Militarism, Media, Mismanagement: The Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War
America came home from the fields of Europe and the islands of the Pacific in 1945 as the most powerful nation on Earth. Its enemies defeated and its European allies ravaged by six years of bloodshed, the decade and a half that followed the Second World War is widely regarded as America’s Golden age, where ex-GI’s returned from their 9-5 job to their Levittown houses, complete with manicured lawns and picturesque nuclear families.
Devoid of any true enemies, the preservation of “American” ideals—namely, capitalism—surged to the forefront of American foreign policy. Top White House officials posited the Domino Theory, that if one country were to fall to communism, neighboring countries might do the same, creating a ripple effect. The goal of the United States, then, was to suppress the burgeoning Vietnamese Communist movement—which had recently defeated France and ended years of colonial rule.
As the United States remained dominant on an international level, domestically, it faced issues. After centuries of systematic oppression, America’s black population united to fight their shared injustices. What followed would be known as the Civil Rights Movement, a national movement that pushed for increased political agency and an end to racist policies of segregation that lingered like an unwelcome ghost of the Civil War. In the beginning, the movement quickly saw change. The 1954 passage of landmark Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education proved this, ending racial segregation in schools with “all deliberate speed”. However, as many black leaders worked to fight injustice at home, many started to question the necessity and morality of American involvement in Vietnam. Although the presence of the Vietnam War may have provided a common enemy for Americans, the contentious nature of the war drew too much national attention away from the Civil Rights Movement, annulling its momentum and dampening its impact.
As a result of the Vietnam War, many of the Civil Rights Movement’s leaders protested with the Anti-War Movement while also siding with the Civil Rights Movement, diverting their full focus away from the unity and purpose that had previously brought them success.
Though Indian leader and reformer Mohandas Gandhi and his Quit India Movement was an influence, The Civil Rights Movement was largely so impactful because leaders were able to amass large numbers of people as they fought for their rights. The Civil Rights movement showed what could be possible if an entire oppressed group banded together and collectively dissented. Sociologist Aldon D. Morris noted that “The [Montgomery Bus] boycott revealed the central role that would be played by social organization and a Black culture rooted in a protest tradition, if protests were to be successful. The Black Church, which had a mass base and served as the main repository of Black culture, proved to be capable of generating, sustaining, and culturally energizing large volumes of protest… A repertoire of collective action is crucial to the generation of protest.” Unlike other worldwide rights revolutions, every aspect of the black community pitched in, from churches, to schools, to neighbors. While Civil Rights Movement leaders saw change through collective action, the Vietnam War broke up the feelings of unity that had otherwise propelled the movement far.
The Vietnam War not only affected the followers of the Civil Rights Movement—it directly influenced the leaders themselves. Martin Luther King’s desire to fight a “two-front war” between Vietnam and domestic civil rights was not a wise one, as one Washington Post reporter put it: “King has diminished his usefulness to his cause, to his country and to his people.” King’s urge to side with both movements meant that the Civil Rights Movement received less of his attention and planning. A disorganized Civil Rights Movement cannot—and did not—enact change.
A series of 1964 race riots in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, painstakingly reflected the irreparable damage that could be done to the Civil Rights Movement if it was led poorly. As historian Daniel S. Lucks observes, “With the Vietnam War now sucking the life from the Great Society and the civil rights agenda stalled in Congress, African Americans’ impatience and anger mounted. This was best reflected in a spike in militancy among black activists, which had surfaced most prominently in Watts.” The key to the Civil Rights Movement’s nonviolence was that it would portray African-Americans as worthy of increased political agency, yet with an unclear sense of leadership and direction, maintaining an organized movement was near impossible. Instead, the Watts Riots presented a different image of African-Americans, one of rioting, disorder, and combativeness—an image that would not take them far.
In a now relatively unknown speech, Martin Luther King, one of the movement’s most respected and well-known leaders, openly expressed his hatred of the Vietnam War, and was vilified for it, hurting his credibility and influence as a leader of the movement. King’s hatred of the war was directly correlated with his influence with the Civil Rights Movement, as he wrote: “A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor, both black and white, through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything in a society gone mad on war... I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.” King’s fervent expression of anti-war sentiment proved to be one of the biggest blunders of his career, with one disgruntled reporter stating: “Dr. King has done a grave injury to those who are his natural allies… and he has done an even graver injury to himself. Many who have listened to him with respect will never again accord him the same confidence.”
King’s Beyond Vietnam speech cost him the image and power he once had, replacing it with one of an angry leader who disliked the government, even calling The United States “The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” Just like the Watts Riots, King’s anti-Vietnam speech presented him as a combative dissenter, not the universal symbol of freedom that he is regarded as today. One political review magazine notes that: “A Harris poll taken in May 1967 revealed that 73 percent of Americans opposed his antiwar position, including 50 percent of African-Americans. The New York Times strongly condemned King, calling his effort to link civil rights and opposition to the war a ‘disservice to both. The moral issues in Vietnam are less clear-cut than he suggests.’” Not only did King anger his own supporters, he lost the invaluable attention of the media—the precious attention that had allowed the Civil Rights Movement to get as far as it had. King’s Beyond Vietnam Speech proved to be the nail in the coffin of the Civil Rights Movement, as it turned the media away and further disrupted the movement’s already feeble sense of unity.
Just as the image and esteem of the Civil Rights Movement was declining, the Vietnam War was developing into national news. The Vietnam War was one of the first wars broadcast on television, and what airtime was once used to show the March on Washington soon turned into a time to update viewers on the status of the conflict. The press and publicity generated by the war quickly surpassed any airtime gained by the Civil Rights Movement. Few events during the war created as much domestic strife as The Kent State Massacre, a brutal suppression of a student-led anti-war protest at Kent State University. After it was heard that Kent State students were protesting, the National Guard was sent in, killing four of the protestors. The anti-war outrage and press which came from the massacre further took the focus away from the Civil Rights Movement.
According to the Trenton Evening Times, the Kent State Massacre not only gained press, but it also triggered a wave of collegiate anti-war protests: “The campus of Kent State University virtually as deserted today, but other schools around the nation boiled with students furious over the deaths Monday of four Kent State students.” Those students, it was later revealed, were all also incredibly violent, with Washington University students burning an ROTC building, and protestors from the Universities of Nebraska, Rochester, Virginia, and Wisconsin all occupying school buildings and chanting “Remember Kent!” While some sided with the victims, many started to turn against the anti-war movement, with Ohio Governor Jim Rhodes calling the protestors “Worse than the Brownshirts, and the Communist element, and also the Night Riders, and the vigilantes. They're the worst type of people that we harbor in America.” Not only did the Vietnam War and the Anti-War Movement split up and divert the full focus of Civil Rights leaders, it also kicked the Civil Rights Movement out of the limelight of the American press, losing the publicity it needed to thrive.
Although the Civil Rights Movement saw short term effectiveness, The Vietnam war split the movement up just as it was achieving its greatest victories. Martin Luther King’s Beyond Vietnam Speech split the interests of the Civil Rights Movement—a movement which was effective only because of its unifying qualities. The Civil Rights Movement had come so far because of its unified approach, but it was made nationally relevant because of the media. The leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, disbanded and divided, failed to maintain the successful protest that kept the media intrigued. A disorganized Civil Rights Movement cannot—and did not—enact change.
Bibliography
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