Focus On How We Lived: 1965-1969

[music] [bell] In the 60s, much of what we learned, we learned from television. We lived in front of televisions and were changed by what we saw. Unlike any war in our history, Vietnam was [music] a living room war. Chad Huntley and David Brinkley, Walter Konite, and Howard K. Smith [music] told us what was happening as we ate dinner and watched the evening. It was a TV war with commercial interruptions. [music] When people have headache pain and want an extra strength medicine, they know about Andison. Compared to the other extra strength tablet, even with its attitude, if we grew tired of the war in our living room, we could always turn off the TV. The GIS were not so lucky. In Vietnam, the war meant death and dying. They were strangers in a strange land, and the war became a lasting nightmare. [music] [singing] [music] Even soldiers who had volunteered to fight grew disenchanted. Rio He-Man's army was like, it turned me off quite a bit. But what was it like? It was as I've said uh unbelievably uncompassionate, completely uh callous, uncaring, unfeilling about any type of of uh human sensitivity. They took all your dignity and all your sensitivity and just inexorably grind it out of you, strip it off of you, and they make you into a little zombie. By 1967, more than 100 Americans were dying each week in Vietnam. And we were watching another war on TV, the war at home. Thousands of Americans were protesting what they believed to be an unjust war. Many burned draft cards. 10,000 [music] left the country for Canada. [screaming] [music] Many people were calling Vietnam a racist war. For black Americans, this had a special meaning. [music] Fighting to improve conditions at home seemed more important than fighting a war in Southeast Asia. Black frustration sometimes turned to violence, and when it did, we saw it on TV. Riots broke out in many cities, and the National Guard was called in to help police restore order. 36 died [music] in Watts in ' 65. Even more in the summer of ' 67 as Detroit, Newark, and dozens of other cities became [music] urban war zones. Meanwhile, the war in Vietnam was growing worse. General West Morland [music] was talking about seeing the light at the end of the tunnel as 1967 ended. [music] But the staggering losses of the Tet offensive two months later made it difficult to believe it. The administration said the communist offensive had been a failure, but the scenes we saw on television didn't look like victory. [music] [music] By now, the administration was losing its support, and some were talking of a credibility gap. How many men must die to justify some 23,000 Americans and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese North and South who have died to prove some questionable issue or ideal in the past. Mr. Moyer says that the vice president's had private doubts about the war. But I think everyone has had private doubts. But there comes a time when the private doubts of a public man must become public doubts. While students on many campuses burned their draft cards, some burned money in symbolic protest. Students organized to protest the presence of job recruiters from corporations involved in war production like Dowo Chemical, [music] which made Napal. Some ROC buildings were even burned to the ground. In April of ' 68, students opposed to administration policy organized a strike at Columbia University and shut down the school. TV coverage of events like these gave student movements national attention not only in America but abroad as well. In France, leftist students were marching in the streets of Paris that spring to protest government policies. They occupied buildings of the Sorbon and built barricades in the streets of the Latin port. By 68, clashes between students and police were a common sight on American TV. But few of us were prepared for the violence at the Democratic convention in Chicago that summer. The panicked reaction of Chicago police shocked many Americans. [music] The whole world is watching, they cried. The whole world was watching. most of us from our living rooms and we wondered how the violence [music] would end. Vice President Humphrey, the Democratic nominee, told us how he felt. We have seen the terrible results of violence in this country. It would be intolerable if a handful of violent people, and that is what it is, just a handful, could harden us against needed change. We must give notice to this violent few. There are millions of decent Americans who are willing to sacrifice for change, but they want to do it without being threatened and they want to do it peacefully. They are the nonviolent majority, black and white, who are for change without violence. These are the people whose voice I want to be. The proceeding was a pre-recorded political announcement. Richard Nixon, the Republican candidate, waged a more aggressive TV campaign. Was 8 years ago, I uh I don't allow myself to be packaged. There isn't one side of my face that's better than the other. I never insist on any uh particular type of uh presentation. Uh I'll let them shoot me anywhere they want. It is time for an honest look at the problem of order in the United States. [music] Dissent is a necessary ingredient of change. But in a system of government that provides for peaceful [music] change, there is no cause that justifies resort to violence. Let us recognize that the first civil right of every American is to be free from domestic violence. So I pledge to you, we shall have order in the United States. Nixon was elected, but the violence continued at home and abroad. In ' 69, Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland were fighting in the streets of Belfast over issues that had divided them for generations. That year we also heard the first reports from Vietnam about a place called Mi. The uh CO's order was uh to destroy the village and its inhabitants. You said did you think the people in the village were Vietkong? Uh some of the people in the village, you say people in the village, some of the people in the village uh weren't old enough to walk yet. As the decade ended, we were just beginning to understand some of the real horrors of the war in Vietnam.