youth protest in vietnam war

             In 1961 president Kennedy decided to send American troops to Vietnam to stop the spread of Communism and to show the United States' strength of resolve. At the time he did not know the turmoil he would bring to his own country. The United States was split between those who believed it was our part to get involved in Vietnam and those who thought it was none of our business. As the war continued people's opinions intensified, especially student's. Youth protests during the 1960's changed the way many Americans viewed the Vietnam War.
             In the early 1960's protests first became a way of change for the civil rights movement. Then as men started going off to war it became a way of displaying activism. Liberal cities with big universities were the first to experience the antiwar movement. The cities of Ann Arbor, Bloomington, Chicago, East Lansing, Lawrence, Madison, Milwaukee, and Minneapolis saw the movement in full effect (Anderson 4-5). Some people believed that the protesters were a disgrace for betraying their own country (Dudley 83).
             "Teach-ins" became a way of educating students about what was really happening in Vietnam. Speeches, songs, discussions,
             and seminars helped get the students involved at the "teach-ins". After the first "teach in" occurred on March 24, 1965, at the University of Michigan, hundreds more started taking place within a few weeks. All the administration could do was to send for government officials called "truth teams". When that did not work, the government realized they should not reveal their policies to the public (Dougan and Weiss 87-88). The students from the University of California at Berkely felt like a minority when no one took them seriously at their campus demonstration in September 1965 because of their long hair and ragged clothes (Kent 74). Many youth joined organizations that were against the war. They would go to protests such as the one that took place on April 17, 1965. The 2...

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