Class Five:
1966-67 Urban Riots, Anti-war Protests, Intense Fighting, Troop Increases
“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold”
—WB Yeats
There’s a book called Coming Apart: an informal history of the 60s by William O’Neill. “Coming apart” is probably a very apt description for America in the mid-60s. The civil rights movement may have reached its height in 1965 with the success of the Selma to Montgomery March and the passage of the Voting Rights Act, but that couldn’t alleviate the frustration and anger that had built up over countless years of subjugation and discrimination of those who were basically trapped in ghettos in cities across the country. And television—in both its programming and advertising—no doubt contributed to the resentment with its daily depictions of the gulf between the haves and the have-nots. All that pent-up anger and resentment only needed a spark to set off. It found one in Watts in 1965 when a Black man was pulled over by police while driving under the influence and the resulting scuffle quickly escalated into a conflagration.
The Watts Riot lasted for days and resulted in 34 deaths, almost 3,500 arrests, and millions of dollars in property damage to an area of Los Angeles. Two years later in what would be called “the Long, Hot Summer ” there would be devastating riots in Newark (26 killed, 1,465 arrested, $10 million in damage) and Detroit where 43 people would die and hundreds would be injured in violence that lasted for five days.
The riots of ’65 and ’67 were only precursors of the nationwide riots that broke out after the assassination of Martin Luther King in April 1968. Over 100 cities erupted in flames. Where else could the Black communities release their pain and anger, but on the streets on which they lived?
As the war revved up, so did the protests against it. Just as riots engulfed the cities, mostly peaceful antiwar demonstrations were increasingly met with violent reactions. The country was split between young and old, college students and construction workers, rich and poor over the draft and the bloodshed in Vietnam.
The early public demonstrations of resistance to the war were on college campuses and in New York City where some defiant young men burned their draft cards in November 1965. Larger antiwar demonstrations followed in New York and San Francisco, culminating in massive marches in Washington DC over the next several years. The campus protests grew and included protests against the universities that did government/military research and companies that made weapons like Dow chemical which made napalm. And raids on selective service offices in order to destroy draft records. The most famous is the one led by the Berrigan brothers on the office in Catonsville, Maryland in May 1968 where they stole and burned the records of 378 potential draftees.
Background Programs and Videos
Newark Riots 1967
WXYZ-TV Program on Detroit Riot Clip 1967
Walter Cronkite Introducing Morley Safer’s Vietnam War 1967
Speeches
LBJ 1966 State of the Union Address on Vietnam Policy: WATCH (start at 00:33:51)
By their very nature—a Constitutional mandate for the president to provide Congress information on the “state of the union”—these speeches rarely, if ever, qualify as great speeches. They are more a pro forma, shopping list of things that the president wants the Congress to do and a status of where things are. And in most respects, this one is a typical state of the union address. What sets it apart is the president’s lengthy discussion of the situation in Vietnam. He spends the last 20 minutes of a 52-minute speech talking about the war. He justifies his significant increase in the number of troops fighting the war and tries to prepare the Congress and the nation that more might be required despite his professed intent to limit the conflict. He also cites the numerous peace efforts that the United States has made —including an extended bombing pause and outreach to nations around the world for help in getting peace discussions underway. This is when Vietnam becomes Johnson’s war. But he makes it very clear that it is not a responsibility that he wants to shirk. On the contrary, he says repeatedly that he will not abandon Vietnam…that the US will stay in that country “as long as aggression commands us to battle.”
In addition to the speech’s focus on Vietnam and spelling out the rationale for our steadfast commitment to its independence, this particular speech is remarkable for several things. First, is the command presence that Johnson exudes—in his demeanor, but also in his voice and words. He is a man at the height of his power, presumably at peace with himself, confident in his ability, and in command of the situation.* Compare this to the seemingly tentative man who assumed the presidency following the assassination and the beaten and depressed leader who tells the nation he won’t run again (1968).
Another admirable element of this speech is the writing. It is clearly in LBJ’s voice that enables him to deliver it so easily and confidently. It was written by Richard Goodwin, who had left the White House the previous year but agreed to come back to write this one. However, as Goodwin points out in his memoir, “Remembering America” before Johnson gave the speech, it was drastically altered by others—“the pledges to domestic programs diluted, statements on the war made more militant.”
Finally, notice all the applause that the president gets. He is making some pretty strong statements about the nation’s commitment to war in Vietnam, but virtually everyone seems to like what they hear. It was still a couple of years before much of the country and many politicians turned against the war.
*Not long after writing this paragraph, I read an article about a new book, based on Lady Bird Johnson’s diaries, “In Plain Sight: Lady Bird Johnson”. One of the revelations of the book is that after a gallbladder operation in the fall of 1965, President Johnson went into a severe depression. It was largely thanks to her that he could rebound from the “black beast of depression” to ascend the podium in Congress to deliver the State of the Union address with such confidence and command.
Bobby Kennedy’s Cape Town, South Africa “Tiny Ripple of Hope” Speech June, 1966
This is a recent addition to the syllabus. I hadn’t included the speech before because it just didn’t impress me or, more accurately, the delivery and the writing didn’t impress upon me the importance of the statement he is making and the place in which he is making it. South Africa was one of a number of countries that RFK visited as a senator. I think he realized that he could use his youthful looks and his late brother’s legacy of idealism to appeal to youth around the world to bring about change.
He’s candid about his country’s far from perfect record toward racial equality. And he demonstrates the moral courage that he is calling for by being there and listening and speaking to as many groups as he can.
While he says many important things in the speech—and often says them well—I was put off initially by his delivery of the speech. And the writing. His speech just doesn’t have the uplifting cadence and the pauses and the “punch lines” that his brother’s speech did. You can hear the difference in the voice and the writing when he quotes from JFK’s Inaugural Address at the end.
But that shouldn’t take away from what he’s saying and doing in this speech. He’s come to inspire these young people to keep resisting. To have the moral courage to stand up to a brutish government and continue to try to defeat apartheid. He praises them, their Chancellor, and the country for their accomplishments. He also acknowledges the difficulties that will make their task so hard…the dangers of futility, expediency, timidity, and comfort. But he also provides encouragement by citing past successes and by that beautiful image of the tiny ripples of hope. “Each time a man stands up for an ideal,…he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope…those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.” That’s speech writing!
Once I took more time to listen to the speech, I began to appreciate his message and the importance of encouraging young people around the world to be the leaders of tomorrow. And he was someone who could do this through his presence and his words. In a sense, this and the other speeches he made over the four days he spent in South Africa, were a pep rally for these young people. Showing and telling them they are not alone. Appreciating their courage by saying, “Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence.”
The importance of this speech is also confirmed by the fact that it forms the basis of much of what his brother, Ted, will say in his eulogy two years later. It captured the man…and what he stood for.
Finally, I loved the opening of the speech – with that surprise punchline. All along, you think he’s talking about South Africa when, in fact, is talking about his own country. It took a little time for the audience to get the irony, but once they did, they felt connected with the speaker. And I liked the antithesis beginning with the succession of three “not because…” phrases culminating with: “We must do it for the single and fundamental reason that it is the right thing to do.” Sounds very much like something Jack would have said.
Martin Luther King “Beyond Vietnam” Speech Riverside Church April 4, 1967: LISTEN (00:56:47)
This speech was given one year to the day before he was assassinated. In the two years since he had addressed the marchers in Montgomery, Dr. King had started to focus more on the economic exploitation of the Blacks. He went to Chicago in 1965 and launched a civil rights campaign there against very strong white opposition. He also began to question the US involvement in Vietnam, but it wasn’t until 1967 when he made two major speeches against the war that his voice was raised nationally. And he got a lot of pushback from civil rights leaders and white supporters because he was risking his relationship with the president who had been instrumental in getting civil rights legislation passed.
Recognizing that he is doing something that will startle, even upset his followers, he begins the speech with a series of rhetorical questions, the ones on peoples’ minds about this major shift in focus. He proceeds to answer them and track the audience through his thought process. He puts the war into the broader context of the human rights fight he’s long been engaged in. In some respects, King’s speech is similar to JFK’s “Peace” Speech. It is an explanatory speech for a shift in policy and attitude which requires the speaker to argue for this change.
Also, like Kennedy’s speech, it is different in length, tone, content, and delivery than most of his more inspirational speeches. King is delivering it from a text drafted by Spelman College history professor, Vincent Harding, and others. It sounds more like a prepared lecture by a professor than a speech or sermon by an inspirational preacher.
He rushes through this long speech in a monotone, not stopping for applause, as if he just wants to get his statement on record and sit down again. It’s almost as if he’s on automatic pilot and any slowing down, any pausing, will divert him from his path. As you recall, Kennedy did pretty much the same thing in his “Peace” Speech.
The speech is full of facts, not all of them totally accurate, but rather selective and exaggerated for maximum effect. It’s antiwar, but also anti-capitalist—addressed to the clergy in the audience, but also the government, making him even more controversial. This pivot from the war in Vietnam to what the future looks like (“Beyond Vietnam”) occurs at about the 40-minute point in the speech. He calls for a “radical revolution in (American) values.” He’s almost prescient in his forecast of the consequences of America being on the wrong side of the current revolutions and being “the biggest purveyor of violence in the world.”
Unlike his other speeches, there are few biblical quotes. Toward the end, he seems to loosen up a little, recalling his phrase from the “Dream” speech about the fierce urgency of the moment. He also quotes at length lines from James Russell Lowell’s anti-slavery poem, “The Present Crisis”, which he also used near the end of the Montgomery speech. He then ends his speech in the cadence of his “Dream” speech, leading into his famous quote from Amos “ ‘Til justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
But notice how subdued his delivery of these once uplifting words is. It’s like he’s a different person from the young (34-year-old) man who stood on his tip-toes at the Lincoln Memorial to proclaim, “Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, we are free at last.” Granted it’s a different audience, setting, and occasion, but you can’t help but hear what sounds like weariness and depression in this once-inspiring leader.
While the clergy and antiwar groups were very pleased to have MLK speak out, he was roundly criticized by the leading newspapers, many white supporters, and the administration.
Muhammad Ali Explaining his Refusal to be Drafted 1966-1967
Muhammad Ali Speaking to/Debating with Students re: Refusing to be Inducted 1967
This short speech is about his refusing to be drafted. Courage is synonymous with boxing. But the heavyweight champion displays a different kind of courage–moral courage—in his willingness to lose his title, his wealth, and his reputation for standing up for his religious beliefs.
In what sounds like an impromptu speech, the boxer outlines his nonviolent philosophy as he thinks before he speaks and organizes his thoughts around the questions people have on their minds—why risk giving up so much; isn’t boxing the same as war; they say there are two alternatives—jail or go into the army. He turns the questions around and talks about what he’s gained and he humorously describes the big difference between being a fighter in the ring and one in a war. He also adds a third alternative (to draft or jail): justice.
This man is quick, but also authentic and respectful of and connected with his audience. He is a man committed to a cause and willing to lose almost everything for his beliefs. Note how he isn’t bothered by the hecklers at the beginning. And how he engages with the audience. His ease and humor demonstrate with his words and his gestures he’s a man seemingly at peace with himself.
You can see that he has notes, but doesn’t really refer to them until well into the speech. A good speech answers the audience’s questions. A good persuasive speech anticipates and refutes their counterarguments. Ali does both in this one.
I love the classic Ali pose when he asks: “Who’s the heavyweight champion of the world?” and pulls his ears to encourage multiple affirmations. Despite the seriousness of the topic, wit is part of this man’s authenticity.
The quickness of the man’s mind is captured in the short clip of him debating a college student on one of the many visits he made to campuses. He was bright, witty, and had the courage of his convictions. In some respects, in his quickness and his wit, he sounds a lot like Malcolm X. There are some very good documentaries about Ali. Most recently, the 2021 Ken Burns film on PBS.
Buck Benedict 