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NOVA Online | Secrets, Lies, and Atomic Spies | Alger Hiss

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Though Alger Hiss, a U.S. State Department official, was accused of spying for the Soviet Union and imprisoned, he was never convicted of espionage per se. Throughout his life, Hiss denied any involvement in espionage, and many historians have for years remained polarized on the question of Hiss's spying; some believe that declassified documents prove he did spy for the Soviets, and some still see these allegations as groundless.

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1950 Family Date, Dinner In A 1950's Home

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You Will Love History

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The 1950s were a decade marked by the post-World War II boom, the dawn of the Cold War and the Civil Rights movement in the United States. "America at this moment," said the former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1945, "stands at the summit of the world." During the 1950s, it was easy to see what Churchill meant. The United States was the world's strongest military power. Its economy was booming, and the fruits of this prosperity-new cars, suburban houses and other consumer goods-were available to more people than ever before. However, the 1950s were also an era of great conflict. For example, the nascent civil rights movement and the crusade against communism at home and abroad exposed the underlying divisions in American society.

The Postwar Booms

Historians use the word "boom" to describe a lot of things about the 1950s: the booming economy, the booming suburbs and most of all the so-called "baby boom." This boom began in 1946, when a record number of babies-3.4 million-were born in the United States. About 4 million babies were born each year during the 1950s. In all, by the time the boom finally tapered off in 1964, there were almost 77 million "baby boomers."

Did you know? When Rosa Parks died in 2005, she was the first woman to lie in honor in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol.

After World War II ended, many Americans were eager to have children because they were confident that the future held nothing but peace and prosperity. In many ways, they were right. Between 1945 and 1960, the gross national product more than doubled, growing from $200 billion to more than $500 billion, kicking off "the Golden Age of American Capitalism." Much of this increase came from government spending: The construction of interstate highways and schools, the distribution of veterans' benefits and most of all the increase in military spending-on goods like airplanes and new technologies like computers-all contributed to the decade's economic growth. Rates of unemployment and inflation were low, and wages were high. Middle-class people had more money to spend than ever-and, because the variety and availability of consumer goods expanded along with the economy, they also had more things to buy.

Moving to the Suburbs

The baby boom and the suburban boom went hand in hand. Almost as soon as World War II ended, developers such as William Levitt (whose "Levittowns" in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania would become the most famous symbols of suburban life in the 1950s) began to buy land on the outskirts of cities and use mass production techniques to build modest, inexpensive tract houses there. The G.I. Bill subsidized low-cost mortgages for returning soldiers, which meant that it was often cheaper to buy one of these suburban houses than it was to rent an apartment in the city.

These houses were perfect for young families-they had informal "family rooms," open floor plans and backyards-and so suburban developments earned nicknames like "Fertility Valley" and "The Rabbit Hutch." However, they were often not so perfect for the women who lived in them. In fact, the booms of the 1950s had a particularly confining effect on many American women. Advice books and magazine articles ("Don't Be Afraid to Marry Young," "Cooking To Me Is Poetry," "Femininity Begins At Home") urged women to leave the workforce and embrace their roles as wives and mothers. The idea that a woman's most important job was to bear and rear children was hardly a new one, but it began to generate a great deal of dissatisfaction among women who yearned for a more fulfilling life. (In her 1963 book The Feminine Mystique, women's rights advocate Betty Friedan argued that the suburbs were "burying women alive.") This dissatisfaction, in turn, contributed to the rebirth of the feminist movement in the 1960s.

The Civil Rights Movement

A growing group of Americans spoke out against inequality and injustice during the 1950s. African Americans had been fighting against racial discrimination for centuries; during the 1950s, however, the struggle against racism and segregation entered the mainstream of American life. For example, in 1954, in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case, the Supreme Court declared that "separate educational facilities" for black children were "inherently unequal." This ruling was the first nail in Jim Crow's coffin.

Many Southern whites resisted the Brown ruling. They withdrew their children from public schools and enrolled them in all-white "segregation academies," and they used violence and intimidation to prevent blacks from asserting their rights. In 1956, more than 100 Southern congressmen even signed a "Southern Manifesto" declaring that they would do all they could to defend segregation.

Despite these efforts, a new movement was born. In December 1955, a Montgomery activist named Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give her seat on a city bus to a white person. Her arrest sparked a 13-month boycott of the city's buses by its black citizens, which only ended when the bus companies stopped discriminating against African American passengers. Acts of "nonviolent resistance" like the boycott helped shape the civil rights movement of the next decade.

The Cold War

The tension between the United States and the Soviet Union, known as the Cold War, was another defining element of the 1950s. After World War II, Western leaders began to worry that the USSR had what one American diplomat called "expansive tendencies"; moreover, they believed that the spread of communism anywhere threatened democracy and capitalism everywhere. As a result, communism needed to be "contained"-by diplomacy, by threats or by force. This idea shaped American foreign policy for decades.

It shaped domestic policy as well. Many people in the United States worried that communists, or "subversives," could destroy American society from the inside as well as from the outside. Between 1945 and 1952, Congress held 84 hearings designed to put an end to "un-American activities" in the federal government, in universities and public schools and even in Hollywood. These hearings did not uncover many treasonous activities-or even many communists-but it did not matter: Tens of thousands of Americans lost their jobs, as well as their families and friends, in the anti-communist "Red Scare" of the 1950s.

1950s Pop Culture

In the 1950s, televisions became something the average family could afford, and by 1950 4.4 million U.S. families had one in their home. The Golden Age of Television was marked by family-friendly shows like I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners, The Twilight Zone and Leave It To Beaver. In movie theaters, actors like John Wayne, James Stuart, Charlton Heston, Marlon Brando, Grace Kelly, Jerry Lewis, Dean Martin, Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe dominated the box office. The Abstract Expressionism of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning signaled a new age in art, paving the way for the Pop Art of artists like Andy Warhol in the 1960s.

1950s Music

Elvis Presley. Sam Cooke. Chuck Berry. Fats Domino. Buddy Holly. The 1950s saw the emergence of Rock 'n' Roll, and the new sound swept the nation. It helped inspire rockabilly music from Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash. People swayed to The Platters and The Drifters. Music marketing, changed, too: For the first time, music began to target youth.

On February 3, 1959, American musicians Buddy Holly. Ritchie Valens and J.P. Richardson died in a plane crash over Clear Lake, Iowa, in what became known as " The Day The Music Died "-an event immortalized in Don McLean's 1972 song "American Pie."

Shaping the '60s

The booming prosperity of the 1950s helped to create a widespread sense of stability, contentment and consensus in the United States. However, that consensus was a fragile one, and it splintered for good during the tumultuous 1960s.
Sources:
The Elvic Oracle. The New Yorker.

1950s Rock 'n' Roll. Rolling Stone.

The Day The Music Died. Biography.

The Fifties: The Way We Really Were. Douglas T. Miller and Marion Novak.

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During the 1950s, the United States was the world's strongest military power. Its economy was booming, and the fruits of this prosperity-new cars, suburban houses and other consumer goods-were available to more people than ever before. However, the 1950s also saw great conflict.

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It's a colorful fall day as Louise Cassano takes me on a walking tour of Levittown, New York. Trees with burnt-orange leaves line Elbow Lane, and I wonder aloud if the neighborhood has always been so heavily wooded.

"No, no. These trees were sticks. I'm not exaggerating," Cassano says, recalling what the 20-foot-tall trees looked like when she first came to Levittown in 1951. She flattens her palm, even with the ground, near her waist. "They were this high."

For the last 66 years, Cassano has watched Levittown grow. Like many other families, the Cassanos moved out of New York City after World War II to take advantage of a then-new suburban community, Levittown. It opened to the public in 1947 and represents one of the earliest versions of the modern suburbs.

Cassano and more than 51,000 other current residents can thank Bill Levitt for this place. While many saw Long Island's potato fields solely as farmland, Levitt realized they could be transformed into a suburb, a bedroom community for New York City.

Lawrence Levy, the executive dean of Hofstra University's National Center for Suburban Studies, says Levitt was also savvy enough to foresee that the demand would easily meet the supply of houses he wanted to build. Veterans returning from World War II wanted to settle down and buy a house, and thanks to the federal government, they had the means to do so.

"He knew if he could produce homes that had eye appeal and utility, they would sell," Levy said. "The demand among GIs was enormous and it was fed by the GI Bill, which made cheap loans and subsidized rentals available at a scale we had never seen before."

Levitt was able to build and sell more than 17,000 homes for incoming residents. Bob Koenig, a local historian and curator at the Levittown historical museum, says Levitt took a page out of Henry Ford's book to mass produce these houses quickly and efficiently.

"Levitt had an assembly line-like process of 27 different steps," Koenig says. "Each crew would have a particular job to do. The copper tubing would get put down, and then a concrete pourer would come in to pour concrete over the slab. Then a plumber would come along and so on and so forth. Ford brought the cars to his workers. Levitt had to bring his workers to the homes."

When Levittown was complete, Bill Levitt had created what many considered the new American dream. This setup allowed people to escape the cramped conditions of the city and experience the novelty of suburban homeownership.

"We would camp out in the backyard and the doors were never locked," Cassano said. "There was a feeling of freedom and camaraderie. It was exciting because we were all learning it at the same time and you were growing up with others who were doing the same thing."

Locked out of the American dream

As Cassano drives around Levittown today, she points out town landmarks and places and important places from her childhood. At one point, we slow down near one unremarkable-looking home.

"That's where the first Asian family moved in," Cassano said.

For many years, Levittown was a whites-only community, so when a family of a different ethnicity moved in, it didn't go unnoticed.

"Eventually we started to see other cultures move into the community," Cassano said. "At first, they were so noticeable because they were so rare. And those changes pleased some people and didn't please others."

The lack of diversity began before Cassano's time, having been built into the framework of the community. For decades, the Federal Housing Administration subsidized developers on the condition they didn't sell homes to black Americans. Bill Levitt played ball.

But he insisted that Levittown's ban on black Americans wasn't due to racism. He saw it as a business decision. He argued, " If we sell one house to a Negro family, then 90 to 95 percent of our white customers will not buy into the community. That is their attitude, not ours. We did not create it and we cannot cure it."

"At a minimum, you can say Bill Levitt didn't have the courage of what he claimed his convictions were, to take a financial and economic risk in trying something different," Levy says. "Is he right? Would 95 percent of people stop buying? Possibly. But not everybody would have. If you don't cause panic and fear among homeowners ... maybe it wouldn't have turned out the way he feared it might."

And after 70 years, Levittown hasn't gotten much more diverse. According to the 2010 US Census, Levittown is still nearly 90 percent white. Today, Levy says, that has less to do with financial or governmental barriers.

"There are plenty of black families who can afford to move into Levittown. ... There are ghosts in that community, to them," Levy says. "Ghosts of racism and exclusion and dashed dreams. Imagine you're a black soldier for as many years and as many times as a white soldier, and you can't get to live or even buy in most places in these new suburbs."

So even though Long Island as a whole is getting more diverse, Levy says it's also staying noticeably segregated, partly because people of color simply don't feel welcome in certain communities.
A version of this story originally appeared on Innovation Hub.

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Levittown and the rise of the American suburb

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It's a colorful fall day as Louise Cassano takes me on a walking tour of Levittown, New York. Trees with burnt-orange leaves line Elbow Lane, and I wonder aloud if the neighborhood has always been so heavily wooded. "No, no. These trees were sticks.

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What is McCarthyism and how did it happen?

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What is McCarthyism and how did it happen?

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What is McCarthyism And how did it happen - Ellen Schrecker

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You Will Love History

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The term McCarthyism described the practice of publicly accusing government employees of political disloyalty or subversive activities and using unsavory investigatory methods to prosecute them. The criticisms of McCarthyism, and of Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy (pictured here) in particular, are threefold. First, he ruined the reputations and lives of many people by accusing them without credible evidence. Second, he used accusations of communist sympathies to counterattack anyone who criticized his methods. And, third, he argued against freedom of speech because much of his rhetoric assumed that any discussion of the ideas underlying communism was dangerous and un-American. The U.S. Supreme Court has referenced McCarthyism in several of its First Amendment decisions.

McCarthyism was a term coined to describe activities associated with Republican senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin. He served in the Senate from 1947 to 1957.

McCarthyism described the practice of publicly accusing government employees of disloyalty

In the American political lexicon, the term has its origin in a March 1950, Washington Post editorial cartoon by Herbert Block, who depicted the four leading Republicans trying to push an elephant to stand on a teetering stack of 10 tar buckets. The topmost Republican in the cartoon was labeled "McCarthyism."

The term McCarthyism soon evolved to describe the practice of publicly accusing government employees of political disloyalty or subversive activities and using unsavory investigatory methods to prosecute them. The practice held sway between 1950 and 1954, a period of intense suspicion during which the U.S. government was actively engaged in countering Communism - in particular, the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA).

As evidenced by congressional passage of the Subversive Activities Control Act of 1950, which made up Title 1 of the Internal Security Act of 1950 (also called the McCarran Act), a majority of Congress also shared the belief that CPUSA constituted an active conspiracy that was secretive and loyal to a foreign power and dedicated to the clandestine infiltration of U.S. cultural and political institutions.

The Supreme Court's 6-2 decision in Dennis v. United States (1951) upholding the constitutionality of the convictions of CPUSA leaders Eugene Dennis, William Z. Foster, and ten others for advocating the violent overthrow of the U.S. government in many ways also lent constitutional support to this belief.

Ronald Reagan, actor and president of the Screen Actors Guild, listens to testimony at a public hearing of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, in 1947. Reagan, who was known for his strong anti-Communist stand, became President of the United States. The HUAC was one result of McCarthyism, the practice of publicly accusing government employees of political disloyalty or subversive activities and using unsavory investigatory methods to prosecute them. (AP Photo, used with permission from the Associated Press.)

Sen. Joseph McCarthy spearheaded investigations with little evidence

Although most scholars consider McCarthyism to be an outgrowth of the Palmer raids and the red scare of the 1920s and the Smith Act of 1940, which made it illegal to advocate, abet, or teach the desirability of overthrowing the U.S. government, it was for the most part synonymous with Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

As chair of the Senate Committee on Government Operations and the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, McCarthy spearheaded investigations of Communist Party members and sympathizers employed either in the U.S. government or by government contractors. Anti-McCarthyites would later refer to these congressional investigations as "witch hunts."

During his 10 years in the Senate, McCarthy and his staff gained notoriety for making outlandish accusations that, though initially directed to government employees, would later include Americans from all walks of life. Because he systematically engaged in the practice of public accusations of political disloyalty or subversion with little regard for evidence and the use of unfair investigatory methods, Senator McCarthy would later himself be accused of victimizing those who appeared before his committee and suppressing basic civil rights and liberties.

The men and women accused in both the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) hearings had little chance to exonerate themselves once their identities were revealed to the public. Simply being accused of Communist sympathies was sufficient to damage or end many careers, because those accused could not otherwise argue their innocence. The widespread persecution of Communists and Communist sympathizers began to abate only after Senator McCarthy's testimony in the so-called Army-McCarthy Hearings in 1954 produced an unfavorable backlash.

The men and women accused in both the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) hearings had little chance to exonerate themselves once their identities were revealed to the public. Simply being accused of Communist sympathies was sufficient to damage or end many careers, because those accused could not otherwise argue their innocence. In this photo, Brooklyn Dodgers' star Jackie Robinson speaks before the House Un-American Activities committee in 1949. Robinson was called to testify about the loyalty of blacks to the United States. (AP Photo/William J. Smith, used with permission from the United States)

Court put an end to McCarthyism

In 1957, the Supreme Court decision in Yates v. United States put an end to the Smith Act prosecutions by requiring that the government prove that a defendant actually took concrete steps toward the forcible overthrow of the government; merely advocating it in theory would not suffice. Because McCarthyism rested largely on smearing people's reputations and careers rather than presenting factual evidence that supported the allegations, the Yates decision effectively put an end to such a practice.

McCarthy ruined lives of innocent people

The criticisms of McCarthyism, and of Senator McCarthy in particular, are threefold.

First, he ruined the reputations and lives of many people by accusing them without credible evidence.

Second, he used accusations of Communist sympathies to counterattack anyone who criticized his methods.

And, third, he argued against freedom of speech because much of his rhetoric assumed that any discussion of the ideas underlying communism was dangerous and un-American.

The victims of McCarthyism - that is, those who were called by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and the House Un-American Activities Committee - were either denied employment in the private sector or failed government security checks. In the film industry alone, over three hundred actors, writers, and directors were denied work in the industry through the informal Hollywood blacklist, which prompted some to go into exile overseas.

From the viewpoint of McCarthy supporters, at the time it was essential to identify foreign agents and suppress "radical organizations." McCarthy and his followers believed subversive elements posed a danger to the national security of the country and so justified such extreme measures, even if they included the denial of civil liberties.

From the viewpoint of McCarthy supporters, at the time it was essential to identify foreign agents and suppress "radical organizations." McCarthy and his followers believed subversive elements posed a danger to the national security of the country and so justified such extreme measures, even if they included the denial of civil liberties. In this photo, men examine publications in Federal Courthouse in New York on March 12, 1957 where a subcommittee of the House of Un-American Activities Committee held a hearing. From left: Irving Fishman, Deputy Collector of Customs in New York, a witness before the committee; Richard Arens, director and counsel for the committee; and Gordon Scherer, a member of the U.S. House of Representative from Ohio. The subcommittee opened four days of hearings into the dissemination and sources of Communist propaganda. (AP Photo/John Rooney, used with permission from the Associated Press)

McCarthyism today means denying due process and civil liberties

Today, McCarthyism is synonymous with any perceived government activity that suppresses unfavorable political or social views by limiting or undermining vital civil rights and liberties under the pretext of maintaining national security. As understood, it is a means of government harassment that includes blacklisting with intent to pressure people to follow popular political beliefs. Thus anyone who makes insufficiently supported accusations or engages in unbalanced investigations against persons in an attempt to silence or discredit them is said to be practicing McCarthyism. This practice in effect represents both a denial of due process and a fundamental breach of civil liberties, thereby violating the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution.

The U.S. Supreme Court has referenced McCarthyism in several of its First Amendment decisions.For example, the Court explained in the library filtering decision, United States v. American Library Association (2003), that the American Library Association adopted its Library Bill of Rights in response to McCarthyism.

Justice William O. Douglas was a consistent critic of McCarthyism.He specifically criticized the phenomenon in his concurring opinion in the college student free-expression decision Healy v. James (1972) and in his concurring opinion in the political broadcasting decision Columbia Broadcasting System v. Democratic National Committee (1973).
This article was originally published in 2009. Dr. Marc G. Pufong is a specialist in Public Law and Professor of Politics, Public Law and Courts at Valdosta State University. Dr. Pufong's teaching interest and research focuses on constitutional law and judicial politics, international law and politics and human rights and conflicts. He is also co-author of three books including Georgia State Politics: The Constitutional Foundations, 7th edition (2016) with Lee M. Allen and Researching Constitutional Law, 4th edition (2013) with Albert P. Melone.
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The term McCarthyism described the practice of publicly accusing government employees of political disloyalty or subversive activities and using unsavory investigatory methods to prosecute them. The criticisms of McCarthyism, and of Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy (pictured here) in particular, are threefold. First, he ruined the reputations and lives of many people by accusing them without credible evidence.

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Mass hysteria has reared its ugly head for as long as humans have existed. Adolf Hitler worked enough people into a frenzy to justify the murder of millions of Jews. Jesus Christ, known by all as peaceful, if controversial, was brutally nailed to a cross because a few high-ranking officials felt threatened by him. Although one would hope that people would learn a lesson or two from the mistakes of the past, it seems that history, as the old cliché goes, is forever doomed to repeat itself.

Enter Senator Joseph McCarthy. While he may not have caused genocide or murdered a prophet, he was able to whip up hysteria in America in the early 1950s. McCarthy's issue of choice? Communism. The American Heritage Dictionary defines McCarthyism as "the political practice of publicizing accusations of disloyalty or subversion with insufficient regard to evidence."

Communism, in simple terms, is an economic system designed to equally benefit everyone in the society. The idea is that everyone contributes to the society and gets an equal share of property and goods. Communist systems are generally controlled by dictators and totalitarian governments -- think China, Cuba and North Korea.

By the '50s, communism wasn't exactly a new worry for the United States. In the aftermath of World War I, the country had experienced the First Red Scare ("red" is slang for communism). Russia had a new communist government as a result of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, and dictator Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin) had brutally slaughtered about 9 million of his people for resisting his ideals [source: The History Guide]. All of this upheaval upset Americans, so lawmakers decided to prevent the spread of communism to the United States by enforcing the Sedition Act and the Espionage Act. The First Red Scare was characterized by the ferocity with which the U.S. government identified and attacked suspected communists.

By the time McCarthy won a Senate seat in 1946, World War II was over and the Cold War was beginning. Communist governments had gained hold in Eastern Europe and China, and Americans were increasingly concerned about it -- and about rumors of high-ranking U.S. government officials who were secret communists. McCarthy took advantage of the mounting fear, but because it isn't actually illegal to be a communist, he started charging people with the act of subversion -- the "systematic attempt to overthrow or undermine a government or political system by persons working from within" [source: Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law]. Then he got to work prosecuting them for selling or giving American security secrets to communist governments.

In this article, you'll learn about the basics of communism, McCarthy's interview tactics, and recent evidence about the communist presence in the United States at the time of McCarthyism. You'll also learn about the impact of McCarthy's accusations on the lives of the accused, the country as a whole and his own family name.

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Mass hysteria has reared its ugly head for as long as humans have existed. Adolf Hitler worked enough people into a frenzy to justify the murder of millions of Jews. Jesus Christ, known by all as peaceful, if controversial, was brutally nailed to a cross because a few high-ranking officials felt threatened by him.

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Objective 8.9- Social Change in the Sixties

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Then and Now

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Segregation at All Costs Bull Connor and the Civil Rights Movement

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"There will be a day sometime in the near future when this guide will not have to be published. That is when we as a race will have equal opportunities and privileges in the United States. It will be a great day for us to suspend this publication for then we can go wherever we please, and without embarrassment."

That was how the authors of the "Negro Motorist Green Book" ended the introduction to their 1948 edition. In the pages that followed, they provided a rundown of hotels, guest houses, service stations, drug stores, taverns, barber shops and restaurants that were known to be safe ports of call for African American travelers. The "Green Book" listed establishments in segregationist strongholds such as Alabama and Mississippi, but its reach also extended from Connecticut to California-any place where its readers might face prejudice or danger because of their skin color. With Jim Crow still looming over much of the country, a motto on the guide's cover also doubled as a warning: "Carry your Green Book with you-You may need it."

Public Domain

First published in 1936, the Green Book was the brainchild of a Harlem-based postal carrier named Victor Hugo Green. Like most Africans Americans in the mid-20th century, Green had grown weary of the discrimination blacks faced whenever they ventured outside their neighborhoods. Rates of car ownership had exploded in the years before and after World War II, but the lure of the interstate was also fraught with risk for African Americans. "Whites Only" policies meant that black travelers often couldn't find safe places to eat and sleep, and so-called " Sundown Towns "-municipalities that banned blacks after dark-were scattered across the country. As the foreword of the 1956 edition of the Green Book noted, "the White traveler has had no difficulty in getting accommodations, but with the Negro it has been different."
READ MORE: Was Jim Crow A Real Person?
Inspired by earlier books published for Jewish audiences, Green developed a guide to help black Americans indulge in travel without fear. The first edition of his Green Book only covered hotels and restaurants in the New York area, but he soon expanded its scope by gathering field reports from fellow postal carriers and offering cash payments to readers who sent in useful information. By the early 1940s, the Green Book boasted thousands of establishments from across the country, all of them either black-owned or verified to be non-discriminatory. The 1949 guide encouraged hungry motorists passing through Denver to stop for a bite at the Dew Drop Inn. Those looking for a bar in the Atlanta area were told to try the Yeah Man, Sportsman's Smoke Shop or Butler's. In Richmond, Virginia, Rest-a-Bit was the go-to spot for a ladies' beauty parlor.

The Green Book's listings were organized by state and city, with the vast majority located in major metropolises such as Chicago and Detroit. More remote places had fewer options-Alaska only had a lone entry in the 1960 guide -but even in cities with no black-friendly hotels, the book often listed the addresses of home owners who were willing to rent rooms. In 1954, it suggested that visitors to tiny Roswell, New Mexico, should stay at the home of a Mrs. Mary Collins.
READ MORE: How Freedom Rider Diane Nash Risked Her Life to Desegregate the South
The Green Book wasn't the only handbook for black travelers-another publication called "Travelguide" was marketed with tagline "Vacation and Recreation Without Humiliation"-but it was by far the most popular. Thanks to a sponsorship deal with Standard Oil, the Green Book was available for purchase at Esso gas stations across the country. Though largely unknown to whites, it eventually sold upwards of 15,000 copies per year and was widely used by black business travelers and vacationers alike. In his memoir " A Colored Man's Journey Through 20th Century Segregated America," Earl Hutchinson Sr. described purchasing a copy in preparation for a road trip he and his wife took from Chicago to California. "The 'Green Book' was the bible of every Negro highway traveler in the 1950s and early 1960s," he wrote. "You literally didn't dare leave home without it."

As its popularity grew, the Green Book expanded from a motorists' companion to an international travel guide. Along with suggestions for the United States, later editions included information on airline and cruise ship journeys to places like Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, Africa and Europe. "We know a number of our race who have a long standing love affair with the tempestuous city of Paris," the 1962 Green Book noted. The guide also offered travel tips and feature articles on certain cities. The 1949 edition shined the spotlight on Robbins, Illinois, a town "owned and operated by Negroes." In 1954, readers were encouraged to visit San Francisco, which was described as "fast becoming the focal point of the Negroes' future."

In offering advice to its readers, the Green Book adopted a pleasant and encouraging tone. It usually avoided discussing racism in explicit terms-one article simply noted that "the Negro travelers' inconveniences are many"-but as the years passed it began to champion the achievements of the civil rights movement. In one of its last editions in 1963-64, it included a special "Your Rights, Briefly Speaking" feature that listed state statutes related to discrimination in travel accommodations. "The Negro is only demanding what everyone else wants," the article stressed, "what is guaranteed all citizens by the Constitution of the United States."
READ MORE: The Silent Protest That Kick-Started the Civil Rights Movement
Victor Hugo Green died in 1960 after more than two decades of publishing his travel guide. His wife Alma took over as editor and continued to release the Green Book in updated editions for a few more years, but just as Green had once hoped, the march of progress eventually helped push it toward obsolescence. In 1964, the Civil Rights Act finally banned racial segregation in restaurants, theaters, hotels, parks and other public places. Just two years later, the Green Book quietly ceased publication after nearly 30 years in print.

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The Green Book: The Black Travelers' Guide to Jim Crow America

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"There will be a day sometime in the near future when this guide will not have to be published. That is when we as a race will have equal opportunities and privileges in the United States. It will be a great day for us to suspend this publication for then we can go wherever we please, and without embarrassment."

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Objective 8.6- Civil Right Changes and Triumphs

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Editor's Note: Read The Atlantic's special coverage of Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy.

Image above: The riots in Detroit brought fires and looting. Three weeks after 43 people were killed in race riots in Detroit-the worst of the more than 150 urban riots during the "long hot summer" of 1967-King addressed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Atlanta. He delineated the causes of the violence, notably "the white backlash," black unemployment, racial discrimination, and the war in Vietnam.
A million words will be written and spoken to dissect the ghetto outbreaks, but for a perceptive and vivid expression of culpability I would submit two sentences written a century ago by Victor Hugo:

If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.

The policy makers of the white society have caused the darkness; they created discrimination; they created slums; they perpetuate unemployment, ignorance and poverty. It is incontestable and deplorable that Negroes have committed crimes; but they are derivative crimes. They are born of the greater crimes of the white society. When we ask Negroes to abide by the law, let us also declare that the white man does not abide by law in the ghettos. Day in and day out he violates welfare laws to deprive the poor of their meager allotments; he flagrantly violates building codes and regulations; his police make a mockery of law; he violates laws on equal employment and education and the provisions for civic services. The slums are the handiwork of a vicious system of the white society; Negroes live in them but do not make them any more than a prisoner makes a prison.

Let us say it boldly that if the total slum violations of law by the white man over the years were calculated and were compared with the lawbreaking of a few days of riots, the hardened criminal would be the white man.

After establishing the general cause of outbursts, it is possible to identify five immediate causes:

1. The white backlash.

2. Unemployment.

3. General discriminatory practices.

4. War.

5. Features peculiar to big cities: crime, family problems, and intensive migration.

I place the white backlash first because the outbursts have an emotional content that is a reaction to the insults and depravity of the white backlash. Many people point out that there have been years of some progress, and this is true. Yet equally true is the fact of an animalistic reaction by a significant section of the white population. In the midst of progress Negroes were being murdered in the South and cynical white jurors automatically freed the accused. In Chicago last year thousands of vicious white hoodlums with murder in their hearts bombarded Negroes with rocks and bottles because they dared to ask to be neighbors. The white backlash told Negroes that there were limits to their progress; that they must expect to remain permanently unequal and permanently poor. The white backlash said Negroes should not confuse improvements with equality. True equality, it said, will be resisted to the death. The so-called riots in a distorted and hysterical form were a Negro response that said inequality will now be resisted to the death.

The second major cause is unemployment because it furnishes the bulk of the shock troops. Government figures reveal that the rate of unemployment for Negroes runs as high as 15% in some cities-and for youth up to 30-40%! It is not accidental that the major actors in all the outbreaks were the youth. With most of their lives yet to live, the slamming of doors in their faces could be expected to induce rage and rebellion. This is especially true when a boastful nation, while neglecting them, gloats over its wealth, power and world pre-eminence. Yet almost 40% of Negro youth waste their barren lives standing on street corners.

I proposed that a national agency be established to immediately give employment to everyone needing it. Training should be done on the job, not separated from it and often without any guarantee of employment in which to use the training. Nothing is more socially inexcusable than unemployment in this age. In the thirties when the nation was bankrupt, it instituted such an agency, the W.P.A. In the present conditions of a nation glutted with resources it is barbarous to condemn people willing to work to soul-sapping inactivity and poverty.

I am convinced that one massive act of concern will do more than the most massive deployment of troops to quell riots and still hatreds. I am not convinced that the statesmanship exists in Washington to do it. Hugo could have been thinking of 20th century America when he said, "There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher classes."

The third cause is discrimination, which pervades all experiences of Negro life. It pushes the Negro off the economic ladder after he has ascended a few rungs. It stultifies his initiative and insults his being. Even the few Negroes who realize economic security do not attain respect and dignity, because on upper levels discrimination closes different doors to them.

Discrimination is a hell hound that gnaws at Negroes in every waking moment of their lives to remind them that the lie of their inferiority is accepted as truth in the society dominating them.

The fourth cause is the war in Vietnam. Negroes are not only conscripted in double measure for combat, but they are told the billions needed for remaking their lives are necessary for foreign intervention. Democracy at home is starved to seek a spurious democracy abroad. Dictators, oligarchies, are given our resources to perpetuate their rule at the rate of $80,000,000 per day, but we cannot afford to spend 10% of this on anti-poverty programs ...

To war against your own people, while warring against another nation, is the ultimate in political and social bankruptcy.

Finally, a complex of causes is found in the conditions of urban life. Crime is well organized in the cities and produces an underclass of great numbers. Rackets are the big business of the ghetto, with masses of employees. In any period of unrest they utilize conditions for advantage. Organized crime has a protected sanctuary in the slums, with police tolerance, if not connivance. It becomes a normal feature of life, poisoning the young and confounding the adult ...

Cities are also victims of the anarchic migrations of Negroes. Although everyone knew in the past decade that millions of Negroes would have to leave the land without schooling, no national planning was done to provide remedies. White immigrants in the 19th century were given free credit and land by the government. In the early 20th century a plethora of social agencies helped them to adjust to city life. The economy readily absorbed white workers into factories and trained them to skills. There were obstacles and privations for white immigrants but every step was upward; care and concern could be found.

When the Negro migrated he was substantially ignored or grossly exploited within a context of searing discrimination. He was left jobless and ignorant, despised and scorned as no other American minority has been ...

To list the causes is to structure the remedial program. A program is not, however, our problem. Our real problem is that there is no disposition by the [Johnson] Administration nor Congress to seek fundamental remedies beyond police measures. The tragic truth is that Congress, more than the American people, is now running amok with racism. We must devise the tactics, not to beg Congress for favors, but to create a situation in which they deem it wise and prudent to act with responsibility and decency.

Some people assert riots are just such a method. Perhaps it would be well to examine the nature of the outbreaks. They reveal in the first place that the time we have is shorter than many of us believed. Patience is running out and the intransigence and hostility of government-national, state and municipal-is aggravating grievances to explosive levels.

The riots are not simply a reign of terror or a splurge of crime, though both elements are partially present. They are also a wildly emotional protest and a desperate attempt to display the utter desperation that has engulfed many Negroes. The vast majority who actively participated were remarkably discriminating in avoiding harm to persons, venting their anger by appropriating or destroying property. There is an ironic purpose in this choice; to attack a society that appears to cherish property above people, the worst wounds to inflict on it are those to property.

The outbursts cannot be considered an insurrection, because insurrections are organized and can sustain themselves for more than a few days. The riots are powered by spontaneous bitter emotions and therefore die out rapidly.

Rolls Press / Popperfoto / Getty

We have not devised the tactics for urban slum reform. We spent ten years in the South using new tactics of nonviolence that were successful. But in the Northern cities, with time running out, we failed to achieve creative methods of work. As a result, a desperate, essentially leaderless mass of people acted with violence and without a program ...

There is probably no way, even eliminating violence, for Negroes to obtain their rights without upsetting the equanimity of white folks. All too many of them demand tranquility when they mean inequality ...

Related Stories

Nonviolent action in the South was effective because any form of social movement by Negroes upset the status quo. When Negroes merely marched in Southern streets it was close to rebellion. In the urban communities marches are less disquieting because they are not considered rebellions and secondly, because the normal turbulence of cities absorbs them as merely transitory drama which is ordinary in city life.
This excerpt appears in the special MLK issue print edition with its original title, "The Crisis in America's Cities." © 1967 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., © renewed 1995 Coretta Scott King. All works by Martin Luther King Jr. have been reprinted by arrangement with the Heirs to the Estate of Martin Luther King Jr., care of Writers House as agent for the proprietor, New York, New York.
To raise protest to an appropriate level for cities and to invest it with aggressive but nonviolent qualities, it is necessary to adopt civil disobedience. To dislocate the functioning of a city without destroying it can be more effective than a riot because it can be longer-lasting, costly to the society but not wantonly destructive. Moreover, it is more difficult for government to quell it by superior force. Mass civil disobedience can use rage as a constructive and creative force. It is purposeless to tell Negroes they should not be enraged when they should be.

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Editor's Note: Read The Atlantic's special coverage of Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy. Image above: The riots in Detroit brought fires and looting. Three weeks after 43 people were killed in race riots in Detroit-the worst of the more than 150 urban riots during the "long hot summer" of 1967-King addressed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Atlanta.

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Robert Kennedy Announcing the Death of MLK, Jr

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Robert Kennedy Announcing the Death of MLK, Jr

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Robert F Kennedy Announcing The Death Of Martin Luther King - A Great Speech

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You Will Love History

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The U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education marked a turning point in the history of race relations in the United States. On May 17, 1954, the Court stripped away constitutional sanctions for segregation by race, and made equal opportunity in education the law of the land.

Brown v. Board of Education reached the Supreme Court through the fearless efforts of lawyers, community activists, parents, and students. Their struggle to fulfill the American dream set in motion sweeping changes in American society, and redefined the nation's ideals.

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Separate Is Not Equal - Brown v. Board of Education

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The U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education marked a turning point in the history of race relations in the United States. On May 17, 1954, the Court stripped away constitutional sanctions for segregation by race, and made equal opportunity in education the law of the land.

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Landmark Cases explores the human stories and constitutional dramas behind some of the most significant and frequently cited decisions in the Supreme Court's history. This 12-part series delves into cases that represent some of the tipping points in our nation's story and in our evolving understanding of rights in America.

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In Griswold v. Connecticut, the Court identified a constitutionally protected right to privacy, which the court reasoned prohibited states from denying birth control to married couples. Above, a man protests outside a Planned Parenthood clinic in New Haven, Connecticut.

Reproduction courtesy of Corbis Images

Griswold v. Connecticut (1965)

In Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), the Supreme Court ruled that a state's ban on the use of contraceptives violated the right to marital privacy. The case concerned a Connecticut law that criminalized the encouragement or use of birth control. The 1879 law provided that "any person who uses any drug, medicinal article or instrument for the purposes of preventing conception shall be fined not less than forty dollars or imprisoned not less than sixty days." The law further provided that "any person who assists, abets, counsels, causes, hires or commands another to commit any offense may be prosecuted and punished as if he were the principle offender."

Estelle Griswold, the executive director of Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut, and Dr. C. Lee Buxton, doctor and professor at Yale Medical School, were arrested and found guilty as accessories to providing illegal contraception. They were fined $100 each. Griswold and Buxton appealed to the Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut, claiming that the law violated the U.S. Constitution. The Connecticut court upheld the conviction, and Griswold and Buxton appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which reviewed the case in 1965.

The Supreme Court, in a 7-2 decision written by Justice William O. Douglas, ruled that the law violated the "right to marital privacy" and could not be enforced against married people. Justice Douglas contended that the Bill of Right's specific guarantees have "penumbras," created by "emanations from these guarantees that help give them life and opinion." In other words, the "spirit" of the First Amendment (free speech), Third Amendment (prohibition on the forced quartering of troops), Fourth Amendment (freedom from searches and seizures), Fifth Amendment (freedom from self-incrimination), and Ninth Amendment (other rights), as applied against the states by the Fourteenth Amendment, creates a general " right to privacy" that cannot be unduly infringed.

Further, this right to privacy is "fundamental" when it concerns the actions of married couples, because it "is of such a character that it cannot be denied without violating those fundamental principles of liberty and justice which lie at the base of our civil and political institutions." Because a married couple's use of contraception constitutes a "fundamental" right, Connecticut must prove to the Court that its law is "compelling" and "absolutely necessary" to overcome that right (i.e., the "strict scrutiny test"). Because Connecticut failed to prove this, the law was struck down as applied.

Other justices, while agreeing that marital privacy is a "fundamental right" and that the Connecticut law should be struck down, disagreed with Justice Douglas as to where in the Constitution such a "fundamental right" exists. In his concurrence, Justice Arthur Goldberg argued that the Ninth Amendment, which states that the Bill of Rights does not exhaust all the rights contained by the people, allows the Court to find the "fundamental right to marital privacy" without having to ground it in a specific constitutional amendment. In another concurrence, Justice John Marshall Harlan II maintained that a "fundamental right to marital privacy" exists only because marital privacy has traditionally been protected by American society. Finally, in yet another concurrence, Justice Byron White argued that a fundamental right to marital privacy constitutes a liberty under the Due Process Clause, and is protected by the Fourteenth Amendment against the states.

Yet, for all their differences, the majority in Griswold v. Connecticut agreed that the "right to privacy," in addition to being "fundamental," was " substantive." In West Coast Hotel v. Parrish (1937), the Court had rejected the idea that the Constitution protects "substantive rights," i.e., protects certain activities from government interference that are not explicitly mentioned in the Bill of Rights. In Griswold, however, it ruled that "substantive rights" do exist in non-economic areas like "the right to privacy," even if they do not in economic activities like the right to contract. Over the next 10 years, the Court expanded this fundamental, substantive "right to privacy" beyond the marital bedroom, ruling that the state could not ban the use of contraceptives by anyone (Eisenstadt v. Baird [1972]), and that the state could not ban most abortions ( Roe v. Wade [1973]).

AUTHOR'S BIO

Alex McBride is a third year law student at Tulane Law School in New Orleans. He is articles editor on the TULANE LAW REVIEW and the 2005 recipient of the Ray Forrester Award in Constitutional Law. In 2007, Alex will be clerking with Judge Susan Braden on the United States Court of Federal Claims in Washington.

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The Supreme Court . Expanding Civil Rights . Landmark Cases . Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) | PBS

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In Griswold v. Connecticut, the Court identified a constitutionally protected right to privacy, which the court reasoned prohibited states from denying birth control to married couples. Above, a man protests outside a Planned Parenthood clinic in New Haven, Connecticut. Reproduction courtesy of Corbis Images Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) In Griswold v.

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Fifty years later, Mary Beth Tinker looks back at her small act of courage and the Supreme Court case that followed

smithsonian.com

In the late 1965, the evening news blared with news of the U.S. engagement in Vietnam, disheartening a 13-year-old Mary Beth Tinker as she ate dinner with her family. The month prior, Mary Beth's 15-year-old brother, John, and his friend Christopher Eckhardt marched against the war in Washington, D.C. Back in Iowa, the boys thought their small circle of peace supporters were alone in the anti-war fight. But in Washington, they became inspired by the support they felt from the thousands of other Americans in attendance. The boys carried that confidence home to Des Moines, and come December, Eckhardt and the Tinker siblings discussed how they could take their stand against what they saw as an unjust war.

The plan: Wear black armbands to school in peaceful protest. Their school board promptly banned the wearing of armbands and suspended the students when they disobeyed the directive. Though simple, the young adults' actions would cascade into what became "one of the seminal cases in constitutional law in American history" in the words of constitutional scholar David Hudson. The so-called "Tinker Test," established 50 years ago when the United States Supreme Court ruled in Tinker v. Des Moines, forever changed the legality of school protest, for better and for worse.

The students gleaned inspiration from a group of college students and adults who had gathered in the Eckhardt family home to discuss ways Iowans could advocate for peace in Vietnam. The next day, word of the peaceful protest plan spread to a high school Liberal Religious Youth group gathered at the Eckhardt's, and later, to the Tinker siblings. Wearing black armbands, as had been done to mourn the children murdered in the Birmingham church bombing, became the course of action. Soon, the principals of the Des Moines schools the students attended received word of the protest and hastily moved to ban black armbands from school premises. Yet, seven students - including Mary Beth, John and Chris - carried on and five were suspended, the youngest being Mary Beth.

"I had no idea our small action would lead to something so consequential," Mary Beth now says.

News of their protest spread and retribution came swiftly. Red paint was tossed across the Tinker's driveway, and a local talk show host encouraged people to attack family patriarch Leonard Tinker. Soon, individuals from the Iowa branch of the American Civil Liberties Union offered legal aid to the families, citing that they could sue the Des Moines school district for violating their First Amendment rights to free speech. The initial case, argued before the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa, did not end in their favor. Judge Roy Stephenson acknowledged the students' expression was a "symbolic act" protected by the First Amendment, but argued that it should not surpass the school's concern for "the disciplined atmosphere of the classroom." The appeal to the U.S. Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals went no better. The eight judges were evenly divided 4-4 in their decision, upholding the lower court's ruling, and pushing the students' attorneys to file a writ of certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court in a last effort to prevail.

On November 12, 1968, the case of Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District came before the Supreme Court. Though preoccupied by the continuing quagmire in Vietnam, with more than 16,000 American troops killed that year alone, the Tinker family was eager for a resolution to their case. Before the justices, Dan Johnston, a lawyer working with the ACLU, argued that the balance between a school's effort to maintain discipline and the right of increasingly politicized students to voice their opinions was " not an isolated problem... And we suggest that this case provides a good context for the Court to provide guidance..."

Three months later, on February 24, 1969, the court ruled 7-2 in favor of the students, with Justice Abe Fortas writing in the decision, " It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate." He added, "In our system, state-operated schools may not be enclaves of totalitarianism... [students] are possessed of fundamental rights which the State must respect, just as they themselves must respect their obligations to the State. In our system, students may not be regarded as closed-circuit recipients of only that which the State chooses to communicate."

Hudson, a law professor at the Nashville School of Law and author of Let the Students Speak!: A History of the Fight for Free Expression in American Schools, says of the Tinker case, "It's hard to overstate its importance." Since 1969, the decision has been cited as precedent in practically every case having to do with free speech for public school students. And while it appeared to be a First Amendment triumph, a win for public school students across the nation, in practice, it's been interpreted in many unexpected ways.

In defending the students' rights, the seven justices pointed to a 1966 lower court decision: Burnside v. Byars. In that case, a group of Mississippi students wore "freedom buttons" to school in 1964, and school authorities hastily threw together a rule banning the protest. At the time, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled it was unreasonable to believe "the mere presence of 'freedom buttons' is calculated to cause a disturbance sufficient to warrant their exclusion from school premises..." Thus began the age of "substantial disruption."

First suggested in Burnside and later codified in Tinker, substantial disruption asks schools to determine whether a student protest causes enough of an impediment to learning to merit discipline. The Tinker ruling established what is commonly referred to as the "Tinker test," a barometer to measure student speech against. However, the only concrete standard established by the "Tinker Test," was that passively wearing armbands alone was not substantial enough. This left walk-outs, signs, sit-ins and other forms of speech up for debate.

The Tinker case also laid the groundwork for "reasonable forecast." In order to implement disciplinary actions, Hudson says, "Public-school officials don't have to wait for an actual riot or wide-scale disruption. They can point to specific facts that certain expression will cause substantial disruption." In other words, public schools can legally prohibit student speech, if they have reason to believe substantial disruption will result.

In March 2018, the ACLU cited Tinker to argue a Georgia school unconstitutionally suspended student Amari Ewing, who walked out of school in protest of gun violence. The usual punishment for such offense was a one-day, in-school suspension. Ewing was suspended for five days. In a letter to the school district, the ACLU wrote, "It is hardly clear how Amari's leaving school during the break between classes without fanfare has caused a material and substantial disruption to school. If you have such evidence, we ask that you provide it immediately. Absent such evidence, the school's overreaction to Amari's expression appears to be nothing more than 'an urgent wish to avoid the controversy which might result from the expression.'" Eventually, according to the ACLU of Georgia, Ewing's suspension was reduced to an amount all parties agreed was acceptable.

The ACLU sued the Shawnee Mission School District in Kansas on behalf of students who allege their school prohibited them from mentioning "gun violence" during a planned anti-gun violence protest. The Shawnee Mission School District is also accused of stopping student journalists from covering the event and even cancelling a student rally altogether.

The ambiguous nature of student speech rights has universal impact. Madison Oster, who walked out of her Illinois school in support of gun rights in March, is similarly suing her school district for censoring her free speech. Oster alleges the school "selectively bann[ed] her viewpoint" by initially insisting she and her fellow gun supporters stage their protest near the school's front door, far from where the crowd of anti-gun violence protesters demonstrated on the football field, and keeping them "out of everyone else's sight or hearing."

This is just a sampling of instances when students felt their freedom of speech has been impeded. Even more are argued outside the court house, as schools negotiate their own limits of "reasonable forecast" and "substantial disruption." With the power to define these terms, schools can also redefine them and over-discipline students. While up for interpretation, the Tinker test still requires schools provide adequate proof of disruption. And, still "in our system, state-operated schools may not be enclaves of totalitarianism."

Today, celebration around youth activism is abundant. Mary Beth's protest will be honored in a 2020 exhibit at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History that focuses on the ways young girls have forever been on the frontlines of change.

"We tend to think about childhood as something that is isolated and pristine," exhibit curator Nancy Bercaw says. "We think that girls are sugar and spice and everything nice. But all along major government policies have come from girls' actions, like Mary Beth's."

Five years ago, Mary Beth left her career as a family nurse practitioner. "Young people aren't going to have optimal health until they have the rights to speak up about their status," she realized and started the Tinker Tour. She travels the country stopping at schools and teacher colleges, encouraging others to speak out for their passions.

"I show them that they can be a part of history and democracy," she says. "And when you are, life becomes very interesting, meaningful and somedays even fun. History is going to be made one way or another, and they could have a part in making it. They should and they deserve to."

Mary Beth believes we are living in "mighty times," similar to the ones of her youth. To her, the voices of the current generation are vital. These new voices value Mary Beth's too. Last February, March for Our Lives activist Emma González said in a speech, "We are going to be the kids you read about in textbooks... Just like Tinker v. Des Moines, we are going to change the law.... it's going to be due to the tireless effort of the school board, the faculty members, the family members and most of all the students."

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The Young Anti-War Activists Who Fought for Free Speech at School

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smithsonian.com In the late 1965, the evening news blared with news of the U.S. engagement in Vietnam, disheartening a 13-year-old Mary Beth Tinker as she ate dinner with her family. The month prior, Mary Beth's 15-year-old brother, John, and his friend Christopher Eckhardt marched against the war in Washington, D.C.

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You Will Love History

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Objective 9.2 - Nixon and Vietnamization

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The Little Rock Nine Explained: US History Review

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60 years later

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The pictures have since become iconic: Elizabeth Eckford walking stoically as a white mob jeers and shouts at her; Terrence Roberts and Carlotta Walls LaNier clutching textbooks under the cover of armed soldiers; Minnijean Brown arriving at Little Rock Central High School, escorted by the 101st Division of the Airborne Command.

The Southern Poverty Law Center attended a ceremony at the high school to commemorate the 60th anniversary of its integration by the Little Rock Nine.

"I feel like I'm visiting a religious shrine," said Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., speaking in the school's auditorium Monday. "And if this is a shrine, ladies and gentlemen, these are the saints."

The surviving members of the Little Rock Nine addressed the high school's current students on the occasion of their first full day of class 60 years ago. By Sept. 25, 1957, they had withstood mobs, a hostile governor and the Arkansas National Guard in one of the most iconic struggles of the civil rights movement.

"The integration of Central High was so early in the civil rights movement, it was before many of the counter sit-ins. It was before the [Freedom] bus rides," said Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson. "That fact gives us all an even greater appreciation for the lonely steps of the Little Rock Nine."

But members of the Little Rock Nine say they see activists today taking steps just as lonely.

"Emmett Till turns to Heather Heyer in Charlottesville protesting Nazis," said Ernest Green, one of the Little Rock Nine. "Muhammad Ali turns to Colin Kaepernick taking a knee for injustice. And the Little Rock Nine turns to the Charleston Nine, who gave the ultimate sacrifice for peaceably assembling in a church."

Almost every member of the Little Rock Nine was quick to warn those in attendance at the ceremony that the march for justice is far from over.

"Today we have [president] number 45, who behind the scenes and through his Twitter account, we become as we were 60 years ago - anxious and worried and concerned about what lies ahead," said LaNier.

Nor was she the only dignitary to reference President Trump. Former President Bill Clinton, an Arkansas native, acknowledged the disparity between the ceremony in Little Rock and Trump's rally in Alabama, a rally where Trump referred to a hypothetical football player kneeling during the national anthem as a "son of a bitch."

"I heard that rally down in Alabama, I thought, 'Oh my God, I gotta come look at the Little Rock Nine,'" Clinton said. "They're down there talking in ways you haven't heard since George Corley Wallace, the governor of Alabama, and again - they've forgotten the history."

Trump's comments exposed a selective patriotism, one that allows him to vilify black athletes who have the temerity to protest, but see "very fine people" among the neo-Nazis and white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville.

"We don't want to go back there. We don't want to give in to hate," Clinton said. "Are we really going to let the 200 years of our struggle to get over the idea that our differences are more important than our common humanity just be blown away?"

Clearly, 60 years after the Little Rock Nine overcame massive resistance to integrate an Arkansas high school, the country is reeling from the bigotry and hatred once again given a voice by President Trump.

Today, as in the 1960s, it is easy for some Americans to see any disruption of the status quo as going "too far." Peaceful protestors have long been asked to silence their concerns and patiently wait for justice, but it has been through bravely pushing forward with such protest that justice has been won. As LaNier reminded those in attendance, "In the words of the old Negro spiritual, 'We have come too far to turn back now.'"

The Editors.

P.S. Here are some other pieces we think are valuable this week:
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Weekend Read: The Little Rock Nine - and America - 60 years later

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The pictures have since become iconic: Elizabeth Eckford walking stoically as a white mob jeers and shouts at her; Terrence Roberts and Carlotta Walls LaNier clutching textbooks under the cover of armed soldiers; Minnijean Brown arriving at Little Rock Central High School, escorted by the 101st Division of the Airborne Command.

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You've probably seen the photo: a young African-American girl walks to school, her eyes shielded by sunglasses. She is surrounded by a hateful crowd of angry white people, including a girl caught mid-jeer, her teeth bared and her face hardened with anger. It's one of the most famous images of the civil rights era, but it turns out that the story of the young women in the photo is even more complicated than the racial drama their faces portray.

Hazel Bryan was just 15 when the photo was taken, but her actions on September 4, 1957-and the hatred on her face-turned her into an infamous symbol of the bigotry of Jim Crow and the intolerance faced by the students who tried to go to school that day.

It was the first day of school in Little Rock, Arkansas, and Elizabeth Eckford, also 15 and the girl Bryan was screaming at, was headed to class at Little Rock Central High School. That fact alone was anything but normal: Eckford and eight other black students were recruits sent to the all-white school to test Arkansas' supposed intention to integrate its schools.

Three years earlier, the Supreme Court ruled the segregation of public schools unconstitutional. But in a South ruled by the brutality of Jim Crow, many whites clung to segregation. Like other Southern states, Arkansas dragged its feet, and when the Supreme Court tried to force integration with a second landmark decision, the Little Rock school board decided it would integrate its schools over a period of many years.

Technically, Little Rock Central High School was to be the first to integrate. Eckford and her fellow black students were entitled to attend Central High under the law, but city officials gerrymandered the district in a way that would have forced the majority of black students to attend a different school than whites. The NAACP decided to defy those rules and desegregate Central High on its own. The group recruited students, then registered them at the school.

But on the first day of school, a mob of furious white people assembled to make sure they couldn't get in. The black students had trained for this moment. But nothing could prepare Eckford for the screaming, taunting crowd that surrounded the school. They called out for her to be lynched and yelled slogans like "Two, four, six eight, we don't want to integrate!" In the midst of the horde, reporters and photojournalists recorded the chaos.

Women in the crowd "shrieked in spasms, as tears flowed down their cheeks," wrote one reporter. Screams of obscenities and slurs echoed through Eckford's ears. A group of girls-including Bryan- "started to shriek and wail" as Eckford passed and headed toward the school. As she clutched a folder, trying to move forward, Bryan screamed at her and told her to "go back to Africa."

Eckford and the rest of the Nine never made it into school that day. Acting on the orders of Governor Orville Faubus, Arkansas National Guardsmen stopped her at the door and she was chased away from the school by the mob. Later that month, after President Dwight Eisenhower intervened, Eckford and the other eight students went back to school escorted by members of the 101st Airborne and were finally allowed in.

The day after the incident, the photograph, taken by photojournalist Will Counts, ran on the front page of the Arkansas Democrat. It, and a similar wire photo taken by another photographer, quickly spread throughout the country. When Bryan received disapproving mail, her parents pulled her from the school.

Meanwhile, Eckford endured constant harassment and hatred inside the school she had helped integrate. She was spat upon, punched, hit with eggs and vegetables and faced with a barrage of slurs and insults all year long. Though Eckford managed to finish the school year, the bigots of Little Rock could not abide another year with integrated schools. Rather than repeat integration the next year, they shut down schools altogether.

But though Little Rock's schools reopened-and finally integrated-the year after, the story didn't end there. When Eckford, who moved to St. Louis soon after, visited Little Rock at age 21, she received a call from Bryan, who apologized. Then they went their separate ways again.

Eckford stayed silent about her ordeals for years and suffered from depression and trauma throughout her adult life. Bryan spent years atoning on her own, learning about the civil rights movement and becoming more racially conscious. In 1997, Will Counts, the photographer whose iconic shot was by then considered a defining document of a moment in the struggle for black equality in the United States, arranged for the two to meet in person. Forty years after Bryan screamed at Eckford, they reunited, reconciled and became friends.

Or did they? After a brief, warm friendship that saw them attend events and seminars together and even pose for a poster entitled "Reconciliation" that featured a modern-day photo of the pair outside Little Rock Central, their paths split again when they realized they could not truly reconcile. "True reconciliation can occur only when we honestly acknowledge our painful, but shared past," said Eckford.

Though both Hazel Bryan-now Massey-and Elizabeth Eckford are still alive, it's unclear if they will find that reconciliation during their lifetimes. Their journey from enemies to friends to tense acquaintances is a reminder of the lasting effects of America's history, just as the photograph of two diametrically opposed girls shows just how far the nation has come.

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The Story Behind the Famous Little Rock Nine 'Scream Image'

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You've probably seen the photo: a young African-American girl walks to school, her eyes shielded by sunglasses. She is surrounded by a hateful crowd of angry white people, including a girl caught mid-jeer, her teeth bared and her face hardened with anger.

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Reading with Questions

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Vietnam War protests began small among peace activists and leftist intellectuals on college campuses but gained national prominence in 1965, after the United States began bombing North Vietnam in earnest. Anti-war marches and other protests, such as the ones organized by Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), attracted a widening base of support over the next three years, peaking in early 1968 after the successful Tet Offensive by North Vietnamese troops proved that war's end was nowhere in sight.

Vietnam War Protests: The Beginnings of a Movement

In August 1964, North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked two U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin, and President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered the retaliatory bombing of military targets in North Vietnam. And by the time U.S. planes began regular bombings of North Vietnam in February 1965, some critics had begun to question the government's assertion that it was fighting a democratic war to liberate the South Vietnamese people from Communist aggression.

Did you know? Boxer Muhammad Ali was one prominent American who resisted being drafted into service during the Vietnam War. Ali, then heavyweight champion of the world, declared himself a "conscientious objector," earning a prison sentence (later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court) and a three-year ban from boxing.

The anti-war movement began mostly on college campuses, as members of the leftist organization Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) began organizing "teach-ins" to express their opposition to the way in which it was being conducted. Though the vast majority of the American population still supported the administration policy in Vietnam, a small but outspoken liberal minority was making its voice heard by the end of 1965. This minority included many students as well as prominent artists and intellectuals and members of the hippie movement, a growing number of young people who rejected authority and embraced the drug culture.

Widespread Disillusionment

By November 1967, American troop strength in Vietnam was approaching 500,000 and U.S. casualties had reached 15,058 killed and 109,527 wounded. The Vietnam War was costing the U.S. some $25 billion per year, and disillusionment was beginning to reach greater sections of the taxpaying public. More casualties were reported in Vietnam every day, even as U.S. commanders demanded more troops. Under the draft system, as many as 40,000 young men were called into service each month, adding fuel to the fire of the anti-war movement.

On October 21, 1967, one of the most prominent anti-war demonstrations took place, as some 100,000 protesters gathered at the Lincoln Memorial; around 30,000 of them continued in a march on the Pentagon later that night. After a brutal confrontation with the soldiers and U.S. Marshals protecting the building, hundreds of demonstrators were arrested. One of them was the author Norman Mailer, who chronicled the events in his book "The Armies of the Night," published the following year to widespread acclaim.

Also in 1967, the anti-war movement got a big boost when the civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. went public with his opposition to the war on moral grounds, condemning the war's diversion of federal funds from domestic programs as well as the disproportionate number of African American casualties in relation to the total number of soldiers killed in the war. At a march of over 5,000 protestors in Chicago, Illinois on March 25, 1967, Martin Luther King called the Vietnam War "a blasphemy against all that America stands for."

Vietnam War Protest Songs

The Vietnam War protest inspired many popular songs that became an anthem for their generation. Phil Ochs wrote "What Are You Fighting For?" in 1963 and "I Ain't Marching Anymore" in 1965. Other songs whose very titles were a protest unto themselves included Pete Seeger's "Bring 'Em Home" (1966) and Joan Baez's "Saigon Bride" (1967). Nina Simone's "Backlash Blues" (1967) took a civil rights poem by Langston Hughes and adapted it into a protest of Vietnam: "Raise my taxes/Freeze my wages/Send my son to Vietnam." Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On?" from 1971 went on to be one of the most popular songs of all time.

John Lennon's first song after leaving the Beatles, "Give Peace a Chance," hit airwaves in 1966. " Imagine," from 1971, has transcended the Vietnam era to continue to be a song of peace and unity.

Political Consequences of Vietnam War Protests

The launch of the Tet Offensive by North Vietnamese communist troops in January 1968, and its success against U.S. and South Vietnamese troops, sent waves of shock and discontent across the home front and sparked the most intense period of anti-war protests to date. By early February 1968, a Gallup poll showed only 35 percent of the population approved of Johnson's handling of the war and a full 50 percent disapproved (the rest had no opinion). Joining the anti-war demonstrations by this time were members of the organization Vietnam Veterans Against the War, many of whom were in wheelchairs and on crutches. The sight of these men on television throwing away the medals they had won during the war did much to win people over to the anti-war cause.

After many New Hampshire primary voters rallied behind the anti-war Democrat Eugene McCarthy, Johnson announced that he would not seek reelection. Vice President Hubert Humphrey accepted the Democratic nomination in August in Chicago, and 10,000 anti-war demonstrators showed up outside the convention building, clashing with security forces assembled by Mayor Richard Daley. Humphrey lost the 1968 presidential election to Richard M. Nixon, who promised in his campaign to restore "law and order"-a reference to conflict over anti-war protests as well as the rioting that followed King's assassination in 1968-more effectively than Johnson had.

The following year, Nixon claimed in a famous speech that anti-war protesters constituted a small-albeit vocal-minority that should not be allowed to drown out the "silent majority" of Americans. Nixon's war policies divided the nation still further, however: In December 1969, the government instituted the first U.S. draft lottery since World War II, inciting a vast amount of controversy and causing many young men to flee to Canada to avoid conscription. Tensions ran higher than ever, spurred on by mass demonstrations and incidents of official violence such those at Kent State in May 1970, when National Guard troops shot into a group of protesters demonstrating against the U.S. invasion of Cambodia, killing four students.

In mid-1971, the publication of the first Pentagon Papers -which revealed previously confidential details about the war's conduct-caused more and more Americans to question the accountability of the U.S. government and military establishments. In response to a strong anti-war mandate, Nixon announced the effective end to U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia in January 1973. The Paris Peace Agreement was signed on January 27, 1973.

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The Vietnam War protests began small-among peace activists and leftist intellectuals on college campuses-but gained national prominence in 1965, after the United States began bombing North Vietnam in earnest. Learn how and why young Americans and seasoned veterans protested the war and the consequences of their actions.

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The Vietnam War was a long, costly and divisive conflict that pitted the communist government of North Vietnam against South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. The conflict was intensified by the ongoing Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. More than 3 million people (including over 58,000 Americans) were killed in the Vietnam War, and more than half of the dead were Vietnamese civilians. Opposition to the war in the United States bitterly divided Americans, even after President Richard Nixon ordered the withdrawal of U.S. forces in 1973. Communist forces ended the war by seizing control of South Vietnam in 1975, and the country was unified as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam the following year.

Roots of the Vietnam War

Vietnam, a nation in Southeast Asia on the eastern edge of the Indochinese peninsula, had been under French colonial rule since the 19th century.

During World War II, Japanese forces invaded Vietnam. To fight off both Japanese occupiers and the French colonial administration, political leader Ho Chi Minh -inspired by Chinese and Soviet communism-formed the Viet Minh, or the League for the Independence of Vietnam.

Following its 1945 defeat in World War II, Japan withdrew its forces from Vietnam, leaving the French-educated Emperor Bao Dai in control. Seeing an opportunity to seize control, Ho's Viet Minh forces immediately rose up, taking over the northern city of Hanoi and declaring a Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) with Ho as president.

Seeking to regain control of the region, France backed Emperor Bao and set up the state of Vietnam in July 1949, with the city of Saigon as its capital.

Both sides wanted the same thing: a unified Vietnam. But while Ho and his supporters wanted a nation modeled after other communist countries, Bao and many others wanted a Vietnam with close economic and cultural ties to the West.

Did you know? According to a survey by the Veterans Administration, some 500,000 of the 3 million troops who served in Vietnam suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, and rates of divorce, suicide, alcoholism and drug addiction were markedly higher among veterans.

When Did the Vietnam War Start?

The Vietnam War and active U.S. involvement in the war began in 1954, though ongoing conflict in the region had stretched back several decades.

After Ho's communist forces took power in the north, armed conflict between northern and southern armies continued until a decisive battle at Dien Bien Phu in May 1954 ended in victory for northern Viet Minh forces. The French loss at the battle ended almost a century of French colonial rule in Indochina.

The subsequent treaty signed in July 1954 at a Geneva conference split Vietnam along the latitude known as the 17th Parallel (17 degrees north latitude), with Ho in control in the North and Bao in the South. The treaty also called for nationwide elections for reunification to be held in 1956.

In 1955, however, the strongly anti-communist politician Ngo Dinh Diem pushed Emperor Bao aside to become president of the Government of the Republic of Vietnam (GVN), often referred to during that era as South Vietnam.

The Viet Cong

With the Cold War intensifying worldwide, the United States hardened its policies against any allies of the Soviet Union, and by 1955 President Dwight D. Eisenhower had pledged his firm support to Diem and South Vietnam.

With training and equipment from American military and the CIA, Diem's security forces cracked down on Viet Minh sympathizers in the south, whom he derisively called Viet Cong (or Vietnamese Communist), arresting some 100,000 people, many of whom were brutally tortured and executed.

By 1957, the Viet Cong and other opponents of Diem's repressive regime began fighting back with attacks on government officials and other targets, and by 1959 they had begun engaging the South Vietnamese army in firefights.

In December 1960, Diem's many opponents within South Vietnam-both communist and non-communist-formed the National Liberation Front (NLF) to organize resistance to the regime. Though the NLF claimed to be autonomous and that most of its members were not communists, many in Washington assumed it was a puppet of Hanoi.

Domino Theory

A team sent by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 to report on conditions in South Vietnam advised a build-up of American military, economic and technical aid in order to help Diem confront the Viet Cong threat.

Working under the " domino theory," which held that if one Southeast Asian country fell to communism, many other countries would follow, Kennedy increased U.S. aid, though he stopped short of committing to a large-scale military intervention.

By 1962, the U.S. military presence in South Vietnam had reached some 9,000 troops, compared with fewer than 800 during the 1950s.

Gulf of Tonkin

A coup by some of his own generals succeeded in toppling and killing Diem and his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, in November 1963, three weeks before Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.

The ensuing political instability in South Vietnam persuaded Kennedy's successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to further increase U.S. military and economic support.

In August of 1964, after DRV torpedo boats attacked two U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin, Johnson ordered the retaliatory bombing of military targets in North Vietnam. Congress soon passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which gave Johnson broad war-making powers, and U.S. planes began regular bombing raids, codenamed Operation Rolling Thunder, the following year.

In March 1965, Johnson made the decision-with solid support from the American public-to send U.S. combat forces into battle in Vietnam. By June, 82,000 combat troops were stationed in Vietnam, and military leaders were calling for 175,000 more by the end of 1965 to shore up the struggling South Vietnamese army.

Despite the concerns of some of his advisers about this escalation, and about the entire war effort amid a growing anti-war movement, Johnson authorized the immediate dispatch of 100,000 troops at the end of July 1965 and another 100,000 in 1966. In addition to the United States, South Korea, Thailand, Australia and New Zealand also committed troops to fight in South Vietnam (albeit on a much smaller scale).

William Westmoreland

In contrast to the air attacks on North Vietnam, the U.S.-South Vietnamese war effort in the south was fought primarily on the ground, largely under the command of General William Westmoreland, in coordination with the government of General Nguyen Van Thieu in Saigon.

Westmoreland pursued a policy of attrition, aiming to kill as many enemy troops as possible rather than trying to secure territory. By 1966, large areas of South Vietnam had been designated as "free-fire zones," from which all innocent civilians were supposed to have evacuated and only enemy remained. Heavy bombing by B-52 aircraft or shelling made these zones uninhabitable, as refugees poured into camps in designated safe areas near Saigon and other cities.

Even as the enemy body count (at times exaggerated by U.S. and South Vietnamese authorities) mounted steadily, DRV and Viet Cong troops refused to stop fighting, encouraged by the fact that they could easily reoccupy lost territory with manpower and supplies delivered via the Ho Chi Minh Trail through Cambodia and Laos. Additionally, supported by aid from China and the Soviet Union, North Vietnam strengthened its air defenses.

Vietnam War Protests

By November 1967, the number of American troops in Vietnam was approaching 500,000, and U.S. casualties had reached 15,058 killed and 109,527 wounded. As the war stretched on, some soldiers came to mistrust the government's reasons for keeping them there, as well as Washington's repeated claims that the war was being won.

The later years of the war saw increased physical and psychological deterioration among American soldiers-both volunteers and draftees-including drug use, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), mutinies and attacks by soldiers against officers and noncommissioned officers.

Between July 1966 and December 1973, more than 503,000 U.S. military personnel deserted, and a robust anti-war movement among American forces spawned violent protests, killings and mass incarcerations of personnel stationed in Vietnam as well as within the United States.

Bombarded by horrific images of the war on their televisions, Americans on the home front turned against the war as well: In October 1967, some 35,000 demonstrators staged a massive Vietnam War protest outside the Pentagon. Opponents of the war argued that civilians, not enemy combatants, were the primary victims and that the United States was supporting a corrupt dictatorship in Saigon.

Tet Offensive

By the end of 1967, Hanoi's communist leadership was growing impatient as well, and sought to strike a decisive blow aimed at forcing the better-supplied United States to give up hopes of success.

On January 31, 1968, some 70,000 DRV forces under General Vo Nguyen Giap launched the Tet Offensive (named for the lunar new year), a coordinated series of fierce attacks on more than 100 cities and towns in South Vietnam.

Taken by surprise, U.S. and South Vietnamese forces nonetheless managed to strike back quickly, and the communists were unable to hold any of the targets for more than a day or two.

Reports of the Tet Offensive stunned the U.S. public, however, especially after news broke that Westmoreland had requested an additional 200,000 troops, despite repeated assurances that victory in the Vietnam War was imminent. With his approval ratings dropping in an election year, Johnson called a halt to bombing in much of North Vietnam (though bombings continued in the south) and promised to dedicate the rest of his term to seeking peace rather than reelection.

Johnson's new tack, laid out in a March 1968 speech, met with a positive response from Hanoi, and peace talks between the U.S. and North Vietnam opened in Paris that May. Despite the later inclusion of the South Vietnamese and the NLF, the dialogue soon reached an impasse, and after a bitter 1968 election season marred by violence, Republican Richard M. Nixon won the presidency.

Vietnamization

Nixon sought to deflate the anti-war movement by appealing to a "silent majority" of Americans who he believed supported the war effort. In an attempt to limit the volume of American casualties, he announced a program called Vietnamization: withdrawing U.S. troops, increasing aerial and artillery bombardment and giving the South Vietnamese the training and weapons needed to effectively control the ground war.

In addition to this Vietnamization policy, Nixon continued public peace talks in Paris, adding higher-level secret talks conducted by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger beginning in the spring of 1968.

The North Vietnamese continued to insist on complete and unconditional U.S. withdrawal-plus the ouster of U.S.-backed General Nguyen Van Thieu-as conditions of peace, however, and as a result the peace talks stalled.

My Lai Massacre

The next few years would bring even more carnage, including the horrifying revelation that U.S. soldiers had mercilessly slaughtered more than 400 unarmed civilians in the village of My Lai in March 1968.

After the My Lai Masscre, anti-war protests continued to build as the conflict wore on. In 1968 and 1969, there were hundreds of protest marches and gatherings throughout the country.

On November 15, 1969, the largest anti-war demonstration in American history took place in Washington, D.C., as over 250,000 Americans gathered peacefully, calling for withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam.

The anti-war movement, which was particularly strong on college campuses, divided Americans bitterly. For some young people, the war symbolized a form of unchecked authority they had come to resent. For other Americans, opposing the government was considered unpatriotic and treasonous.

As the first U.S. troops were withdrawn, those who remained became increasingly angry and frustrated, exacerbating problems with morale and leadership. Tens of thousands of soldiers received dishonorable discharges for desertion, and about 500,000 American men from 1965-73 became "draft dodgers," with many fleeing to Canada to evade conscription. Nixon ended draft calls in 1972, and instituted an all-volunteer army the following year.

Kent State Shooting

In 1970, a joint U.S-South Vietnamese operation invaded Cambodia, hoping to wipe out DRV supply bases there. The South Vietnamese then led their own invasion of Laos, which was pushed back by North Vietnam.

The invasion of these countries, in violation of international law, sparked a new wave of protests on college campuses across America. During one, on May 4, 1970, at Kent State University in Ohio, National Guardsmen shot and killed four students. At another protest 10 days later, two students at Jackson State University in Mississippi were killed by police.

By the end of June 1972, however, after a failed offensive into South Vietnam, Hanoi was finally willing to compromise. Kissinger and North Vietnamese representatives drafted a peace agreement by early fall, but leaders in Saigon rejected it, and in December Nixon authorized a number of bombing raids against targets in Hanoi and Haiphong. Known as the Christmas Bombings, the raids drew international condemnation.

When Did the Vietnam War End?

In January 1973, the United States and North Vietnam concluded a final peace agreement, ending open hostilities between the two nations. War between North and South Vietnam continued, however, until April 30, 1975, when DRV forces captured Saigon, renaming it Ho Chi Minh City (Ho himself died in 1969).

More than two decades of violent conflict had inflicted a devastating toll on Vietnam's population: After years of warfare, an estimated 2 million Vietnamese were killed, while 3 million were wounded and another 12 million became refugees. Warfare had demolished the country's infrastructure and economy, and reconstruction proceeded slowly.

In 1976, Vietnam was unified as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, though sporadic violence continued over the next 15 years, including conflicts with neighboring China and Cambodia. Under a broad free market policy put in place in 1986, the economy began to improve, boosted by oil export revenues and an influx of foreign capital. Trade and diplomatic relations between Vietnam and the U.S. resumed in the 1990s.

In the United States, the effects of the Vietnam War would linger long after the last troops returned home in 1973. The nation spent more than $120 billion on the conflict in Vietnam from 1965-73; this massive spending led to widespread inflation, exacerbated by a worldwide oil crisis in 1973 and skyrocketing fuel prices.

Psychologically, the effects ran even deeper. The war had pierced the myth of American invincibility and had bitterly divided the nation. Many returning veterans faced negative reactions from both opponents of the war (who viewed them as having killed innocent civilians) and its supporters (who saw them as having lost the war), along with physical damage including the effects of exposure to the toxic herbicide Agent Orange, millions of gallons of which had been dumped by U.S. planes on the dense forests of Vietnam.

In 1982, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was unveiled in Washington, D.C. On it were inscribed the names of 57,939 American men and women killed or missing in the war; later additions brought that total to 58,200.

PHOTO GALLERIES

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The Vietnam War was a long, costly and divisive conflict that pitted the communist government of North Vietnam against South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. The conflict was intensified by the ongoing Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union.

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Kent State Shootings - Ohio History Central

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The various protests drew to an end as President Richard Nixon, who served from 1969-1974, began to withdraw U.S. soldiers from North and South Vietnam. With the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in 1973, which basically ended U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, the protests drew to a formal close.

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NY Times article

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4 Kent State Students Killed by Troops
8 Hurt as Shooting Follows Reported Sniping at Rally
By John Kifner

Special to The New York Times

OTHER HEADLINES
Kosygin Attacks Nixon for Moving G.I.'s to Cambodia: He Tells News Conference Action Raises Doubts on Bids for Negotiations: Warns on Arms Parley: China Pledges Support to Indochinese People -- U.S. in New Drive

President Assailed by Fulbright Panel

37 College Chiefs Urge Nixon Move for Prompt Peace: Warn Invasion of Cambodia Poses New Alienation Peril -- Student Strikes Begin

High Court Backs Churches' Right to Tax Exemption: Holds, 7 to 1, That Law Does Not Violate Ban on State Support of Religion: Douglas Casts Dissent: Majority Rejects Plea of a Bronx Lawyer Over His Plot on Staten Island

War and Economy Spur Stock Drops: Adminstration Economist Voices Apprehension as Market Falls 19.07

Report of Songmy Incident Wins a Pulitzer for Hersh

Israelis Report Killing 21 Arabs: Toll in Guerrilla Battle at Jordan River Is Termed Largest Since '67 War

Study of LSD Spurs Suspicions of Drug's Link to Birth Defects

U.S. Says Big Raids in North Are Over: Officials Stress That There May be Smaller Strikes if Flights Are Periled

U.S. Officials In Saigon Reduce Their Hopes in Cambodia Drive

Kent, Ohio, May 4 -- Four students at Kent State University, two of them women, were shot to death this afternoon by a volley of National Guard gunfire. At least 8 other students were wounded.

The burst of gunfire came about 20 minutes after the guardsmen broke up a noon rally on the Commons, a grassy campus gathering spot, by lobbing tear gas at a crowd of about 1,000 young people.

In Washington, President Nixon deplored the deaths of the four students in the following statement:

"This should remind us all once again that when dissent turns to violence it invites tragedy. It is my hope that this tragic and unfortunate incident will strengthen the determination of all the nation's campuses, administrators, faculty and students alike to stand firmly for the right which exists in this country of peaceful dissent and just as strong against the resort to violence as a means of such expression."

In Columbus, Sylvester Del Corso, Adjutant General of the Ohio National Guard, said in a statement that the guardsmen had been forced to shoot after a sniper opened fire against the troops from a nearby rooftop and the crowd began to move to encircle the guardsmen.

Frederick P. Wenger, the Assistant Adjutant General, said the troops had opened fire after they were shot at by a sniper.

"They were understanding orders to take cover and return any fire," he said.

This reporter, who was with the group of students, did not see any indication of sniper fire, nor was the sound of any gunfire audible before the Guard volley. Students, conceding that rocks had been thrown, heatedly denied that there was any sniper.

Gov. James A. Rhodes called on J. Edgar Hoover, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, to aid in looking into the campus violence. A Justice Department spokesman said no decision had been made to investigate. At 2:10 this afternoon, after the shootings, the university president, Robert I. White, ordered the university closed for an indefinite time, and officials were making plans to evacuate the dormitories and bus out-of-state students to nearby cities.

Robinson Memorial Hospital identified the dead students as Allison Krause, 19 years old, of Pittsburgh; Sandra Lee Scheuer, 20, of Youngstown, Ohio, both coeds; Jeffrey Glenn Miller, 20, of 22 Diamond Drive, Plainsview, L.I., and William K. Schroeder, 19, of Lorain, Ohio.

At 10:30 P.M. the hospital said that six students had been treated for gunshot wounds. Three were reported in critical condition and three in fair condition. Two others with superficial wounds were treated and released.

Students here, angered by the expansion of the war into Cambodia, have held demonstrations for the last three nights. On Saturday night, the Army Reserve Officers Training Corps building was burned to the ground and the Guard was called in and martial law was declared.

Today's rally, called after a night in which the police and guardsmen drove students into their dormitories and made 69 arrests, began as students rang the iron Victory bell on the commons, normally used to herald football victories.

A National Guard jeep drove onto the Commons and an officer ordered the crowd to disperse. Then several canisters of tear gas were fired, and the students straggled up a hill that borders the area and retreated into buildings.

A platoon of guardsmen, armed- as they have been since they arrived here with loaded M-1 rifles and gas equipment - moved across the green and over the crest of the hill, chasing the main body of protesters.

The youths split into two groups, one heading farther downhill toward a dormitory complex, the other eddying around a parking lot and girls' dormitory just below Taylor Hall, the architecture building.

The guardsmen moved into a grassy area just below the parking lot and fired several canisters of tear gas from their short, stubby launchers.

Three or four youths ran to the smoking canisters and hurled them back. Most fell far short, but one landed near the troops and a cheer went up from the crowd, which was chanting "Pigs off campus" and cursing the war.

A few youths in the front of the crowd ran into the parking lot and hurled stones or small chunks of pavement in the direction of the guardsmen. Then the troops began moving back up the hill in the direction of the college.

Students Cheer

The students in the parking lot area, numbering about 500, began to move toward the rear of the troops, cheering. Again, a few in front picked up stones from the edge of the parking lot and threw them at the guardsmen. Another group of several hundred students had gathered around the sides of Taylor Hall watching.

As the guardsmen, moving up the hill in single file, reached the crest, they suddenly turned, forming a skirmish line and opening fire.

The crackle of the rifle volley cut the suddenly still air. It appeared to go on, as a solid volley, for perhaps a full minute or a little longer.

Some of the students dived to the ground, crawling on the grass in terror. Others stood shocked or half crouched, apparently believing the troops were firing into the air. Some of the rifle barrels were pointed upward.

Near the top of the hill at the corner of Taylor Hall, a student crumpled over, spun sideways and fell to the ground, shot in the head.

When the firing stopped, a slim girl, wearing a cowboy shirt and faded jeans, was lying face down on the road at the edge of the parking lot, blood pouring out onto the macadam, about 10 feet from this reporter.

Too Shocked to React

The youth stood stunned, many of them clustered in small groups staring at the bodies. A young man cradled one of the bleeding forms in his arms. Several girls began to cry. But many of the students who rushed from the scene seemed almost too shocked to react. Several gathered around an abstract steel sculpture in front of the building and looked at the .30-caliber bullet hole drilled through one of the plates.

The hospital said that six young people were being treated for gunshot wounds, some in the intensive care unit. Three of the students who were killed were dead on arrival at the hospital.

One guardsman was treated and released at the hospital and another was admitted with heat prostration.

In early afternoon, students attempted to gather at various areas of the Commons but were ordered away by guardsmen and the Ohio Highway Patrol, which moved in as reinforcements.

There were no further clashes, as faculty members, graduate assistants and student leaders urged the crowd to go back to dormitories.

But a bizarre atmosphere hung over the campus as a Guard helicopter hovered overhead, grim-faced officers maneuvered their men to safeguard the normally pastoral campus and students, dazed, fearful and angry, struggled to comprehend what had happened and to find something to do about it.

Students carrying suitcases and duffel bags began leaving the campus this afternoon. Early tonight the entire campus was sealed off and a court injunction was issued ordering all students to leave.

A 5 P.M. curfew was declared in Kent, and road blocks were set up around the town to prevent anyone from entering. A state of emergency was also declared in the nearby towns of Stow and Ravenna.

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8 Hurt as Shooting Follows Reported Sniping at Rally By John Kifner Special to The New York Times OTHER HEADLINES Kosygin Attacks Nixon for Moving G.I.'s to Cambodia: He Tells News Conference Action Raises Doubts on Bids for Negotiations: Warns on Arms Parley: China Pledges Support to Indochinese People -- U.S.

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reading

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video

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Hi, I'm John Green, this is Crash Course US History and today we're going to look at one of the most important periods of American social history, the 1950s. Why is it so important? Well first because it saw the advent of the greatest invention in human history: television.

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worksheet

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Video

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Silent Spring! Yes, I am on such a roll! Silent Spring was a massively important book because it was the first time that anyone really described all of the astonishingly poisonous things we were putting into the air and the ground and the water.

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worksheet

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McGraw-Hill

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Ch 14 Postwar Prosperity and Civil Rights

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Ch 14 Postwar Prosperity and Civil Rights

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textbook

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textbook

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textbook
Supreme Court Summaries

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ch 14

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The Century 3:00-10:00

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The Century, America's Time: Best Years (1 of 3)

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McGraw Hill

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Reading

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American segregation, mapped at day and night