit to Sing, in 1964. A
in journalism during his college days and
review in Rolling Stone magazine called it
published a radical student newspaper. He
“a manifesto of social urgency.” But it was
left the university a few credits short of
his second album, I Ain’t Marchin’ Anymore,
graduation when his political views
that brought him to national attention.
prevented him from becoming editor of
The title track became a theme song of the
the official school newspaper.
antiwar movement. For the next few years,
In the early 1960s Ochs decided to Ochs was a fixture at antiwar rallies, folk
focus on music rather than journalism. He festivals, and benefit concerts around the
based his decision on the advice of union United States. Each time he performed, he
organizer and songwriter Joe Hill, who said encouraged his audience to protest against
that “a pamphlet, no matter how good, is the Vietnam War and support the civil
never read more than once, but a song is rights movement.
Joan Baez 11
North Vietnam wanted to overthrow the South Vietnamese gov-
ernment and reunite the two countries under one Communist
government. But U.S. government officials felt that a Commu-
nist government in Vietnam would increase the power of the
Soviet Union and threaten the security of the United States. In
the late 1950s and early 1960s the U.S. government sent money,
weapons, and military advisors to help South Vietnam defend
itself. In 1965 President Lyndon Johnson (see entry) sent Ameri-
can combat troops to join the fight on the side of South Vietnam.
But deepening U.S. involvement in the war failed to
defeat the Communists. Instead, the war turned into a bloody
stalemate. The American public became bitterly divided about
how to proceed in Vietnam, and antiwar demonstrations took
place across the country. Like many other Americans, Baez felt
that the U.S. government’s actions were wrong. She did not
think that the United States should interfere with the reunifi-
cation of Vietnam. Instead, she believed that the Vietnamese
people should be allowed to decide their own future. As U.S.
involvement increased to all-out war against North Vietnam,
Baez joined the antiwar movement.
As one form of protest, Baez refused to pay 60 percent
of her federal taxes. She chose this number because she esti-
mated that 60 percent of the money the government received
in taxes was used for military purposes. Baez knew that failing
to pay taxes could result in severe financial penalties and even
time in prison, but she wanted to make a statement. She did not
want the U.S. government to use her money to pay for what she
believed was an immoral war in Vietnam. The Internal Revenue
Service (the government agency that collects taxes) eventually
claimed her house, car, and concert earnings as a penalty for
her unpaid taxes. Still, Baez continued her protest for ten years.
Baez also appeared on many television talk shows to
share her views on U.S. involvement in Vietnam. She believed
that she had a responsibility to use her celebrity to make a dif-
ference. “I must be ready not to die for something, but to live
for it, which is really much harder,” she explained in a letter to
her parents in 1965. “I have a choice of things to do with my
life. I think it is time to charge in head first. I want to start a
peace movement.” Toward that end, she founded the Institute
for the Study of Nonviolence in California.
In 1967 Baez released one of her best-known albums,
Joan Baez 13
Through the late 1970s Baez continued performing in
concerts around the world to spread her message of peace and
human rights. She also became active in the humanitarian
organization Amnesty International and helped organize
chapters in California. In 1979 Baez grew concerned about
conditions in Vietnam and Southeast Asia. Vietnam’s Com-
munist government had put many of its political opponents in
prison or sent them away to “reeducation” camps. In fact, con-
ditions in Vietnam had become so bad that thousands of Viet-
namese people fled the country as refugees. Baez wrote an
open letter to the Vietnamese government, asking for an end
to the repression (the denial of basic rights).
Later that year, Baez organized a trip to Southeast Asia.
With a group of American reporters and photographers, she
visited refugee camps in northern Thailand. She met with
many refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos and heard
stories about how they had been imprisoned and tortured by
their countries’ new Communist governments. Upon return-
ing home, Baez formed a group called Humanitas to raise
money for food and medical supplies for the refugees.
In the 1980s folk music came back into style, and Baez
regained some of her popularity as a singer and performer. In
1985 she was selected to open Live Aid, a huge benefit concert
event that attracted 90,000 spectators and a worldwide televi-
sion audience. Live Aid eventually raised $70 million to fight
world hunger. Baez continued to perform in the 1990s. Many
people still consider her a symbol of how an individual can
create social change. “I do think of myself as a symbol,” she
noted in her memoir, “of following through on your beliefs,
using your talents to do so.”
Sources
Baez, Joan. And a Voice to Sing With. New York: Summit Books, 1978.
Baez, Joan. Daybreak. New York: Dial Press, 1968.
Heller, Jeffrey. Joan Baez: Singer with a Cause. Chicago: Children’s Press, 1991.
Loder, Kurt. “Joan Baez: The Rolling Stone Interview.” Rolling Stone, April
14, 1983.
Robbins, Mary Susannah, ed. Against the Vietnam War: Writings by
Activists. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1999.
Sager, Mike. “Joan Baez.” Rolling Stone, November 15, 1987.
15
was obsessed by the suffering in the world,” his mother
recalled in Francine du Plessix Gray’s book Divine Disobedience.
“[He was] the most sensitive and studious . . . and the most
devout [religious] of the six children.”
During high school Berrigan decided that he wanted to
enter the priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church. As a sen-
ior he chose to join the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, a religious
order of men within the Roman Catholic Church. He began
his training for the priesthood in 1939, immediately after grad-
uating from high school. He spent the next thirteen years
studying theology, philosophy, foreign languages, and other
subjects at Jesuit schools around the world.
Berrigan was ordained (appointed by church authori-
ties) into the Jesuit priesthood on June 19, 1952. He spent the
following year on a spiritual retreat in France. Berrigan was
strongly influenced during this period by his daily involve-
ment with French Roman Catholic priests who were dedicated
to addressing social problems such as poverty, hunger, and
prejudice. These members of the Catholic clergy believed that
they had a responsibility to apply their religious beliefs to real-
world issues. By the time Berrigan returned to the United
States in 1954, he had become a firm believer in this philoso-
phy of religious activism.
Daniel Berrigan 17
Philip Berrigan (1923–)
Daniel Berrigan 19
sometimes used radical activities and harsh language. CAL-
CAV’s moderate, peace-oriented stance appealed to many
Americans who opposed the war but disliked the militant
stances of other antiwar groups.
In addition to his CALCAV-related activities, Berrigan
participated in a wide range of other antiwar rallies and events.
In October 1967, for example, he took part in a massive anti-
war demonstration in Washington, D.C. Berrigan was one of
hundreds of protestors who were arrested on the last day of the
protest outside the Pentagon, the headquarters of the U.S. mil-
itary. In addition, Berrigan’s writings reflected his strong out-
rage over the Vietnam conflict. He used both books of poetry
such as No One Walks Waters (1966) and nonfiction works such
as They Call Us Dead Men: Reflections on Life and Conscience
(1966) to express his anger and anguish over the war.
In 1967 Berrigan moved to Cornell University in
Ithaca, New York, to take a leadership position with the
United Religious Work Program. In February 1968 he traveled
to North Vietnam with fellow activist Howard Zinn. During
their visit, the two men examined the impact of U.S. air
attacks on the nation’s population centers and helped gain
the release of three captured U.S. pilots. Later that year, Berri-
gan published an account of his trip to North Vietnam, called
Night Flight to Hanoi.
Daniel Berrigan 21
his attention to other social causes, such as racial equality and
improving the lives of poor and politically powerless people.
Through the 1980s and 1990s Berrigan became well-
known for his counseling efforts on behalf of people suffering
from cancer and AIDS. Over the years, he has also expressed
strong opposition to the death penalty in America and fiercely
criticized U.S. military policies toward other nations. Finally,
Berrigan is known as a leading critic of nuclear weapons pro-
duction in the U.S. and abroad. In fact, he has been repeatedly
jailed for his protest activities against nuclear arms produc-
tion. His most recent imprisonment took place in 1997, when
he and five other antinuclear activists were convicted of dam-
aging a U.S. missile cruiser during a protest.
Berrigan has also published nearly three dozen books
of poetry, nonfiction essays, and religious studies over the
course of his career. In 1987 he published an autobiography,
To Dwell in Peace. Not surprisingly, critics characterized
Berrigan’s autobiography as a blunt and unapologetic
account of his actions and statements during and after the
Vietnam War. “Those readers who despised Berrigan at the
peak of the Vietnam War will find him no more worthy of
admiration as he reflects on the events in his life [in To Dwell
in Peace],” wrote Chicago Tribune reviewer Charles Madigan.
“And those who admired him, who perhaps recognized in
him something of an ancient Christian ideal, will find that
the fire still burns in Berrigan.”
Sources
Berrigan, Daniel. Lights on in the House of the Dead: A Prison Diary. New
York: Doubleday, 1974.
Berrigan, Daniel. The Trial of the Catonsville Nine (play). Beacon Press,
1970.
Berrigan, Daniel. They Call Us Dead Men: Reflections on Life and Conscience.
New York: Macmillan, 1966.
Dear, John, ed. Apostle of Peace: Essays in Honor of Daniel Berrigan. Mary-
knoll, New York: Orbis, 1996.
O’Grady, Jim, and Murray Polner. Disarmed and Dangerous: The Radical
Lives and Times of Daniel and Philip Berrigan. New York: Basic Books,
1997.
Daniel Berrigan 23
McGeorge Bundy
Born March 30, 1919
Boston, Massachusetts
Died September 16, 1996
Boston, Massachusetts
“I am much affected by
my belief that the M cGeorge Bundy played a major role in shaping U.S. mili-
tary policies toward Vietnam during the early and mid-
1960s. During his years as national security advisor, Bundy
sentiment in the country
urged both President John F. Kennedy (see entry) and President
on the war has shifted
Lyndon B. Johnson (see entry) to expand America’s military role
very heavily . . . . What
in the war. By 1965, however, Bundy’s confidence in an eventual
has happened is that a U.S. victory was badly shaken. His doubts about continued
great many people . . . American involvement in the Vietnam War became so great that
have begun to think he resigned from the Johnson administration in early 1966.
that Vietnam really is
a bottomless pit.”
Early reputation for brilliance
McGeorge Bundy was born March 30, 1919, in Boston,
Massachusetts. He was one of three sons of Harvey H. Bundy,
an attorney and government official, and Katharine (Putnam)
Bundy. Bundy’s parents enrolled their sons in Massachusetts’
finest schools, where all three boys excelled in their studies.
McGeorge Bundy. After graduating from Groton School in 1936, McGeorge
Courtesy of the Library applied for admission into Yale University, one of the most
of Congress. prestigious universities in the United States. Yale gladly
24
accepted Bundy after he posted the school’s first-ever perfect
score on its entrance exam.
During his years of study at Yale, Bundy distinguished
himself as a brilliant and energetic student. He won numerous
academic honors at the school, where he majored in mathe-
matics. But he became even better known around the school
for his active involvement in journalism and his interest in
both local and national politics. After graduating from Yale in
1940, Bundy was invited to teach U.S. foreign policy at Har-
vard University. The young scholar soon became one of the
most popular instructors at Harvard.
In 1942 Bundy managed to gain acceptance into the
U.S. Army despite suffering from extremely poor eyesight. He
entered the military as a private but received extensive train-
ing as an intelligence officer. He served in the army for the
next four years as World War II raged across Europe and the
Pacific Rim. During this time he helped devise strategy for a
variety of military operations, including major invasions of
France and Italy. He left the army in 1946 as a captain.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Bundy’s image as a
brilliant and ambitious young man continued to flourish. He
remained a member of the Harvard faculty while simultane-
ously working his way into powerful political circles. In 1948
and 1949, for example, he served as a political analyst for the
U.S. Council of Foreign Relations, and in 1952 he edited a col-
lection of Secretary of State Dean Acheson’s public papers. In
1950 he married Mary Buckminster Lothrop, with whom he
eventually had four sons.
In 1953 Bundy was named dean of Harvard’s Graduate
School of Arts and Sciences. This was an amazing honor for
someone of Bundy’s age—he was only 34 years old at the
time—and reflected his growing national reputation as a bril-
liant administrator and decisive leader. He spent the next sev-
eral years attending to his duties at Harvard and building
strong relationships with a number of prominent American
politicians, including John F. Kennedy.
McGeorge Bundy 25
ary 1961, he asked dozens of bright young men from the
nation’s most highly regarded universities, companies, and
foundations to accept important government posts in his
administration. He reserved a special spot in his administration
for Bundy, making him his national security advisor. Bundy
and the other men selected by Kennedy eventually came to be
known as “the Best and the Brightest,” a new generation of
capable leaders who would guide America into the future.
In earlier presidential administrations, the position of
national security advisor had not always been that important.
But Kennedy gave Bundy a great deal of authority and relied on
him for advice on military policies and other national security
issues. For example, Bundy was responsible for overseeing the
National Security Council (NSC) and developing the Kennedy
administration’s overall military and foreign policy strategies.
Before long, Bundy was widely known as one of Kennedy’s clos-
est and most trusted advisors on a wide range of issues.
In the early 1960s Bundy helped Kennedy reach deci-
sions on many different areas of public policy. But he is best
remembered for encouraging the president to increase
America’s military commitment to the troubled nation of
South Vietnam.
South Vietnam had been created only a few years ear-
lier, when Vietnamese forces ended decades of French colonial
rule. The 1954 Geneva peace agreement that ended the
French-Vietnamese conflict created two countries within Viet-
nam. North Vietnam was headed by a Communist govern-
ment under revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh (see entry).
South Vietnam, meanwhile, was led by a U.S.-supported gov-
ernment under President Ngo Dinh Diem (see entry).
The Geneva agreement provided for nationwide free
elections to be held in 1956 so that the two parts of Vietnam
could be united under one government. But U.S. and South
Vietnamese officials refused to hold the elections because they
feared that the results would give the Communists control
over the entire country. When the South refused to hold elec-
tions, North Vietnam and its allies in the South—known as the
Viet Cong—launched a guerrilla war against Diem’s govern-
ment. The United States responded by sending money,
weapons, and advisors to aid in South Vietnam’s defense. By
the early 1960s, however, Bundy and some other American
A “hawk” on Vietnam
Bundy firmly believed that South Vietnam could be
saved if the United States took a more active role in the con-
flict. After all, America possessed technology and military
power that were far superior to those of North Vietnam. In
addition, Bundy interpreted the civil war in Vietnam as a test
of American resolve. He felt that the United States needed to
show the world that Communist aggression would not be
allowed to go unpunished. These feelings, which were shared
by many other Kennedy administration “hawks” (supporters
of American military involvement in Vietnam), shaped U.S.
military policy toward Vietnam for the next several years.
In November 1963 Kennedy was assassinated, and Vice
President Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as president. But
Johnson retained Bundy and most other Kennedy officials for
his own administration. During his first year as Johnson’s
national security advisor, Bundy continued to advocate an
expansion of the U.S. military role in Vietnam. He and other
administration hawks remained certain that as America
unleashed more and more of its military power on the Viet
Cong and their allies in the North, the Communists would
give up the fight.
In 1965, however, Bundy’s confidence in an eventual
American victory began to crumble. In February of that year he
made a personal tour of Vietnam that deeply troubled him.
Despite massive amounts of American military and economic
aid, the nation seemed to him to be tottering on the brink of a
Communist takeover. The “energy and persistence [of the Viet
Cong] are astonishing,” he warned Johnson in a secret cable
message. Bundy also stated that during his travels, he detected
a “widespread belief that we [the United States] do not have the
will and force and patience and determination to take the nec-
essary action and stay the course.” He concluded his message
by urging the president to approve “continuous” bombing
attacks on North Vietnam and other new military measures.
Over the next several months, the United States dra-
matically escalated its involvement in the Vietnam War. John-
McGeorge Bundy 27
son approved a major bombing campaign against North Viet-
nam called Operation Rolling Thunder. He also sent U.S. com-
bat troops to fight in the conflict. But when these actions
failed to stop the Communist threat, Bundy became con-
vinced that an American victory in Vietnam was years away.
In early 1966 Bundy’s doubts about the war led him to
submit his resignation and leave the government. But he never
publicly expressed his fears that American involvement in
Vietnam was a terrible mistake. Instead, he continued to
advise Johnson on an informal basis after assuming the presi-
dency of the Ford Foundation, an organization that supports a
wide range of educational, antipoverty, and nation-building
programs around the world.
After Bundy’s departure, the war continued to drag on
with no end in sight. Public opposition exploded across the
country, and Johnson’s presidency came under intense criti-
cism for its actions in Vietnam. This criticism became even
stronger in early 1968, after North Vietnam launched the Tet
Offensive—a massive attack against American and South Viet-
namese positions throughout South Vietnam.
In March 1968 Johnson asked Bundy and other close
advisors—known collectively as the “Wise Men”—to meet with
him about the war. Johnson hoped that the men could help him
devise a strategy to win the war. But to Johnson’s great dismay,
Bundy and the others urged him to withdraw American troops
from Vietnam and begin peace negotiations with the Commu-
nists. “I am much affected by my belief that the sentiment in the
country on the war has shifted very heavily since the Tet offen-
sive,” Bundy told Johnson. “This is not because our people are
quitters . . . . What has happened is that a great many people—
even very determined and loyal people—have begun to think
that Vietnam really is a bottomless pit.” A short time later, John-
son announced a halt to the Rolling Thunder bombing cam-
paign and called on North Vietnam to begin peace talks.
Sources
Berman, Larry. Lyndon Johnson’s War. New York: W. W. Norton, 1989.
Bird, Kai. The Color of Truth: McGeorge Bundy and William Bundy, Brothers
in Arms: A Biography. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998.
Halberstam, David. The Best and the Brightest. New York: Random House,
1972.
Herring, George C. LBJ and Vietnam: A Different Kind of War. Austin: Uni-
versity of Texas Press, 1994.
McGeorge Bundy 29
William Calley
Born in 1943
“[Calley] wanted to do
the best possible W illiam Calley is one of the Vietnam War’s most infa-
mous figures. In 1968 he led American troops in an
attack that led to the slaughter of hundreds of defenseless
job . . . . He was going
Vietnamese peasants in My Lai, a small farming village. In
to fight Communism.
many people’s minds, this massacre stands as the single most
He believed in the
horrible event of the entire war.
war. Absolutely.”
30
ernment sent generous military and financial aid packages to
the young country of South Vietnam to help it establish a
strong economy and a democratic government. But by the
early 1960s America had become gravely concerned that South
Vietnam was on the verge of falling to the Communist nation
of North Vietnam and its Viet Cong allies in the South. U.S.
analysts claimed that if the South were overrun by the Com-
munists, other nations would become more vulnerable to a
Communist takeover. This fear convinced U.S. President Lyn-
don Johnson (see entry) to send American combat troops to
fight on the side of South Vietnam in 1965.
In 1966 Calley voluntarily left civilian life to enlist in
the U.S. Army. He supported American intervention in Viet-
nam and hoped to make a career for himself in the military.
After undergoing basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia, he
successfully completed officer school. “When he became a lieu-
tenant, it was the most important thing in the world to him,”
recalled one of Calley’s friends in a 1989 People Weekly article.
“He wanted to do the best possible job . . . . He was going to
fight Communism. He believed in the war. Absolutely.”
William Calley 31
blend in with Vietnamese civilians to cancel out this advan-
tage. As a result, the war turned into a stalemate, with neither
side able to gain a meaningful advantage.
As the war continued and American frustration
increased, the U.S. military adopted increasingly ruthless
measures to defeat the Communists. For example, they
approved the use of so-called “free-fire zones” in Vietnam.
Areas received this designation when military authorities
decided that they were probably inhabited only by enemy sol-
diers. American soldiers were free to attack any Vietnamese
they saw in a free-fire zone. But in many cases, areas were given
“free-fire zone” status despite the continued presence of civil-
ians. As a result, Vietnamese civilians who lived in or passed
through free-fire zones came under attack from U.S. forces.
Another controversial element of the U.S. war effort
was its reliance on “body counts.” The U.S. military kept track
of enemy casualties (killed and wounded) as a way of gauging
its progress in the conflict. But as opposition to the war
increased in America, U.S. troops were encouraged to take the
view that all dead Vietnamese—even women and children—
should be counted as Viet Cong guerrillas. Officials hoped that
the inflated body count statistics would reassure both Con-
gress and the American public that it was marching to victory
in Vietnam. But the use of “body count” statistics came under
harsh criticism. Critics argued that the military’s decision to
use such information as a measurement of progress proved
that the war was immoral. Many observers also claimed that
the emphasis on body counts eroded the morale and spirit of
American troops and actually encouraged them to take the
lives of innocent civilians.
William Calley 33
Hugh C. Thompson: A Hero in My Lai
One of the few American soldiers only help the villagers would get was a
who behaved honorably during the My Lai hand grenade,” Thompson realized that
massacre was helicopter pilot Hugh C. Calley and his platoon intended to wipe
Thompson. He and his two-man crew out the entire village.
(Lawrence Colburn and Glenn Andreotta)
Thompson knew that he could not
spotted dozens of dead bodies while flying
over the hamlet during a reconnaissance stop the slaughter by himself. But he
(information gathering) mission. They immediately flew his helicopter between a
quickly radioed for help, then watched in group of terrified villagers and a line of
disbelief as an American soldier executed a advancing soldiers. “These people [the
young Vietnamese girl. Horrified by what villagers] were looking at me for help, and
he witnessed, Thompson quickly landed there was no way I could turn my back on
his helicopter in the village. Once he them,” Thompson recalled in the National
landed, the pilot urged some of Calley’s Catholic Reporter (March 20, 1998). The pilot
troops to help him rescue the remaining then ordered his crew to aim their M-60
villagers. But when he was told that “the machine gun at the murderous U.S. troops.
William Calley 35
expected,” Ridenhour said in People. “This was not the aberra-
tion [abnormal behavior] of one wild officer. My Lai was an act
of policy. Calley had his guilt, but he was just one small actor
in a very large play, and he did not write the script.”
Calley, William L., as told to John Sack. Lieutenant Calley: His Own Story.
New York: Viking Press, 1971.
Knoll, Erwin, and Judith Nies McFadden. War Crimes and the American
Conscience. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970.
MacPherson, Myra. Long Time Passing: Vietnam and the Haunted Genera-
tion. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1984.
Sack, John. Body Count: Lt. Calley’s Story as Told to John Sack. London:
Hutchinson, 1971.
William Calley 37
Ramsey Clark
Born December 18, 1927
Dallas, Texas
38
Attorney General (from 1945 to 1949) and a U.S. Supreme
Court justice (from 1949 to 1967). Ramsey Clark’s career even-
tually carried him into the world of American law and politics
as well. Raised in Texas, he joined the U.S. Marines in 1945.
After leaving the military one year later, he went on to college.
In 1949 he graduated from the University of Texas with a bach-
elor’s degree. That same year, he married Georgia Welch, with
whom he eventually had two children. He then continued his
education, securing both a master’s degree and a law degree
from the University of Chicago.
Clark worked from 1951 to 1961 in a Dallas law firm.
In 1961 he accepted a post as an assistant attorney general
with the U.S. Justice Department. Four years later, he was pro-
moted to deputy assistant attorney general. And in 1967 Pres-
ident Lyndon Johnson—a longtime friend of the Clark fam-
ily—selected him to succeed Nicholas Katzenbach as U.S.
Attorney General. At that time, his father, Tom Clark, retired
from the Supreme Court because his son, as the Johnson
administration’s leading law officer, would be arguing many
cases in front of the Supreme Court. Tom Clark knew that if he
remained on the Supreme Court, he would be faced with a seri-
ous “conflict of interest”— a circumstance in which his public
obligation to make impartial (fair) rulings might clash with his
personal interest in seeing his son succeed.
Ramsey Clark 39
a way of registering its anger with John-
son’s Vietnam policies. These protests
angered and embarrassed the president.
As a result, Johnson repeatedly urged
Clark to use his law enforcement pow-
ers to halt the gatherings. But the attor-
ney general himself harbored signifi-
cant doubts about the wisdom of
American involvement in Vietnam. In
addition, he argued that peaceful
protests against the government were
protected by the U.S. Constitution. For
these reasons, Clark resisted Johnson’s
calls to break up the demonstrations.
Instead, he concentrated his energies
on other law enforcement issues. For
example, he waged an effective cam-
paign against organized crime activity
in the United States.
As the months passed, Clark’s
relationship with the president contin-
ued to deteriorate. In fact, Johnson pur-
sued alternative strategies to combat the
antiwar movement that did not involve
Dr. Benjamin Spock speaks Clark. For example, he made special arrangements with Federal
out at a “Peace in Vietnam”
Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director J. Edgar Hoover—who was
meeting in 1968.
technically under Clark’s authority—to use wiretapping and
Reproduced by permission of
other spying techniques against antiwar leaders. But Clark
AP/Wide World Photos.
fought against these surveillance activities as well, arguing that
they violated the constitutional rights of the protestors. Clark’s
steady defense of constitutional principles during this period
has since received high praise from scholars and historians.
In 1968 Clark did supervise criminal prosecutions of a
number of antiwar leaders. These activists, including William
Sloan Coffin and Dr. Benjamin Spock, were charged with con-
spiring to encourage draft evasion among young American
men eligible for military service. The defendants were eventu-
ally found guilty of the conspiracy charges, but their passion-
ate testimony against the war drew a great deal of attention. In
addition, the guilty verdicts were never enforced. Instead,
Clark’s Justice Department dropped all charges against the
defendants after their convictions were overturned on appeal.
Ramsey Clark 41
Controversial career as political activist
Since the late 1970s Clark has worked as a lawyer and
political activist, building a reputation as a harsh and persist-
ent critic of U.S. government policies. He claims that the
United States routinely bullies and mistreats poor, minority,
and politically powerless peoples, both within its own borders
and around the world. In fact, he has repeatedly charged that
the “greatest human rights violator in the world is my own
government.” But Clark has also criticized the activities of
other governments over the years. For example, in the 1980s
and 1990s he represented Native American groups in both
Canada and Mexico when they became involved in disputes
with the governments of those two nations.
Clark’s visibility as a political activist reached its height
during the early 1990s. At that time he denounced the Persian
Gulf War, in which U.S.-led forces drove Iraq out of Kuwait
after Iraq had invaded its oil-rich neighbor. Clark expressed
outrage over America’s military strikes against Iraq, charging
that U.S. air raids killed many Iraqi civilians. Since the war
ended, Clark has remained a strong critic of U.S.-sponsored
economic sanctions against Iraq. He claims that these sanc-
tions, which have remained in place for nearly a decade, are
hurting millions of innocent men, women, and children.
Clark explained his feelings about the situation in Iraq in
1998, when he published Challenge to Genocide: Let Iraq Live.
Some officials, scholars, and peace activists express
support for Clark’s views on U.S. policies toward Iraq and other
countries. But other observers differ strongly with him on
these issues. For example, many people believe that U.S. mili-
tary intervention in the Persian Gulf was necessary to protect
political stability and oil supplies throughout the Middle East.
In addition, critics note that while Clark has repeatedly criti-
cized the United States for committing human rights viola-
tions, he has remained silent about the well-documented
human rights abuses committed by Iraqi President Saddam
Hussein’s regime.
Clark has also been heavily criticized for other posi-
tions that he has taken during the past two decades. During
the 1980s, for example, Clark became closely linked to Lyndon
LaRouche, the anti-Semitic (anti-Jewish) leader of an extreme
right-wing political movement. Around the same time, he
Ramsey Clark 43
Sources
Clark, Ramsey. The Fire This Time: U.S. War Crimes in the Gulf. New York:
Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1992.
Elliff, John T. Crime, Dissent, and the Attorney General: The Justice Depart-
ment in the 1960s. 1971.
Judis, John B. “The Strange Case of Ramsey Clark.” New Republic, April 22,
1991.
Margolick, David. “The Long and Lonely Journey of Ramsey Clark.” New
York Times, June 14, 1991.
Williams, Ian. “Ramsey Clark, the War Criminal’s Best Friend.” Salon
(Internet magazine), June 21, 1999. [Online] Available
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/1999/06/21/clark/index.html
(accessed August 1, 2000).
Zaroulis, Nancy, and Gerald Sullivan. Who Spoke Up? American Protest against
the War in Vietnam, 1963–1975. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1984.
45
(Catholic) school before earning his high school diploma from
De La Salle Institute in 1918.
Daley worked as a clerk and a Democratic Party official
around the neighborhood for the next several years. But he
also continued his studies, eventually earning a law degree
from Chicago’s De Paul University. In 1933 he passed law
exams that enabled him to work as an attorney in Illinois, and
three years later he formed a law firm with William J. Lynch
and Peter Fazio. As time passed, however, Daley turned many
of his business duties over to his partners so that he could
devote his time and energy to city politics.
Daley’s importance as a Democratic Party official
increased steadily during the late 1930s and 1940s, when he
took a series of positions of increasing prestige within the city
and state governments. During that same period, he began to
raise a family with Eleanor Guilfoyle, whom he married on
June 23, 1936. They eventually had seven children.
By 1948 Daley had risen to the post of revenue direc-
tor for the state of Illinois, and two years later he took over as
Cook County clerk. These important administrative positions
provided Daley with important experience in the complex
political and financial worlds that governed Chicago and the
rest of Cook County. In 1953 Daley was elected to the chair-
manship of the Cook County Democratic Party Central Com-
mittee. This victory made Daley even more powerful in
Chicago, for it gave him control over the Democratic political
machine that directed affairs throughout the city.
Mayor of Chicago
In 1955 Daley completed his rise to the top of
Chicago’s political world by winning the city’s mayoral elec-
tion. In addition, he continued to serve as the chairman of the
Cook County Central Committee even after taking the may-
oral reins. Daley exercised great power and influence over the
city in these dual roles.
As mayor, Daley forged effective relationships with
industry leaders, labor unions, and federal agencies. As these
alliances took shape, the mayor oversaw new business growth
and massive construction projects throughout the city. These
projects included the world’s largest airport and tallest office
Richard J. Daley 47
convention because he knew that the event would provide a
boost for Chicago’s businesses, emphasize his prominent posi-
tion in the Democratic Party, and shine a spotlight on the city
he led. But as the August convention date approached, Amer-
ica’s growing divisions over the Vietnam War threatened to
cast a shadow over the event.
The Vietnam War was a conflict that pitted the U.S.-
supported nation of South Vietnam against the Communist
nation of North Vietnam and its Viet Cong allies in the South.
The Viet Cong were guerrilla fighters who wanted to over-
throw the South Vietnamese government and unite the two
countries under one Communist government. In the late
1950s and early 1960s the United States sent money, weapons,
and advisors to South Vietnam to help it fend off the Viet
Cong. In 1965 the United States began using thousands of
American combat troops and extensive air bombing missions
to crush the Communists. But deepening U.S. involvement in
the war failed to defeat the Viet Cong or the North Viet-
namese. Instead, the war settled into a bloody stalemate that
claimed the lives of thousands of young American troops. As
disillusionment over the war increased, the American public
became bitterly divided over how to proceed in Vietnam.
For his part, Daley reportedly harbored private doubts
about American involvement in the conflict. But he publicly
supported the Vietnam policies of President Lyndon B. John-
son (see entry), a fellow Democrat and important political ally.
The mayor also criticized the antiwar movement, which he
viewed as a group of disrespectful troublemakers. But despite
Daley’s public expressions of support for the war, none of his
four draft-age and eligible sons served on active military duty
during the conflict. Instead, they all joined military reserve
units to avoid going to Vietnam. One son even used his father’s
political connections to leapfrog over a waiting list of several
thousand applicants and gain special admittance into the
reserve.
In the weeks prior to the Chicago convention, Daley
expressed great concern that antiwar demonstrators might try
to interfere with the convention proceedings. He vowed that he
would not tolerate any nonsense on the streets of Chicago dur-
ing the convention. Antiwar activists took this warning seri-
ously. After all, Daley had reacted strongly to disturbances in
Richard J. Daley 49
onlookers alike. “By [the second day of the convention] it was
irrelevant to the police whether the person they clubbed was
young or old, male or female, a protestor or a hapless neighbor-
hood resident who happened to be on his way home from
work,” wrote Mike Royko in Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago.
“Clergymen trying to calm the situation were beaten . . . . Scores
of people were beaten badly enough to require hospital treat-
ment, including twenty newsmen. After [the first day’s] jolting
experience, reporters had mistakenly taken to wearing even big-
ger press credentials, which only served to attract the police like
hungry sharks . . . .To a nation and a world, [Daley’s] Chicago
was beginning to look like a madhouse, and the famous TV
commentators were being blunt about it. By [the last day of the
convention], there was more interest in Daley and his police-
men than in the expected nomination of [Hubert] Humphrey,”
the Democrats’ candidate for the U.S. presidency.
Many Democratic officials who gathered for the con-
vention were outraged by the behavior of the Chicago police.
They angrily demanded a halt to the police violence, which
eventually forced an estimated 1,000 people to seek medical
assistance. But Daley and his staff dismissed their complaints
and furiously defended the performance of the Chicago police.
As the convention continued, public shouting matches
erupted between the two camps. In the meantime, the con-
vention floor also became the setting for a bitter debate over
the party’s Vietnam War policies. The delegates eventually
voted to support a continuation of Johnson’s war policies. But
the chaotic debate, which was televised to a national audience,
revealed that the party was deeply divided over the issue.
By the time the convention finally ended, nearly
everyone agreed that the event had been a nightmarish disas-
ter for both Humphrey and the Democratic Party. Televised
images of rampaging police and furious party officials lingered
long after the convention closed. The events in Chicago con-
vinced many voters that the Democratic Party was too trou-
bled and confused to lead the U.S. to victory in Vietnam or
heal American communities that had become divided over the
war, civil rights, and other issues. In fact, many scholars
believe that the ugliness of the Chicago convention was an
important factor in Humphrey’s loss to Republican nominee
Richard M. Nixon in the November 1968 presidential election.
Sources
Farber, David. Chicago ‘68. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.
Kahn, Melvin. The Winning Ticket: Daley, the Chicago Machine, and Illinois
Politics. New York: Praeger, 1984.
Kennedy, Eugene. Himself: The Life and Times of Mayor Richard J. Daley.
New York: Viking, 1978.
Royko, Mike. Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago. New York: New American
Library, 1970.
Richard J. Daley 51
David Dellinger
Born August 22, 1915
Wakefield, Massachusetts
52
that arrived in the United States before the American Revolu-
tion. As a boy, Dellinger spent most of his time playing sports
and chasing girls. But he also made friends with children from
poor, ethnic neighborhoods and began to question class and
racial discrimination.
Upon graduating from high school, Dellinger went
along with his family’s expectations and enrolled at Yale Uni-
versity. While there, he supported a group of janitors and other
university employees who went on strike in an effort to obtain
higher wages. After earning a bachelor’s degree in economics
in 1936, Dellinger received a scholarship to attend Oxford Uni-
versity in England for a year. He then studied religion at Yale
Divinity School and Union Theological Seminary. When he
graduated in 1940, he became associate minister at a church in
Newark, New Jersey. A short time later, he married Elizabeth
Peterson, with whom he eventually had five children.
During his religious training, Dellinger gave a great deal
of thought to his personal values and his direction in life. He
decided to dedicate himself to pacifism—actively opposing war
and working for peace. By the time Dellinger completed his
education, nations around the world were being drawn into
World War II (1939–45). In this conflict the United States, Great
Britain, and the Soviet Union fought to prevent Germany and
its allies from taking control of Europe. Many Americans felt
that fighting the Germans was a worthy cause, and large num-
bers of young men volunteered to serve their country.
But Dellinger believed that war was morally wrong. “I
couldn’t believe that armed struggle, with the bloodshed and
hatred it would generate, was the way to build a better world,”
he wrote in his autobiography, From Yale to Jail. As a minister,
Dellinger could have avoided military service by filing for a
deferment (an official delay in military induction). But he
refused to file a deferment request. Instead, Dellinger’s pacifist
philosophy led him to believe that he should resist the mili-
tary draft as a way of voicing his opposition to the war.
In 1940 Dellinger was sentenced to a year in prison for
illegally avoiding the draft. In 1943 he received another three
years in prison for organizing a demonstration against large-
scale bombing attacks on German cities. During his time in
prison, Dellinger continued to fight against what he viewed as
unjust policies. For example, he was put in solitary confine-
David Dellinger 53
ment for refusing to sit in the white section of the racially seg-
regated prison dining hall.
Dellinger soon discovered that he found standing up
for his beliefs to be very satisfying. “I had gone from freedom
to jail, from regular jail to solitary confinement, from solitary
confinement to a damp, black dungeon they called punitive
isolation—and I never felt so free before,” he wrote in From
Yale to Jail. “For the first time in my life I had nothing. And for
the first time in my life I had everything.”
David Dellinger 55
cratic Party would formally choose its candidate for the presi-
dency. They knew that this event would attract a great deal of
attention from political leaders and the media, so it would be
an ideal opportunity to get their message across.
When the Democrats met in the summer of 1968, thou-
sands of protesters showed up outside the convention hall.
Dellinger repeatedly asked the members of the various antiwar
groups not to resort to violence. But as the protests went on, some
of the demonstrators began throwing rocks and bottles. Chicago
Mayor Richard J. Daley (see entry) sent his police force to control
the protestors, and the situation quickly turned into a riot. Scenes
of fights between antiwar activists and police officers dominated
television newscasts and overshadowed the convention. As the
convention continued, many reporters, demonstrators, and other
observers charged that the police used excessive force against the
protestors. In the end, more than one thousand protestors and
two hundred police officers were injured in the fighting.
A year later, Dellinger and seven other organizers of the
demonstrations—known in the media as the Chicago Eight—
were put on trial for conspiracy to cause a riot. But the antiwar
activists refused to cooperate with the justice system. Instead,
they used their appearance in court as an opportunity to pres-
ent their political views. The six-month trial turned into a
media circus. Dellinger and the other activists disrupted the
proceedings with frequent outbursts. They even draped a Viet
Cong flag over the table where they sat.
At the end of the trial, Dellinger was found guilty of
causing a riot and contempt of court. Facing another prison
sentence, he made a defiant final statement before the court: “I
think I shall sleep better and happier with a greater sense of ful-
fillment in whatever jails I am in for however many years than
if I had compromised, if I had pretended the problems were less
real than they are, or if I had sat here passively in the court-
house while justice was being throttled and the truth was being
denied.” A year later, a higher court overturned Dellinger’s con-
viction following an appeal.
Sources
Day, Samuel H., Jr. Review of From Yale to Jail. The Progressive, September
1993.
Dellinger, David. From Yale to Jail: The Life Story of a Moral Dissenter. New
York: Pantheon, 1993.
Farber, David, ed. The Sixties: From Memory to History. Chapel Hill, NC:
University of North Carolina Press, 1994.
David Dellinger 57
Jeremiah Denton
Born July 15, 1924
Mobile, Alabama
58
In 1947 Denton joined the U.S. Navy. As the years
passed, he climbed steadily up through the ranks and became
known as a top military pilot. He also continued his education
during this time, taking classes at the Armed Forces Staff Col-
lege (1958–59), the Naval War College (1963), and George
Washington University, where he secured a master’s degree in
1964. A few months later, Denton was transferred to Southeast
Asia, where U.S. military forces were fighting to prevent a
Communist takeover in South Vietnam.
South Vietnam had been created only a few years ear-
lier, when Vietnamese forces ended decades of French colonial
rule. The 1954 Geneva peace agreement that ended the
French-Vietnamese conflict created two countries within Viet-
nam. Communist forces who had led Vietnam to victory over
France were given leadership of North Vietnam, while South
Vietnam came under the control of a U.S.-supported govern-
ment that was supposed to establish a democracy.
The Geneva agreement provided for nationwide free
elections to be held in 1956 so that the two sections of Viet-
nam could be united under one government. But U.S. and
South Vietnamese officials refused to hold the elections
because they feared that the results would give the Commu-
nists control over the entire country. North Vietnam and its
allies in the South—commonly known as the Viet Cong—
responded by launching a guerrilla war against the South.
When these attacks pushed South Vietnam to the brink of col-
lapse in the mid-1960s, the United States escalated its involve-
ment in the conflict. Before long, America had assumed pri-
mary responsibility for both the ground war in the South and
the air war against the North.
Jeremiah Denton 59
River. Once he landed, however, he was quickly captured by
the North Vietnamese and dragged to one of their prisons.
Denton spent the next seven years and eight months
as a prisoner of war in a number of North Vietnam’s most
notorious prison camps, including the “Hanoi Hilton,” the
“Zoo,” and “Alcatraz.” During the first four years of his captiv-
ity, he endured torture on a regular basis. On one occasion, he
was tortured continuously for ten solid days and nights when
he refused to give the guards some information they wanted.
In addition, Denton spent month after month alone in a cold
and dark coffin-sized cell, where he struggled with tremendous
feelings of isolation, fear, and despair.
In Jeremiah Denton’s memoir stood on it, and he and the other guards
When Hell Was in Session, he recalled many took turns jumping up and down and
rolling it across my legs. Then they lifted
episodes of torture that he endured at the my arms behind my back by the cuffs,
hands of North Vietnamese prison guards. raising the top part of my body off the floor
Following is an excerpt from the book that and dragging me around and around. This
went on for hours . . . . I began crying
details the sort of horrendous treatment he
hysterically . . . . My only thought was the
often experienced in the years following desire to be free of pain . . . . [Later, a
his capture: guard nicknamed Smiley] pulled me to my
feet and hit me several times . . . . He
[Two guards] began roping one arm indicated that I must rise whenever he
from shoulder to elbow. With each loop, entered. Bound as I was, that was no easy
one guard would put his foot on my arm matter. The next time Smiley entered, I
and pull, another guard joining him in the began pushing myself against the wall
effort to draw the rope as tightly as their until I was on my feet. He beat me anyway,
combined strengths would permit . . . . The slapping me hard across the face and
first pains were from the terrible pinching hitting me in the stomach . . . . On the
of flesh. After about ten minutes, an seventh day, I decided to give them
agonizing pain began to flow through the something [personal information about
arms and shoulders as my heart struggled himself]. I cried for help. Dried blood
to pump blood through the strangled veins streaked my chest. Feces clung to the
. . . . [One of the guards then laid a nine- bottom of my pajamas, which were
foot-long iron bar] across my shins. He completely stained with urine.
Jeremiah Denton 61
treatment of American POWs became an important issue in
press coverage of the war.
Conditions for Denton and many other American
POWs finally improved in 1969, when North Vietnamese lead-
ers recognized that their treatment of the captured pilots was
hurting their efforts to garner international support for their
cause. From that point on, torture became much less common-
place, and food, shelter, and medical care all improved. Still,
Denton and the others remained imprisoned in generally poor
conditions, thousands of miles away from their loved ones.
Sources
Denton, Jeremiah A., Jr., with Edwin H. Broadt. When Hell Was in Session.
Clover, South Carolina: Commission Press, 1976.
Howes, Craig. Voices of the Vietnam POWs: Witnesses to Their Fight. Oxford
University Press, paperback, 1998.
“POW to U.S. Senator.” U.S. News and World Report, November 24, 1980.
Jeremiah Denton 63
Daniel Ellsberg
Born April 7, 1931
Chicago, Illinois
64
In 1954 Ellsberg volunteered for military service in the
U.S. Marine Corps. He spent the next two years in the Marines,
where he became an expert marksman and a highly regarded
officer. This experience, which included an extended tour of
duty in the Middle East, heightened his interest in military
strategy and international politics. After leaving the service, he
went back to Harvard to secure a doctoral degree in economics.
In 1959 Ellsberg accepted a job offer from the Rand
Corporation, a federally funded organization that studied
defense and national security issues for the U.S. government.
He spent the next few years working as a military affairs con-
sultant to the White House, conducting research on U.S. mili-
tary strategy around the world. Much of his time was spent
studying the fierce competition that had developed during the
1950s between the United States and the Soviet Union. In this
rivalry, known as the Cold War, both nations increased their
military strength and tried to expand their political influence
around the world.
A key battleground
In the early 1960s Vietnam became a major focus of
Ellsberg’s attention. Once a colony of France, Vietnam had
won its freedom in 1954 after an eight-year war with the
French. But the country had been divided into two sections by
the 1954 Geneva peace agreement. North Vietnam was headed
by a Communist government under revolutionary leader Ho
Chi Minh (see entry). South Vietnam, meanwhile, was led by
a U.S.-supported government under President Ngo Dinh Diem
(see entry).
The Geneva agreement provided for nationwide free
elections to be held in 1956 so that the two parts of Vietnam
could be united under one government. But U.S. and South
Vietnamese officials refused to hold the elections because they
believed that the results would give the Communists control
over the entire country. American strategists thought if that
happened, all of Southeast Asia might fall to communism, a
development that would dramatically increase the strength of
the Soviet Union.
When the South refused to hold elections, North Viet-
nam and its Viet Cong (Communist guerrillas) allies in the
Daniel Ellsberg 65
South took up arms against Diem’s government. The United
States responded by sending money, weapons, and advisors to
aid in South Vietnam’s defense. When this assistance failed to
end the Communist aggression, America sent combat troops
to Vietnam. But deepening U.S. involvement in the war failed
to defeat the Communists. Instead, the war settled into a
bloody stalemate by the late 1960s.
Daniel Ellsberg 67
A Daring Ride with John Paul Vann
Daniel Ellsberg became very close political reporter who had asked to go
friends with U.S. military commander John along.] After the turn at Bien Hoa just
north of Saigon, the road became lonely.
Paul Vann during the Vietnam War. They The embassy field political reporter noticed
shared an intense dedication to their jobs the rows of fence stakes with the bits of
and a deep respect for each other’s chopped barbed wire dangling from them.
He looked at the burned militia outposts
abilities and talents. Their friendship
. . . .”John, I’m really not supposed to be
became strained, however, after Ellsberg doing this,” he said. “Political reporters are
secretly delivered the Pentagon Papers to not supposed to be out on the roads. We
New York Times reporter Neil Sheehan (see have orders not to get captured. I think I’d
better try to catch a helicopter.”
entry) in 1971.
[Vann and Ellsberg drop the embassy
In the following passage from
reporter off at a South Vietnamese military
Sheehan’s book A Bright Shining Lie, the post, but the young man reconsiders and
author relates a daring Jeep ride that decides to continue on with them.] A short
Ellsberg and Vann once took through a way out of Xuan Loc the road began to
pass through some of the densest rain
dangerous area of Vietnam:
forest Ellsberg was ever to see in Vietnam.
Ellsberg discovered what a true He knew precisely what to do. Vann had
companion spirit he had found one weekend trained him during their previous
in December 1965, during a drive with Vann expeditions. He glanced down at his side to
to two of the more remote province capitals in be sure a grenade was handy and lifted the
the III Corps region . . . .Their first destination, carbine [rifle] he had been cradling in his
Xuan Loc, deep in the rubber-plantation lap so that he could immediately open fire
country, was about sixty road miles northeast out the window. Vann started driving with
of Saigon. They would then have another one hand. With the other he raised the M-
seventy-five to eighty road miles farther to go 16 automatic [rifle] he now customarily
before they reached their final goal, the carried to be ready to shoot out his side.
capital of Binh Tuy Province, a forlorn little Ellsberg wondered how they were going to
place near the coast called Ham Tan . . . . shoot if they did encounter guerrillas. The
years of neglect from the war had allowed
[Vann and Ellsberg set out in the the rain forest to encroach [grow] until the
company of a young American embassy road was only wide enough for one vehicle
the war in vain hopes that he might get a better outcome than
he could achieve if he’d just negotiated his way out and took
what he could get and accepted, essentially, a defeat,” Ellsberg
claimed during his 1998 appearance at the Institute of Inter-
national Studies.
Daniel Ellsberg 69
me after she read it with tears in her eyes,” Ellsberg recalled in
The Ten Thousand Day War. “She characterized it as [being writ-
ten in] the language of torturers, and that hit me very hard.”
Torn by guilt about his earlier role in Vietnam policy
making, Ellsberg decided that he needed to inform the Ameri-
can people about the contents of the Pentagon Papers. He made
several copies of the study and tried to deliver them to impor-
tant members of Congress, even though he believed that he
would probably be thrown in prison for his actions. But the
lawmakers did not take any immediate action, and the docu-
ments remained a secret from the American public.
By 1970 Ellsberg had resigned from Rand and had
become a vocal opponent of the war in Vietnam. He partici-
pated in antiwar rallies, wrote antiwar articles and letters, and
testified at trials on behalf of draft resisters. In the meantime,
President Nixon ordered two major military raids into Cam-
bodia and Laos—Vietnam’s neighbors to the west—to strike
against Communist forces.
The invasions into Cambodia and Laos convinced Ells-
berg that he needed to take more drastic steps to influence
American policy in Vietnam. “I had the feeling that America
was eating its young, was destroying some of its most dedi-
cated, most patriotic, most concerned citizens—young Ameri-
cans subject to the draft—and it was up to older people like me
who had been participants to not let that burden fall entirely
on their children,” he explained in The Ten Thousand Day War.
Daniel Ellsberg 71
ended, he turned his attention to other political issues that
concerned him. In the 1980s, for example, he emerged as a
leading critic of nuclear weapons. He also spoke out against
American foreign policy in Central America and South Africa.
Ellsberg’s record of political activism remained strong in the
1990s as well. In December 1998 he signed a contract to write
an autobiography for Viking Press, after a spirited bidding war
among several publishers.
Sources
Anderson, David L., ed. Shadow on the White House: Presidents and the Viet-
nam War, 1945–1975. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1993.
Ellsberg, Daniel. Papers on the War. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972.
Herring, George. The Secret Diplomacy of the Vietnam War: The Negotiating
Volumes of the Pentagon Papers. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983.
Maclear, Michael. The Ten Thousand Day War: Vietnam, 1945–1975. New
York: Avon, 1981.
“The Rolling Stone Interview: Dan Ellsberg.” Rolling Stone, September 1973.
Schrag, Peter. Test of Loyalty: Daniel Ellsberg and the Rituals of Secret Gov-
ernment. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974.
Sheehan, Neil. A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam.
New York: Random House, 1988.
Zaroulis, Nancy, and Gerald Sullivan. Who Spoke Up? American Protest
against the War in Vietnam, 1963–1975. Garden City, NY: Doubleday,
1984.
73
Vietnam might trigger a wave of Communist aggression around
the world and threaten the security of the United States.
As a result, the United States sent money, weapons,
and military advisors in the late 1950s and early 1960s to help
South Vietnam defend itself against North Vietnam and the
Viet Cong. Then in 1965 President Lyndon Johnson (see entry)
began sending American combat troops into Vietnam. But
steady increases in U.S. involvement over the next few years
failed to defeat the Communists. Instead, the war dragged on
inconclusively, and divisions over the conflict erupted in com-
munities all across America.
Evans was sent to Vietnam in 1968 to serve a one-year
nursing tour. For most of her year in the war-torn nation, she
worked as a head nurse at a medical unit in Pleiku, a small vil-
lage near the Cambodian border. This was a very violent and
dangerous region of the country, so Evans and the nurses
under her supervision treated large numbers of casualties (per-
sons who are killed or severely wounded) every week. Each
member of the nursing staff in Pleiku routinely worked four-
teen- to sixteen-hour days trying to save the horribly wounded
soldiers and Vietnamese civilians who poured into the facility.
On some occasions, they had to treat young men whose limbs
had been blasted off, even as enemy rockets crashed down
around the medical compound.
“I became one of thousands of Army nurses doing qui-
etly what all military and civilian nurses do: caring for the
wounded and ill,” Evans recalled in a May 24, 1998, speech to
Vietnam veterans in Washington, D.C. “Those of us who went
to Vietnam practiced a lifetime of nursing in one year—our
tour of duty there. We were the young, caring for the young.
The average age of the wounded soldier in Vietnam was 19.4
years. The average age of the nurse was 23. We quickly learned
that the primary reason we were in Vietnam was to get each
other home.”
Evans performed at a high level in Pleiku, caring for
wounded soldiers and attending to her many responsibilities
as a nursing supervisor. But as the months passed by, the con-
stant exposure to mutilated bodies and dying soldiers took a
heavy emotional toll on her. “I couldn’t stand it that we were
patching them up and sending them back to the slaughter,”
Evans recalled in People Weekly. “I shut down [emotionally].”
Sources
Claflin, Terrie. “Monumental Achievement: Twenty Years after Vietnam,
Invisible Vets Get Their Memorial.” Ms., November–December 1993.
Ellis, David. “They Also Served: A Former Army Nurse Wins Her Fight to
Honor the Women of the Vietnam War.” People Weekly, May 31,
1993.
Norman, Elizabeth M. Women at War: The Story of Fifty Military Nurses Who
Served in Vietnam. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1990.
79
Italy, and Japan against the United States, the Soviet Union,
Great Britain, France, and other European nations.
During the summer of 1940, Germany successfully
invaded France. The German army seized outright control over
northern France and installed a pro-German government in
the country’s southern territory. When this occurred, however,
a secret French rebel organization—known as the French
Underground—took up the fight against the German invaders.
The Underground was unable to push the Germans out of its
homeland, but it repeatedly attacked German posts and instal-
lations around the country over the next several years.
Fall joined the French Underground in 1942 at the age
of sixteen and took part in a number of operations against the
Germans. In the meantime, however, Germany used brutal
force to stamp out all resistance to its occupation. “Things got
very bad,” recalled Fall in 1966 on Celebrity’s Choice, a televi-
sion interview program. “My mother was deported as a
hostage and she never came back and my father was tortured
to death in 1943 by the Gestapo [the secret Nazi police]—we
found his body in a ditch with twelve other people, two years
later . . . .I hadn’t known my father was in the Underground.”
Fall remained a member of the French Underground for more
than two years before joining the Fourth Moroccan Mountain
Division in 1944. He fought against Germany as a member of
that army until the war came to an end a year later.
Bernard Fall 81
Fall Reports on an American Bombing Raid of a Fishing Village
eign Affairs, Military Review, the New York Times, and other pub-
lications. In addition, he wrote several critically acclaimed
books on the struggle for Vietnam. These works include Two
Viet-Nams: A Political and Military History (1963) and Viet-Nam
Witness, 1953–1966 (1966). His best-known work, however,
was Hell in a Very Small Place (1967), a gripping account of the
French defeat at Dien Bien Phu.
Fall’s reporting was praised for being both scholarly
and fiercely independent. In fact, both supporters and oppo-
nents of the war respected him for his refusal to reduce the war
to a simple drama of heroes versus villains. Instead, he offered
balanced analysis of both the positive and negative aspects of
French, American, and Vietnamese activities in Vietnam. For
example, he criticized the United States for abandoning France
when it tried to reestablish control over Vietnam. But he con-
demned many aspects of French colonialism, and he
Bernard Fall 83
Bernard Fall’s Last Report
Bernard Fall 85
occupied by a VC [Viet Cong] platoon against its will and
whose only suffering at the hands of the Communists was the
murder of a rather unpopular village chief, ‘liberation’ through
massive napalming and attendant losses of innocent inhabi-
tants (not to speak of all property, stored rice, and even farm
animals) will be a hollow joke, indeed.”
Dies in Vietnam
In late 1963 Fall was diagnosed with retroperitoneal
fibrosis, a rare incurable disease that can destroy internal
organs. He underwent a couple of major operations, including
surgery to remove a damaged kidney. Fall’s physical problems
convinced him that he did not have long to live, but he con-
tinued to pursue his journalism career.
In December 1966 Fall made his sixth trip to Vietnam.
He soon joined a U.S. Marine mission outside of Hue in north-
ern South Vietnam. On February 21, 1967, he and a Marine
sergeant accidentally tripped a land mine while out on patrol
in an area known as the “Street Without Joy” (this was where
the title of his first book came from). The land mine exploded,
killing Fall instantly. A few months after his death, his wife put
together a collection of Vietnam essays and articles that Fall
wrote during the mid-1960s. This collection was published in
1967 as Last Reflections on a War: Bernard B. Fall’s Last Com-
ments on Viet-Nam.
Sources
Fall, Bernard B. Hell in a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu. Lip-
pincott, 1967.
Fall, Bernard B. Two Viet-Nams: A Political and Military History. New York:
Praeger, 1963.
87
growing up. She became interested in politics at an early age,
and she met many international politicians during her teen
years.
FitzGerald was a top student at Foxcraft prep school in
Virginia. After graduating, she enrolled at Radcliffe College,
where she studied Middle Eastern history and journalism. She
graduated from Radcliffe in 1962 and soon settled on a career
in journalism. Before long, her work was appearing in several
major newspapers and magazines.
FitzGerald turned her attention to the Vietnam War in
the mid-1960s. This war had actually begun in the mid-1950s,
when Vietnam was divided into two countries—North Viet-
nam and South Vietnam—after France surrendered its claim
on the region. A short time later, South Vietnamese leaders
refused to hold elections intended to reunite the two Vietnams
under one government. This decision greatly angered North
Vietnam’s Communist leadership. It responded by launching a
guerrilla war against the South with the help of Communist
allies in the South known as the Viet Cong. The Communists
started this campaign with the aim of eventually reuniting the
country by force.
The United States, however, fiercely opposed the Com-
munist political philosophy. It sent military and financial aid
to South Vietnam to help the country defend itself from the
Viet Cong and their partners in the North. But when the South
continued to struggle, American political leaders decided that
they needed to increase their involvement. They committed
large numbers of American troops to the South’s defense and
launched major bombing campaigns against the North.
Within a matter of months, American forces were conducting
much of the war themselves.
Travels to Vietnam
FitzGerald went to Vietnam for the first time in Febru-
ary 1966. By this time, new U.S. forces and weaponry were
pouring into the country, and American military leaders were
conducting numerous military operations against the Viet
Cong and North Vietnam. At first, FitzGerald intended to
spend only a few weeks in Vietnam. But she changed her mind
after becoming convinced that U.S. war policies and strategies
Frances FitzGerald 89
“There’s a whole underlying air of mutual contempt. We cover
it up, of course; we don’t want to admit that.”
In 1972 FitzGerald published Fire in the Lake: The Viet-
namese and the Americans in Vietnam. The book was one of the
first works to examine the conflict from the perspective of the
Vietnamese people. It included a sympathetic portrait of the
war-weary Vietnamese, as well as a harsh condemnation of the
American presence in Vietnam. FitzGerald charged that U.S.
military policies had reduced much of the nation to ruins. She
also claimed that the South Vietnamese government was so
corrupt and incompetent that America’s mission to save the
country was doomed to fail.
Fire in the Lake quickly became one of the best-selling
books in the United States, which had become bitterly divided
over the war in the late 1960s and early 1970s. FitzGerald’s
book added to the debate over the war. In fact, it is viewed by
many historians as an influential book that increased the
American public’s opposition to the war. As Michael Mok
wrote in Publishers Weekly, FitzGerald’s book managed to “get
under the skin of this ugly war which has left so many Ameri-
cans feeling bewildered and morally bankrupt.”
Some Americans objected to the tone of FitzGerald’s
book, arguing that it was too sympathetic toward the Viet
Cong. These critics claimed that she emphasized the destruc-
tive impact of American military actions and minimized the
war crimes committed by the Viet Cong. But most reviewers
praised the work as an excellent study of American-Viet-
namese relations during the war. New York Times reviewer
Christopher Lehmann-Haupt wrote that “Miss FitzGerald’s
study . . . is more than just a superbly dramatic and informa-
tive account of current events on the other side of the globe. It
is also a depth [detailed] analysis . . . of why events [in Viet-
nam] have proceeded as they have and why the drama is prov-
ing not only a tragedy for the people of Vietnam but also for
the American people.” Historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., added
that “If Americans read only one book to understand what we
have done to the Vietnamese and to ourselves, let it be this
one.” Fire in the Lake eventually won the Pulitzer Prize, a
National Book Award, and the Bancroft Prize for historical
writing. Today, it continues to be regarded as one of the finest
books on the Vietnam War.
Sources
Elwood-Akers, Virginia. Women Correspondents in the Vietnam War,
1961–1975. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1988.
FitzGerald, Frances. Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and Americans in Viet-
nam. New York: Atlantic/Little, Brown, 1972.
Frances FitzGerald 91
Jane Fonda
Born December 21, 1937
New York, New York
92
depended on her younger brother, Peter Fonda, for emo-
tional support.
Her father’s career as an actor meant that the Fonda
family often moved back and forth between New York and Los
Angeles. Jane attended private schools on both U.S. coasts dur-
ing her childhood. In 1955 she completed her high school
education at Emma Willard Academy in Troy, New York. She
then attended Vassar College for two years. Insecure and
lonely, Fonda made few close friends and struggled with the
eating disorder bulimia during her student days. In 1957 she
convinced her father to send her to Paris to study art, but she
spent most of her time there partying instead.
After returning from Paris, Fonda studied acting at Lee
Strasberg’s Actors’ Studio in New York City. In 1959 she made
her Broadway debut in the play There Was a Little Girl. She
made her film debut the following year in Tall Story, which co-
starred Anthony Perkins. Throughout the 1960s Fonda built a
promising career as an actress. Some of her early movies
included Barefoot in the Park, Cat Ballou, The Chase, Barbarella,
and They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? She also married director
Roger Vadim and lived in France for several years. In 1971 she
won an Academy Award as best actress for her portrayal of a
prostitute in Klute.
Jane Fonda 93
entry) sent American combat troops to join the fight on the
side of South Vietnam. But increased U.S. involvement in the
war failed to defeat the Communists. Instead, the war turned
into a bloody stalemate. The American public was bitterly
divided about how to proceed in Vietnam, and antiwar
demonstrations took place across the country.
Fonda first became concerned about the Vietnam War
when she was living in France. She recalled seeing French tel-
evision coverage of the destruction that American bombing
caused in Vietnam. She was also affected by news coverage of
antiwar demonstrations in the United States, including the
1967 March on the Pentagon. “I watched women walking up
to the bayonets that were surrounding the Pentagon and they
were not afraid,” she is quoted as saying in Jane Fonda: An Inti-
mate Biography. “I’ll never forget that experience. It com-
pletely changed me. It began all my searching for what was
behind it all.”
By the early 1970s Fonda had become one of the most
visible celebrities involved in the antiwar movement. She
often appeared at antiwar rallies, and she became romantically
involved with the radical antiwar activist Tom Hayden (see
entry). In 1971 Fonda organized a show that toured coffee-
houses and theaters near American military bases. The show
included skits and songs that made fun of the government and
questioned American military involvement in Vietnam. Fonda
intended it to provide a counterpoint to the patriotic shows
put on by Bob Hope and other celebrities to entertain the
American troops.
Since she was a well-known actress, Fonda attracted a
great deal of publicity with her antiwar activities. Before long,
she ended up on President Richard Nixon’s (see entry) list of
enemies of the U.S. government. Agents for the Federal Bureau
of Investigation (FBI) tapped her telephone, broke into her
bank safe-deposit box, and harassed her friends and family. But
Fonda continued to speak out against the war and the U.S.
government’s policies.
Jane Fonda 95
these years. She married Tom Hayden in 1972, and together
they formed the Indochina Peace Campaign (IPC). Fonda also
sued the U.S. government for harassing her, claiming that the
FBI had engaged in illegal activities and violated her rights. She
eventually settled the lawsuit when the FBI admitted its
wrongdoing.
In early 1973 the United States and North Vietnam
reached an agreement to end American involvement in the
war. As part of the agreement, the Communists agreed to
return all American POWs. When the POWs returned home,
people across the country put aside their differences over the
war and gave them a heroes’ welcome. Over the next few
months, the public learned about the terrible abuse and tor-
ture the POWs had endured at the hands of the North Viet-
namese. But Fonda refused to believe the American soldiers
and continued to defend the Communists. In fact, she called
the American POWs liars and killers. These comments led to
further criticism in the media and made her even more unpop-
ular in American society.
In 1975 North Vietnam took control of South Vietnam
to win the Vietnam War. At this time, thousands of South Viet-
namese citizens who were considered threats to the new gov-
ernment were executed or sent to labor camps. But Fonda
refused to join singer Joan Baez (see entry) and other well-
known antiwar activists in urging Vietnam’s government to
end the violence. Instead, she criticized the activists and con-
tinued to defend the Communists.
Sources
Anderson, Christopher. Citizen Jane: The Turbulent Life of Jane Fonda. New
York: Henry Holt, 1990.
MacPherson, Myra. Long Time Passing: Vietnam and the Haunted Genera-
tion. New York: Doubleday, 1984.
Jane Fonda 97
J. William Fulbright
Born April 9, 1905
Sumner, Missouri
Died February 9, 1995
Washington, D.C.
98
After briefly working as an attorney for the U.S.
Department of Justice, Fulbright accepted a teaching position
at George Washington University. In 1936 he moved to the
faculty of the University of Arkansas, where he quickly
emerged as one of the school’s most respected professors. In
1939 Fulbright was named president of the University of
Arkansas, but his time as president was marked by internal dis-
agreements over university policies. He lost his position at
Arkansas in 1941.
In 1943 Fulbright entered Congress as a Democratic
representative from Arkansas. The young politician made his
mark soon after his arrival in Washington, D.C. He impressed
his colleagues with the depth of his knowledge and his style.
In September 1943, he introduced landmark legislation that
led to the formation of the United Nations. Fulbright’s role in
the creation of the United Nations transformed him into “an
instant celebrity” in Washington, D.C., noted Haynes B. John-
son and Bernard M. Gwertzman in Fulbright: The Dissenter.
J. William Fulbright 99
In the 1950s Fulbright’s influence over American for-
eign policy continued to grow. Unlike many of his colleagues,
he adopted a moderate position on “Cold War” issues. (The
Cold War was a period of intense rivalry between the United
States and the Soviet Union in which both nations competed
to spread their political philosophies and influence around the
world.) Fulbright disagreed with other politicians who
regarded the Communist political philosophy as a terrible and
immediate threat to the security of the United States. But at
the same time he supported U.S. efforts to protect itself from
the Soviet Union, the world’s greatest Communist power.
By the late 1950s Fulbright was known as one of the
Senate’s leading scholars on international relations. But he
also became known during this time as an opponent of civil
rights legislation that aimed to eliminate segregation (separa-
tion by race) and other laws that discriminated against blacks.
In fact, Fulbright became an important member of a group of
Southern lawmakers who worked for years to defeat the civil
rights movement. For example, he signed the 1956 “Southern
Manifesto,” a document in which Southern politicians bitterly
condemned efforts to end segregation. In addition, he voted
against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act
of 1965. But despite the resistance of Fulbright and other
southern lawmakers these landmark pieces of civil rights legis-
lation were passed into law. Today, Fulbright’s opposition to
the civil rights movement is regarded by many historians as a
dark stain on an otherwise distinguished Senate career.
Sources
Berman, William C. William Fulbright and the Vietnam War: The Dissent of
a Political Realist. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1988.
Brown, Eugene. J. William Fulbright: Advice and Dissent. Iowa City: Univer-
sity of Iowa Press, 1985.
Childhood in Arizona
Barry Morris Goldwater was born in Phoenix on Janu-
ary 1, 1909, two years before Arizona became a state. His par-
ents were Baron M. Goldwater, a clothing store owner, and
Josephine (Williams) Goldwater. Goldwater was a high-spir-
ited boy who showed more interest in athletics and exploring
Arizona’s outdoors than he did in his schoolwork (although he Barry Goldwater.
did become fascinated with Arizona’s history and geography at Reproduced by permission
an early age). As a teen, he attended Virginia’s Staunton Mili- of Corbis Corporation.
105
tary Academy. Goldwater enjoyed academy life and began to
consider a future career in the military. But after graduation he
enrolled in the University of Arizona so that he could be closer
to his family.
Goldwater took classes at the University of Arizona for
one year. But in 1929 his father died. Goldwater then left
school to work in the family business. Over the next several
years he built the company into one of the most successful in
the Phoenix area. He started a family around this time as well.
In September 1934 he married Margaret Johnson, with whom
he eventually had four children.
Enters politics
Goldwater also became involved in state politics after
returning to Arizona. In 1946 he was appointed to serve on an
important commission studying Colorado River water use in
Arizona and neighboring states. Three years later, he was
elected to the Phoenix City Council.
In 1952 Goldwater upset Democratic incumbent (the
current office-holder) Ernest McFarland to claim a seat in the
United States Senate. He kept the seat for the next twelve years,
winning reelection to a second six-year term in 1958. During
Returns to Senate
Goldwater spent the next four years in retirement in
Arizona. In the meantime, the United States increased its
involvement in the Vietnam War under President Johnson.
In 1968 Goldwater returned to Washington, D.C., reclaiming
his Arizona Senate seat. He renewed his call for increased mil-
itary pressure on North Vietnam during this time, arguing
that the war could not be won without a commitment to use
all-out force.
In the early 1970s America was rocked by the Water-
gate political scandal, which ultimately forced Republican
President Richard Nixon (see entry) to resign in 1974. This
scandal concerned revelations that members of Nixon’s reelec-
tion organization broke into the Democratic campaign head-
quarters in the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C., in 1972
to gather secret information. Nixon and several members of
his administration attempted to cover up the burglary.
When the Watergate scandal first erupted, Goldwater
stood as one of President Richard Nixon’s strongest early sup-
porters. But when it became clear that Nixon had lied about his
role in the scandal, Goldwater called on the president to resign.
He later called Nixon the “most dishonest man” he ever met.
Sources
Edwards, Lee. Goldwater: The Man Who Made a Revolution. Washington,
D.C.: Regnery, 1995.
113
wrote for the school newspaper and ran track. His grades were
good enough to earn him admission to Harvard University,
where he became the managing editor of the daily student
newspaper, the Harvard Crimson. He earned a bachelor’s degree
in journalism from Harvard in 1955.
After graduating from college, Halberstam surprised
many of his Harvard classmates by accepting a job as a reporter
at a small-town Mississippi newspaper called the Daily Times
Leader. At that time, African Americans in the South were just
beginning to protest against segregation (the forced separation
of people by race) and other forms of discrimination. Halber-
stam hoped to use his position to influence the growing debate
about civil rights. But he became frustrated and left the paper
when it became clear that his editor and many local white cit-
izens were not interested in his antisegregation perspective. He
then took a job with the Nashville Tennessean, where he did get
an opportunity to report on the civil rights movement.
In 1960 Halberstam became a staff writer in the
Washington bureau of the New York Times, one of the largest
and most respected newspapers in the country. A year later,
he was sent to the Congo (which became Zaire and is now
known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo) in Africa,
where United Nations forces were trying to stop a bloody
tribal war. The young reporter jumped into his new position
as a foreign correspondent with enthusiasm. He put himself
in dangerous situations many times, and several of his vivid
stories made it to the front page of the New York Times. Before
long, Halberstam had earned a reputation as a daring and tal-
ented journalist.
Sources
Anderson, Christopher. “David Halberstam.” People Weekly, November 4,
1985.
Contemporary Authors New Revision Series. Vol. 45. Detroit: Gale, 1995.
Downie, Leonard, Jr. The New Muckrakers: An Inside Look at America’s Inves-
tigative Reporters. New York: New Republic Books, 1976.
119
editor of the student newspaper, he often got in trouble for
criticizing school officials and policies in his editorials.
In 1957 Hayden enrolled at the University of Michigan
as a journalism major. He became a writer for the student
newspaper, the Michigan Daily. Within a short time, however,
Hayden grew frustrated with the rules guiding student con-
duct, which he viewed as unclear and strict. “You couldn’t find
out what the rules were or how to change them,” he recalled.
He felt that the students should have more say in their own
education, but he was not sure how they could achieve this.
In the summer of 1960 Hayden hitchhiked to Califor-
nia. He was unhappy with many aspects of American life at
this time. He thought that Americans placed too much impor-
tance on material possessions and felt that everyone seemed to
want to look and act like everyone else. Longing to be differ-
ent, he at first intended to become a dropout rebel like the
hero of Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road. But his experiences
in California helped direct him toward radical politics as a way
to bring social change.
During his trip Hayden witnessed the poverty of
migrant farm workers. He learned about the nuclear weapons
research that was taking place because of the military rivalry
between the United States and the Soviet Union. And he met
student radicals who led protests at the University of Califor-
nia at Berkeley and interviewed civil rights protesters who held
demonstrations at the Democratic National Convention in Los
Angeles. All of these experiences added to Hayden’s determi-
nation to work toward change in American society. “I became
a revolutionary in bits and pieces,” he stated. “It was a cumu-
lative process in which one commitment led to another.”
Black activist Bobby Seale was one conditions for blacks and to end police
of the members of the Chicago Eight. Born brutality in black neighborhoods. In May
on October 22, 1936, Robert George Seale 1967, they came to national attention by
grew up in a poor area of Oakland, staging a protest in the California State
California. After dropping out of high school Legislature. The legislature was debating a
in his senior year, he joined the U.S. Air proposal that would prohibit carrying guns in
Force, where he was trained as an aircraft public. But the Black Panthers believed that
sheet-metal mechanic. But he received a African Americans needed to arm themselves
dishonorable discharge after three years of against white authority. They protested
service when he disobeyed an officer. Seale against the proposal by showing up at a
then completed his high school education at legislative session heavily armed with rifles
night while holding a day job as a sheet- and handguns. Seale was arrested for
metal mechanic. In 1959, he entered Merritt disrupting the legislature and spent six
College in Oakland. It was during his time as months in jail. The protest increased the Black
a college student that he became involved in Panthers’ popularity among African
the civil rights movement. Americans, but also made it a controversial
During his college years, Seale and feared organization among many whites.
joined a student group called the Afro- In 1968, Seale began trying to form
American Association. Through this group alliances with radical white leaders, many of
he met Huey Newton, who introduced him whom were involved in protests against the
to the writings of black nationalist leaders Vietnam War. Some black activists wanted
like Malcolm X. Over time, Seale grew African Americans to fight their own battles,
increasingly angry about the unfair separately from whites. But Seale felt that
treatment of blacks in American society. He joining forces with other protest groups
eventually came to believe that blacks could could only help his cause. As he told
not rely on the U.S. justice system to protect Wallace Terry in Time, “You don’t fight
them from violence and discrimination at racism with racism. The best way to fight
the hands of whites. Instead, he felt that racism is with solidarity [joining together].”
African Americans should band together and Under his guidance, the Black Panthers
use armed resistance to gain equal rights. joined several other radical organizations in
In October 1966, Seale and Newton forming the Peace and Freedom Party.
founded the Black Panther Party. The goal of Newton became the party’s candidate for
this radical organization was to defy white president in the 1968 elections.
authority and demand representation for The Democratic Party held a
blacks in the American political system. The convention in Chicago that year to select
Black Panthers also fought to improve living its candidate for the presidency. Antiwar
Sources
Farber, David. Chicago ‘68. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.
Findley, Tom. “Tom Hayden Rolling Stone Interview.” Rolling Stone, Octo-
ber 26, 1972 (Part 1), November 9, 1972 (Part 2).
Garfinkle, Adam. Telltale Hearts: The Origins and Impact of the Vietnam
Antiwar Movement. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995.
Wells, Tom. The War Within: America’s Battle over Vietnam. Berkeley: Uni-
versity of California Press, 1994.
American journalist
127
The Vietnam War pitted the U.S.-supported nation of
South Vietnam against the Communist nation of North Viet-
nam and its guerrilla allies—known as the Viet Cong—in the
South. The Communists wanted to overthrow the South Viet-
namese government and unite the two countries under one
Communist government. In the late 1950s and early 1960s the
United States sent money, weapons, and advisors to South
Vietnam to help it fend off the Viet Cong. In 1965 the United
States began using thousands of American combat troops and
extensive air bombing missions to crush the Communists. But
deepening U.S. involvement in the war failed to defeat the Viet
Cong or the North Vietnamese. Instead, the war settled into a
bloody stalemate that eventually claimed the lives of more
than 58,000 U.S. soldiers. As disillusionment over the war
increased, the American public became bitterly divided over
the nation’s involvement in Vietnam.
Herr’s efforts to secure a reporting assignment that
would take him to the war-torn country eventually paid off. In
1967 he reached an agreement with Esquire magazine to go to
Vietnam and provide monthly reports on the war. Soon after
his arrival, however, Herr convinced the magazine to suspend
the monthly columns in favor of longer articles that would
allow him to explore the true nature of the conflict. “Some-
thing [about the war] wasn’t even being asked,” he explained
in Dispatches. “Hiding low under the fact-figure crossfire [sta-
tistical analysis of the war] there was a secret history, and not
a lot of people felt like running in there to bring it out.”
Time in Vietnam
Herr spent the next eleven months traveling across
South Vietnam. During that time, he personally witnessed
many of the war’s most famous events. He reported on the
massive Communist invasion known as the Tet Offensive, in
which Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces simultaneously
attacked dozens of South Vietnamese cities. He also provided
coverage of the siege of Khe Sanh (a siege is a military strategy
in which an army attempts to capture a city or military base by
surrounding and blockading it). This remote American-South
Vietnamese military base endured weeks of deadly sniper,
artillery, and mortar attacks from Communist forces before the
siege was finally broken.
Writing Dispatches
After returning to America, Herr resumed his journal-
ism career. He also began putting together a book about his
time in Vietnam. But writing about his wartime experiences
proved to be an emotionally exhausting task. In addition, Herr
learned that three of his closest friends from Vietnam—all
photographers—had been killed or reported missing in action.
These factors combined to push Herr into what he later called
“a massive physical and psychological collapse.” He subse-
quently underwent intensive therapy to come to terms with
his experiences in Vietnam. Herr gradually recovered, and in
the mid-1970s he resumed writing.
In 1977 Herr finally published the book, nearly ten years
after he left Vietnam. The book, called Dispatches, was a brilliant
and original work of literature that blended his own wartime
experiences and impressions with an intense examination of the
Sources
Ciotti, P. “Michael Herr: A Man of Few Words.” Los Angeles Times Maga-
zine, April 15, 1990.
Schroeder, Eric James. Vietnam, We’ve All Been There: Interviews with Amer-
ican Writers. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1992.
134
to many reports, his name at birth was Nguyen That Thanh,
which means “Nguyen Who Will Be Victorious” in Viet-
namese. He went by a variety of other names during his career
as a revolutionary, but he became best known under the name
Ho Chi Minh, which means “He Who Enlightens.”
At the time of Ho’s birth, Vietnam was a colony of
France known as French Indochina. His father, Nguyen Sinh
Sac, was a local government official who resigned from his job
in protest against French colonial policies. The youngest of
three children in his family, Ho inherited a strong patriotic
spirit from his father. In fact, he began carrying messages for
an anti-French resistance group at the age of nine.
Ho received his education at the National Academy in
Hue, which was known as one of the top schools in Vietnam.
After teaching and studying in Saigon for a short time, he left
Vietnam around 1912. By this time, he had begun to feel
threatened by the colonial government due to his anti-French
activities. He also hoped to gain firsthand knowledge of polit-
ical systems around the world. He would not return to Viet-
nam for thirty years.
Ho spent several years at sea, working as a cook’s helper
on a French steamship. After visiting New York, London, and
other cities, he settled in Paris around 1917. Ho soon became
involved in the political debates surrounding the negotiations
to end World War I. Calling himself Nguyen Ai Quoc (“Nguyen
the Patriot”), he wrote a petition demanding self-rule for the
colonies held by European nations. He attempted to deliver this
petition to American President Woodrow Wilson at the peace
conference, but he was unsuccessful.
Over the next few years, Ho’s reputation in political
circles continued to grow. In 1920 he joined the French Com-
munist Party. He also wrote a series of pamphlets and articles
protesting French rule in Indochina. He demanded that the
Vietnamese people be allowed to elect their own leaders and
receive representation in the French government. Some of
these works were published under the name Nguyen O Phap
(“Nguyen Who Hates the French”). When copies of his writ-
ings made their way to resistance leaders in Vietnam, Ho was
hailed as a hero in his homeland.
In 1923 Ho traveled to Moscow, where he received
training to become a revolutionary leader. The Communist
The U.S. imperialists [people who try To gain independence, we, the
to establish authority over other nations] Indochinese people, must defeat the French
have of late openly inter fered in colonialists, our number one enemy. At the
Indochina’s affairs. It is with their money same time, we will struggle against the
and weapons and their instructions that U.S. interventionists. The deeper their
the French colonialists have been waging interference, the more powerful are our
war in Viet-Nam, Cambodia, and Laos. solidarity [unity] and our struggle. We will
expose their maneuvers before all our
However, the U.S. imperialists are people, especially those living in areas
intensifying their plot to discard the French under their control. We will expose all those
colonialists so as to gain complete control who serve as lackeys [servants] for the U.S.
over Indochina. That is why they do their imperialists to coerce, deceive, and divide
utmost to redouble their direct intervention our people . . . . We are still laboring under
in every field—military, political, and great difficulties but victory will certainly
economic . . . . The U.S. imperialists supply be ours.
Sources
Duiker, William J. Ho Chi Minh. New York: Hyperion, 2000.
Ho Chi Minh. Against U.S. Aggression, for National Salvation. Hanoi, Viet-
nam: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1967.
Sainteny, Jean. Ho Chi Minh and His Vietnam: A Personal Memoir. Chicago:
Cowles, 1972.
Early rebel
Abbot Hoffman was born November 30, 1936, in
Worcester, Massachusetts. He grew up in a middle-class neigh-
borhood with his parents, John Hoffman and Florence (Schan-
berg) Hoffman, and two younger siblings. In high school he
was a smart but rebellious student who repeatedly got into
trouble with teachers. After being expelled from his public
high school, Hoffman entered Worcester Academy, a private
school. He then enrolled at Brandeis University, from which
he graduated in 1959. He continued his education at the Uni- Abbie Hoffman.
versity of California at Berkeley, earning a master’s degree in Courtesy of the Library of
psychology in 1960. Congress.
141
Hoffman became interested in political activism dur-
ing his years at Brandeis and Berkeley, and he participated in a
wide array of peace and civil rights activities after returning to
Worcester in 1961. “I am first and foremost as you know a guy
who loves action who hates the dullness of regular life—the
boredom of this fat system,” he wrote to one acquaintance
during this time. In 1963 he took a job as a salesman of medi-
cine and other pharmaceutical products. But he devoted most
of his free time to working on behalf of civil rights groups and
other organizations that were trying to make changes in Amer-
ican society. In 1965 he became even more active in the civil
rights movement. He traveled to the American South, where
he joined the effort to end segregation (the enforced separa-
tion of people by race) and racial discrimination against black
Americans.
The Yippies
On January 1, 1968, Hoffman
and another radical activist named
Jerry Rubin announced the creation of
a new group called the Youth Interna-
tional Party or “Yippies.” Hoffman and
Rubin boasted that the group had “no
leaders, no members, and no organiza-
tion,” but in reality, they served as the
group’s guiding force. Over the next
several months, the Yippies used a wide
variety of publicity stunts to register
their dissatisfaction with American
society. These activities included burn-
ing money in public and nominating a
Jerry Rubin helped create pig for president.
the Youth International
Party, or “Yippies,” along In August 1968 the Yippies joined other antiwar
with Abbie Hoffman. demonstrators in Chicago, where the Democratic Presidential
Reproduced by permission Convention was being held. They gathered in the city to rally
of Archive Photos. against the party’s leadership, which they blamed for the con-
tinuation of the war in Vietnam. As the convention got under-
way, Hoffman and other radical leaders launched a series of
antiwar protests that ended in violent clashes between demon-
strators and Chicago police. Televised coverage of the street
battles shocked Americans all across the country, for much of
the footage indicated that Chicago police reacted with exces-
sive force and brutality. Some people blamed the demonstra-
tors for the police violence. But Hoffman did not agree. “Being
accused of inciting [starting] a police riot makes no sense at all
to me,” he told Tom Wells, author of The War Within. “A good
police force cannot be incited to riot. It’s just that simple.”
In the months following the Chicago incident, legal
authorities charged Hoffman and several other antiwar leaders
Sources
DeBenedetti, Charles, with Charles Chatfield. An American Ordeal. The
Antiwar Movement of the Vietnam Era. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse Univer-
sity Press, 1990.
Gitlin, Todd. The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage. New York: Bantam
Books, 1987.
Hoffman, Abbie, and Anita Hoffman. To america with Love: Letters from the
Underground. New York: Stonehill Press, 1976.
Hoffman, Abbie. The Best of Abbie Hoffman. New York: Four Walls, Eight
Windows, 1990.
Jezer, Marty. Abbie Hoffman: American Rebel. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers
University Press, 1992.
Mailer, Norman. Armies of the Night. New York: New American Library,
1968.
Wells, Tom. The War Within: America’s Battle Over Vietnam. Berkeley: Uni-
versity of California Press, 1994.
A Texas childhood
Lyndon B. Johnson. Lyndon Baines Johnson was born near Stonewall,
Reproduced by permission Texas, on August 27, 1908. He and his one brother and three
of AP/Wide World Photos. sisters grew up in economic circumstances that sometimes bor-
148
dered on poverty. Their father, Sam Ealy Johnson, Jr., worked
as a farmer, cattle trader, and local politician. Both he and his
wife, Rebekah (Baines) Johnson, labored hard to provide for
their family with basic necessities. This modest upbringing
had a tremendous influence on Lyndon Johnson’s personality.
He developed a great sympathy for hardworking people who
faced economic insecurity.
The Johnson family’s fortunes improved in 1919,
when Sam Johnson won an election returning him to the
Texas state legislature after an absence of a dozen years. He
eventually served five terms as a member of the state House of
Representatives. As he grew older, young Lyndon became a
common sight in the halls of the building where his father
worked. He enjoyed being in the company of his father, but he
was also fascinated with the hustle and bustle of the legisla-
ture, with its speeches, ceremonial activities, and aura of
importance. This early exposure to politics made a deep and
favorable impression on Johnson.
After graduating from high school in 1924, Johnson
spent a couple of years working at a variety of jobs. He then
enrolled at Southwest Texas State Teachers College, from
which he earned a teaching degree in 1930. Before earning his
degree, however, he spent a year teaching Hispanic children in
Cotulla, Texas. This experience deepened his conviction that
American society should do more to help its poor and disad-
vantaged members.
Hubert Humphrey was one of the time has arrived for the Democratic party to
national leaders of the Democratic Party for get out of the shadow of states’ rights and
nearly three decades, from the 1950s walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of
through his death in 1978. During that time, human rights,” he said. One year later, he
he built a record of distinguished public won election to the U.S. Senate. He spent
service that was highlighted by his the next sixteen years representing
leadership in the realm of civil rights. But the Minnesota in the Senate, where he became
Vietnam War cast a dark shadow over his known for his strong support of civil rights
career during the 1960s. As vice president to and education legislation.
President Lyndon Johnson, Humphrey In 1964 Humphrey agreed to serve
struggled to find a balance between his as vice president in the Johnson
loyalty to Johnson and his growing doubts administration. But his years in the
about the war. And in 1968 his inability to Johnson White House turned out to be
separate himself from Johnson’s unpopular frustrating and unhappy ones. In 1965
Vietnam policies cost him the presidency. Humphrey suggested that the United
Humphrey was born in Wallace, States call a halt to the bombing of North
South Dakota, on May 27, 1911. He Vietnam and negotiate a settlement to end
the war. Johnson interpreted the vice
attended college at the Denver College of
president’s remarks as disloyal. In fact, he
Pharmacy, the University of Minnesota,
angrily excluded Humphrey from Vietnam
and Louisiana State University. In the early
policy discussions for the next year.
1940s he taught political science at a
Humphrey responded by becoming a
college in Minnesota, and in 1945 he
vocal defender of Johnson’s Vietnam
became the youngest mayor ever to lead
strategy. But his support angered
the city of Minneapolis.
Democratic opponents of the war, and it
In 1948 Humphrey entered the failed to repair his relationship with
national spotlight when he fought to add a Johnson. In fact, many historians have
strong civil rights position to the noted that the president often bullied or
Democratic Party’s national platform. “The mistreated Humphrey.
Throughout his presidency, this mask the central fact that this is really
Lyndon Johnson strongly defended his war. It is guided by North Vietnam, and it
is spurred by Communist China. Its goal is
decision to send American troops into to conquer the South, to defeat American
Vietnam. In the following excerpt from a power, and to extend the Asiatic dominion
July 28, 1965, press conference, Johnson of communism.
explained his belief that Vietnam was a key There are great stakes in the balance.
to preventing the expansion of Most of the non-Communist nations of
Communism throughout Southeast Asia: Asia cannot, by themselves and alone,
resist the growing might and the grasping
This is a different kind of war. There ambition of Asian communism. Our power,
are no marching armies or solemn therefore, is a very vital shield. If we are
declarations. Some citizens of South driven from the field in Vietnam, then no
Vietnam, at times with understandable nation can ever again have the same
grievances, have joined in the attack on confidence in American promises or in
their own government. But we must not let American protection.
A crippled presidency
In 1967 Johnson continued to express public confi-
dence about his Vietnam policies. In fact, he joined military
On March 31, 1968, President talks that could bring an end to this long
Lyndon Johnson gave a historic television and this bloody war.
Final years
During Johnson’s last few months in office, he can-
celed the Rolling Thunder bombing campaign for good in
hopes that the action would help bring peace. He left the pres-
idency in January 1969, hopeful that ongoing negotiations
might finally be bringing the vicious war to a close. But U.S.
military involvement in Vietnam continued for another four
years, and the war itself did not end until 1975, when the
Communists seized control of the South.
After leaving office, Johnson retired to his ranch in
Texas. In late 1969 and early 1970 he agreed to a series of tele-
vision interviews with news journalist Walter Cronkite, but he
stayed out of the public eye for the most part. In 1971 he pub-
lished a memoir of his White House years, called The Vantage
Point: Perspectives on the Presidency, 1963–1969. He died on Jan-
uary 22, 1973, of a severe heart attack.
Sources
Berman, Larry. Lyndon Johnson’s War. New York: W. W. Norton, 1989.
Conkin, Paul K. Big Daddy from the Pedernales: Lyndon Baines Johnson.
Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1986.
Herring, George C. LBJ and Vietnam: A Different Kind of War. Austin: Uni-
versity of Texas Press, 1994.
Johnson, Lady Bird. A White House Diary. New York: Holt, Rinehart and
Winston, 1970.
Kearns, Doris. Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream. New York: Signet
Books, 1976.
Thirty-fifth president of
the United States, 1961–1963
165
setts. He was the second of four sons born to Joseph P.
Kennedy, a wealthy businessman and diplomat, and Rose
Fitzgerald Kennedy, daughter of Boston Mayor John F. Fitzger-
ald. As they grew older, all the Kennedy boys were taught that
their financial security and social status obligated them to seek
careers in which they could help guide America’s future and
serve its citizens.
Jack Kennedy grew up in Massachusetts and New York,
where he studied at several exclusive schools. He posted aver-
age grades during his early years, but he was a natural leader
who was very popular with his classmates. He was also a fine
athlete, even though he suffered from a wide range of physical
ailments—including scarlet fever, jaundice, whooping cough,
bronchitis, asthma, appendicitis, and recurring back pain—
during much of his childhood and young adulthood. Many
biographers believe that Kennedy’s early struggles with illness
gave him a lifelong appreciation for people who displayed
courage and determination in difficult circumstances.
In 1936 Kennedy enrolled at Harvard University in
Cambridge, Massachusetts. He graduated four years later with
a bachelor’s degree in political science. During his time at Har-
vard, Kennedy began to take his studies more seriously. In fact,
he wrote a thesis paper (a detailed research paper that must be
completed in order to graduate) during his senior year that
received considerable critical praise. In that paper Kennedy
examined Great Britain’s failure to anticipate the threat of
Adolf Hitler and Germany in the years leading up to World
War II (1939–45). Kennedy’s thesis was so impressive that it
was published later in 1940 under the title Why England Slept.
Kennedy is assassinated
On November 22, 1963, Kennedy was shot and killed
while riding in a motorcade through Dallas, Texas. A man
named Lee Harvey Oswald was quickly arrested for the murder,
but he was himself killed on November 24 by Jack Ruby, a
nightclub owner who was reportedly outraged over Kennedy’s
death. A government investigation led by Chief Supreme
Court Justice Earl Warren later determined that Oswald acted
alone, but many Americans remain suspicious that other peo-
ple were involved in the assassination.
Kennedy’s sudden and violent death shocked America
and the world. It triggered a period of intense national mourn-
ing and helped create an enduring image of Kennedy as a
romantic figure who was unfairly taken from his country just
Sources
Halberstam, David. The Making of a Quagmire: America and Vietnam during
the Kennedy Era. Rev. ed. New York: Knopf, 1988.
Newman, John M. JFK and Vietnam: Deception, Intrigue, and the Struggle for
Power. New York: Warner Books, 1992
“I am concerned that, at
the end of it all, there will R obert F. Kennedy was a close advisor to President John F.
Kennedy (his older brother; see entry) in the early 1960s,
and he emerged as a powerful force in American politics in his
only be more Americans
own right as the decade unfolded. By 1968 Kennedy’s strong
killed, more of our
criticism of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War and Amer-
treasure spilled out; and ica’s high regard for his family established him as a leading
. . . more hundreds of presidential candidate. But his bid for the Democratic nomi-
thousands of Vietnamese nation for the presidency ended in June 1968, when he fell to
slaughtered . . . .” an assassin’s bullet, just as his brother had five years earlier.
174
In 1936 Joseph Kennedy, Sr., was named ambassador to
Great Britain, and he moved his family to London. When
World War II (1939–45) broke out three years later, however,
he sent his family back to the United States. After graduating
from prep school, Kennedy enrolled at Harvard University in
Massachusetts in 1944. A short time later, however, his oldest
brother Joe was killed while flying a bombing mission over
Germany. Bobby Kennedy subsequently left Harvard and
joined the U.S. Navy, where he became a lieutenant. He served
in the Navy until World War II ended a year later.
In 1946 Kennedy resumed his studies at Harvard, earn-
ing a bachelor of arts degree two years later. In 1950 he mar-
ried Ethel Skakel, with whom he eventually had eleven chil-
dren. The last of these children was born after Kennedy’s death
in 1968. In 1951 he graduated from the University of Virginia
with a law degree.
Sources
Halberstam, David. The Unfinished Odyssey of Robert Kennedy. New York:
Random House, 1969.
Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr. Robert Kennedy and His Times. 1978.
Steel, Ronald. In Love with Night: The American Romance with Robert
Kennedy. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000.
181
Sr., a minister at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, and
Alberta Williams King. As a youngster, King attended local
schools in which students were legally segregated (separated)
by race. This system of segregation, which extended into all
areas of American society, discriminated against blacks and
placed them in an inferior position.
King was an excellent student who took a great inter-
est in the world around him. He enrolled at Georgia’s More-
house College when he was fifteen years old and graduated
four years later with a bachelor’s degree in sociology. During
this same time, he was ordained as a Baptist minister. After
leaving Morehouse, he continued his education at Crozer The-
ological Seminary in Pennsylvania, where he earned a master’s
degree in theology in 1951. From there he went to Boston Uni-
versity, where he met Coretta Scott. They married in 1954 and
eventually had four children. King, meanwhile, secured his
doctoral degree in theology from Boston University in 1955.
During King’s years in school, he developed a great
belief in the power of nonviolent protest as a tool to bring
about change in American society. By 1954, when he became
minister of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery,
Alabama, he had become convinced that nonviolent protests
could be used to combat segregation and other forms of racism
in America.
Sources
Albert, Robert J., and Ronald Hoffman, eds. We Shall Overcome: Martin
Luther King Jr. and the Black Freedom Struggle. New York: Pantheon
Books, 1990.
Dyson, Michael Eric. I May Not Get There with You: The True Martin Luther
King Jr. New York: Free Press, 2000.
Fairclough, Adam. “Martin Luther King, Jr. and the War in Vietnam.” Phy-
lon, January 1984.
King, Martin Luther, Jr. Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. Edited by
Clayborne Carson. New York: Warner Books, 1998.
King, Martin Luther, Jr. I Have a Dream: Writings and Speeches That Changed
the World. New York: HarperCollins, 1986.
Oates, Stephen B. Let the Trumpet Sound: The Life of Martin Luther King, Jr.
New York: Harper and Row, 1982.
A German-born scholar
Heinz Alfred Kissinger, who later changed his first
name to Henry, was born May 27, 1923, in Furth, Germany.
His parents, Louis and Paula Kissinger, were Jewish. As Adolf
Hitler and the Nazi Party rose to power in Germany and began
persecuting Jews, the Kissinger family fled the country. They Henry A. Kissinger.
settled in the United States in 1938, and Henry became a nat- Courtesy of the Library
uralized American citizen five years later. of Congress.
189
Upon arriving in the United States, Kissinger lived in
New York City. He worked in a factory by day to help support
his family, and he studied accounting at the City College of
New York at night. In 1943 he was drafted into the military to
serve in World War II (1939–45). He spent most of the next
three years in Germany, acting as an interpreter for an Ameri-
can general. After his discharge in 1946 he returned to the
United States. Longing to continue his education, he entered
Harvard University in 1946. Kissinger stayed at Harvard for his
bachelor’s and master’s degrees, and he completed his educa-
tion by earning a Ph.D. there in 1954.
After leaving Harvard, Kissinger took a job with the
Council on Foreign Relations in New York City. He led a group
of scholars who studied the politics of the Cold War—an
intense rivalry between the United States and Soviet Union
that developed in the late 1940s as both countries competed
to spread their political philosophies and influence around
the world. In 1957 Kissinger wrote a book called Nuclear
Weapons and Foreign Policy outlining his opinions on how the
United States should relate to the Soviet Union. Although
Kissinger opposed communism, he believed that the threat of
nuclear weapons made it impossible for either side to “win”
the Cold War. Instead, he recommended that the two super-
powers agree on a balance of power. Kissinger’s book, which
won several awards and became a surprise best-seller, brought
him to national attention as a leading scholar on interna-
tional relations.
Sources
Encyclopedia of World Biography. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale, 1999.
Goodman, Allan E. The Lost Peace: America’s Search for a Negotiated Settle-
ment of the Vietnam War. 1978.
Porter, Gareth. A Peace Denied: The United States, Vietnam, and the Paris
Agreement. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975.
196
team. He was also invited to try out for the New York Yankees.
“I was a natural athlete,” he recalled in Born on the Fourth of
July, “and there wasn’t much of anything I wasn’t able to do
with my body back then.”
Throughout his childhood, Kovic viewed war as an
exciting way for young American men to prove their courage.
His father had served proudly in World War II (1939–1945).
Kovic had attended holiday parades and cheered for the pass-
ing veterans. He had also grown up watching patriotic movies
starring John Wayne, which had made war seem glamorous to
him. As a result, he often dreamed of escaping from the rou-
tine of small-town life by serving his country and becoming a
war hero.
When a group of recruiters from the U.S. Marine Corps
gave a presentation at his high school, Kovic was deeply
impressed. In 1964 he enlisted in the Marines to serve in the
Vietnam War. “I stayed up most of the night before I left,
watching the late movie,” he recalled in his memoir. “Then
‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ played. I remember standing up
and feeling very patriotic, chills running up and down my
spine. I put my hand over my heart and stood rigid at atten-
tion until the screen went black.”
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Hellman, John. American Myth and the Legacy of Vietnam. New York:
Columbia University Press, 1986.
Kovic, Ron. Born on the Fourth of July. New York: McGraw Hill, 1976.
MacPherson, Myra. Long Time Passing: Vietnam and the Haunted Genera-
tion. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1984.
Moss, Nathaniel. Ron Kovic: Antiwar Activist. New York: Chelsea House,
1994.
Against the Vietnam War: Writings by Activists. New York: Syracuse Univer-
sity Press, 1999.
Ambrose, Stephen E. Nixon. 3 vols. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987,
1989, 1991.
Anderson, David L., ed. Shadow on the White House: Presidents and the Viet-
nam War, 1945-1975. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1993.
Baez, Joan. And a Voice to Sing With. New York: Summit Books, 1978.
Berman, Larry. Lyndon Johnson’s War. New York: W.W. Norton, 1989.
xxxiii
Bernstein, Irving. Guns or Butter: The Presidency of Lyndon Johnson. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Bird, Kai. The Color of Truth: McGeorge Bundy and William Bundy, Brothers
in Arms: A Biography. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998.
Blair, Anne E. Lodge in Vietnam: A Patriot Abroad. New Haven, CT: Yale Uni-
versity Press, 1995.
Boetcher, Thomas D. Vietnam: The Valor and the Sorrow. Boston: Little,
Brown, 1985.
Calley, William L., as told to John Sack. Lieutenant Calley: His Own Story.
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graph, and the Vietnam War. New York: Viking, 2000.
Conkin, Paul K. Big Daddy from the Pedernales: Lyndon Baines Johnson.
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Dear, John, ed. Apostle of Peace: Essays in Honor of Daniel Berrigan. Mary-
knoll, New York: Orbis, 1996.
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York: Pantheon, 1993.
Denton, Jeremiah A., Jr., with Edwin H. Broadt. When Hell Was in Session.
Clover, South Carolina: Commission Press, 1976.
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King Jr. New York: Free Press, 2000.
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