Americans Were Furious In 1968

good evening Jerry Dunphy with tonight's big news in color thousands of anti-draft militants went on a hit-and-run rampage today in an all-out drive to shut down the military induction Center in Oakland sections of downtown Oakland were paralyzed for three hours and 1,000 pleats were needed to restore order but in the end the masked civil disobedience failed the buses were delayed but not turned away inque NXT correspondent Rick Davis reports [Applause] one corner the tension of the day reached a breaking point before demonstrators and law officers a few picket signs and small rocks were thrown into the police ranks and then came their retaliation it was during this confusion an angle that's biscuit Porter was clubbed several times by two oakland officer opposition to the war existed across all ages all classes and all races but the protesters who actually took to the streets were mostly middle class college kids just as the policeman whose job it was to control the demonstrations were mostly from blue-collar backgrounds so dramatic battles between police and anti-war activists came to symbolize a much deeper social conflict too many policemen and their supporters the anti-war protesters were unamerican spoiled naive intellectual hot smoking anarchists on the other hand many protestors and their supporters saw the police as beer-bellied stormtroopers living symbols of how ignorant and authoritarian America had become the police lived by simple ideas us and them we're the good guys they're the bad guys whatever we do is okay they take a very simplistic view of the world very conservative the mids are constantly being reinforced so how do they feel about about they felt of the it's just they're [ __ ] and we're the heroes until the 60s few of these policemen had ever faced a political protest their training had taught them how to use force in crowd control not how to avoid violence most policemen behaved professionally in a difficult and highly visible job but a significant few let their emotions get the better of them I remember marching in Cambridge Massachusetts and marching down Mass Ave right in front of Harvard in fact and having the police on either end of us with tear gas and shooting tear gas at us and running running like crazy against you know and running in the direction of the police in one direction taking a left down Brattle Street or one of the streets off of masa away from these folks and him and looking back at police catching people and billy clubs being thrown around and hit and screams [Music] strange time to watch that I mean it's the first time you've ever seen a policeman do something to a white college kid attempts to destroy the protests with force backfired for every young demonstrator tear gassed or billy club a thousand more shocked by how the riot squads were treating people just like themselves took to the streets in radical defiance of the war you [Applause] as the watched policemen struggle with a hippie counterculture ghetto rebellions and a growing anti-war movement many Americans shared the cops disgust with what looked like one frightening revolutionary nod but the anti-war protesters were succeeding in one way they were focusing the entire country's attention on what America was doing in Vietnam this is going to be a methodical search house by house village by village as we move north as you can see we're looking for tunnels caves anything for the Vietcong may hide we've been chasing the JC since 8 o'clock this morning that's now about five minutes until three o'clock he's be at Conger elusive you can't see him all you can do is hear that the Vietnam war itself was elusive for Americans despite the fact that it was on the evening news almost every night part of the problem was that the film coming out of Vietnam conflicted with what the Johnson administration was saying about the war LBJ and his people said America was winning the TV reports were less convincing the result came to be called the credibility gap almost four years in country I think we're making real progress everybody is very optimistic as I know of the funny thing about Vietnam is that I was getting Time magazine every week it came in the mail I could read about my war even as I sat in the middle of it and I would read about what Lyndon Johnson would say and what McNamara would say and what Russ would say and I could look around and see that ah I don't know what were they're talking about but that's not what's going on here [Music] January 1968 North Vietnamese forces launched over a hundred simultaneous attacks on South Vietnam catching US forces by surprise when these images started coming back to America many began to wonder if victory in Vietnam was worth the price the destruction of the country America was fighting to save of course we weren't as knowledgeable as we are today about the you know the business of the war we thought wars were totally a moral thing at the time why didn't we end that war this little country can't beat us you know and and then the pictures on TV of our boys getting killed and the atrocities on both sides this is nobody could understand why the government wouldn't finish this off it's so easy to do these boys wrong what are we doing on their French couldn't beat him we couldn't beat him yeah that's what do we do on there yet we beat the whole world World War through supply the whole world a bomb but he went through like nothing this little swamp we couldn't dig the money after he gets killed there boy I tell you I really rile up when I start talking about this you know we were brought up to never question authority there's men true people of our age group and the government was ride and the policeman was right and the priest was right his mom and dad were right the school board was right anybody that was in authority knew what was best and how we should think and they told us how to think but I never told my dad he was crazy shouldn't I let my government know that I think they're crazy I think they are I'm saying rally this is an insane thing we're doing tonight how will you say it how should I in a proper manner I think an eighteen-year role is Oh something to deserve country in backyards and bar rooms across the country Americans debated the pros and cons of a distant war for good good reasons as to why we should be there and I haven't heard one well I've heard one their communism is a dynamic philosophy and unless it stopped it continues to grow and I for one would rather send my son to fight if need be then have the country taken over by philosophy to be invaded by the Vietnamese but it's going to invade the United be enormous but Red China Chinese we think that anybody who's committed to democracy in this country now is radical because democracy is a radical idea here certainly it was personal for me these ideas were not just speeches in the forum the the pain of it all became most acute in terms of my relationship with my dad he couldn't understand why I was so upset that with a wife and three kids and a pretty little house on Sunnyside street I would throw that all over quit my good job which to him was a great job that was a step up he had worked in a factory all his life and here his son was white collar with a college education that to him was terrific why complain about that why throw that over to run off with these strange political gypsies who are into something they call the movement it had led to an enormous rupture in our relationship you trust for about 12 years I think and we had children that were growing up and in the school system together we had children that were friends with each other there were almost the same ages so it it was sad for us when the Vietnam War came along and we had such different views on what was patriotism and what was the right stand to tape I was working for a man and had a son who was one of the protesters I didn't feel right about taking money from somebody that were willing to support our country and I was proud of our own boys were going and it got to be the place where I resented the fact that I was helping him make a living and my boys are going off to war I think if our son hadn't been a conscientious objector you know it might have been different too but bob was over there in the war and our son was here safe and it just it really hurt and then when Bob was killed in the war it's very hard for all of us I think [Music] the tiny full of grief the world stopped what six months you can't function you know prank just live day by day ah I know every night for what six weeks I go to the bathroom sit down on the floor knowing what I know now I had another boy to go in a situation like Vietnam I'd help him get away any way I could as far as a situation like that maybe the protesters were right after years of arguments and personal sacrifice roughly half the country still wanted to win the war whatever it took the other half just wanted it to be over an even split in public opinion over an issue as fundamental as war threatens a country's stability and when a nation is fighting with itself it cannot win [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] if you had fun in 1964 and awakened in 1968 you might have had trouble believing you were still living in the same country there was many great ironies one of them was between the Liberals and the radicals liberals wanted to work within the system and change it and the radicals wanted to stand outside and hammer on the wall so they come down and I thought if I thought everybody on our side was nuts what were these people doing arguing with each other my way is right my way is right it was clear did nothing was gonna budge unless she pushed from both sides okay unless there were people in the streets Yellin and people in the offices listening Johnson's Democratic administration was increasingly under attack from all sides from radicals conservatives even his former liberal Ally is all very nice the coalition that had given Lyndon Johnson his enormous victory four years earlier was rapidly disintegrating it's very difficult for someone who didn't live through that period to understand that months not simply years but months make a difference what it felt like in January of 68 on a college campus bears precious little relationship to what it felt like in December of 68 you've moved politically and culturally light-years from those positions there is simply that much groping for a new ground on which to build any kind of consensus politically or culturally and frankly it never comes it just continues to to spin out of control in that fashion as certain kinds of presumptions I don't have to believe it presumes in effect that we're dealing with moral pet we were debating the Vietnam War and I I was debating the pro United States position against the fellow who in fact later served on the City Council in Madison in front of four or five hundred people I presented my case he simply got up and said that when the revolution came people like me would be shocked [Music] [Applause] [Music] I felt that street-fighting and and and disrupting life is normal and being on the evening news going your stinking war was good I thought that it you know it was the it was not going to go away and we were not going to go away and they were not going to get away with it I mean really it was not going to be pretty and all these damn liberals I had grown up with liberals watching liberals say well we're opposed to the war we'll put your money where your mouth do something and they weren't they wouldn't they so we had to I remember back at the bar and our trucking Depot talking to other drivers and they just we were just so angry and not that we supported the war or any of this but you know we were sort of this was all making trouble for a Democratic administration that was delivering more progress more work unemployment was lower growth was higher and the kids didn't seem to get it they seemed to think this could last forever I shall not seek and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president Lyndon Johnson knew that if he ran for the presidency again he would destroy his party Johnson wanted to pass on his power to his vice president Hubert Humphrey but Humphrey was also tainted by a war many Democrats were turning against demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning about incident Vietnam that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people I don't know about you I am go study War no more dr. Martin Luther King who had won the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the nonviolent civil rights movement was now using his persuasive moral influence against the war Martin was becoming a nuisance Martin wasn't this lovable cuddly bear anymore that white America wanted to embrace and you could sense that he was becoming another danger to himself that enemy was out there in one morning just one it all ended that shot affected America and affected black America in such a way you know I can't begin to express to people what happened I know how I felt I mean the tears would not stop your Martin was dead they killed Martin and first thing that jumped in my mind was clearly what was jumping everything white America killed monta white America killed mine and God damage you don't pay you gonna pay for this [Music] Martin Luther King's assassination in April was followed by riots in 126 cities 46 died hundreds were injured 21,000 were arrested [Music] in Washington federal troops guarded the White House a machine gun post protected the Capitol [Music] they see us spend billions on armaments poverty and ignorance continue at home they see us willing to fight a war for freedom in Vietnam but unwilling to fight with one hundredths of money or force or ever to secure freedom in Mississippi or Alabama or the ghettos of the north and they see perhaps most disturbing of all that they are removed from the decisions of policy shortly after the assassination of Martin Luther King Senator Robert Kennedy the younger brother of the assassinated President stepped up his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination he would oppose Hubert Humphrey as a stop the war candidate Kennedy was a strong voice for change within the Democratic Party and had won the hearts of old guard liberals blacks and Hispanics even some political radicals [Music] by June 1968 Robert Kennedy was close to winning the nomination and possibly reuniting a divided America Robert Kennedy for me was the last politician in America who could bring together rich and poor who could talk to the whole nation and had the moral outrage to challenge people in their complacency and that excited me the California primary and I remember going to bed and Robert Kennedy had won the primary and his clear he's going to win all the projections said he was going to win [Music] [Music] [Applause] my mother walked up next morning and said Robert Kennedy had been assassinated it all fell apart everything had fallen apart I really believed I really thought he's going to be the next president United States and I can't ever remember a time I'm feeling less hopeful about the country or feeling sadder [Music] I remember a day or two later heading off to st. Patrick's Cathedral where Robert Kennedy was lying in state I waited five six hours just to walk past his coffin and talking people in the crowd and hearing the crowd the level of sadness the horror the lack of belief that this could possibly be happening [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] in 1968 the rebellions and the disillusionment that had been growing since the decade began exploded in a cataclysm the effects of which still reverberate throughout American society something so valuable you know something of such immense spiritual value was taken out of the American people in 1968 with those two assassinations that I think we were unable to pass on anything of lasting a spiritual or moral value to the succeeding generation because we didn't have it anymore you

Channel: David Hoffman

Views: 150,476

Keywords: documentary, early rock 'n roll, oldies, 60s, Vietnam war, rock blues, Lyndon Johnson, famous, 1960s, growing up in the 50s, 1950s, retro, sixties, communism, Abbie Hoffman, civil rights, series, David Hoffman, hippies, hippie, hippie documentary, hippie lifestyle, Vietnam, angry Americans, American anger, American history, 1968, 1969, 1970, kent state, protests, partisan divide, politics, maga

Id: CnLx4iAF-Go

Length: 27min 16sec (1636 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 15 2010