Streets filled with rallies and prayer vigils. Church bells tolled and workers struck. Municipal buildings were draped in black crepe, and American flags flew at half-staff. The best estimate was that 2 million Americans demonstrated that day. Life magazine judged the protest "the largest expression of public dissent ever seen in this country."

On the day of the demonstration, protesters wore black armbands to mourn the war's dead. And just as "We Shall Overcome" had been the hymn of the civil rights movement, they sang John Lennon's new hit, "Give Peace a Chance," as the day's anthem.

And the Moratorium did not stop at the edge of the metropolises. In East Meadow, Long Island, the longtime ambassador and statesman W. Averell Harriman spoke to a crowd of 15,000. Six inches of snow could not deter 3,000 in Denver. The tally was 11,000 in rural Iowa. Nuclear scientists at the Brookhaven National Laboratory halted their atomic research. 

But withdrawing combat troops (while simultaneously increasing airstrikes and continuing political interference throughout Southeast Asia) did nothing to address “the reality that the worst thing about the war is that Asian people are being uprooted and murdered daily.”¹⁰ For many Asian Americans, the lack of public outcry over the rising death toll for Vietnamese soldiers and civilians—not to mention the “secret war” in Cambodia and Laos—reflected the white anti-war movement’s disregard for Asian lives and freedoms.

Even as they encountered pushback from “Movement guys” unwilling to acknowledge their own role in perpetuating misogyny and white feminists who refused to accept their complicity in racism against women of color, Asian American women opened space for transnational coalitions with their Asian “sisters” and took on important leadership positions within the anti-war movement.

The Chinese Exclusion Act required the few nonlaborers who sought entry to obtain certification from the Chinese government that they were qualified to immigrate. But this group found it increasingly difficult to prove that they were not laborers because the 1882 act defined excludables as “skilled and unskilled laborers and Chinese employed in mining.” Thus very few Chinese could enter the country under the 1882 law.

The 1882 exclusion act also placed new requirements on Chinese who had already entered the country. If they left the United States, they had to obtain certifications to re-enter. Congress, moreover, refused State and Federal courts the right to grant citizenship to Chinese resident aliens, although these courts could still deport them.