Two rivers of history converged recently: Apr. 30 was the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. May 4 was the 55th anniversary of the day in 1970 when Ohio National Guard troops gunned down four students during an antiwar protest on the campus of Kent State University.
The shooting war in Vietnam and the political war at home were juxtaposed then and now. The two recent remembrances of carnage on the battlefields of Vietnam and on the campus greens of Ohio brought back memories to millions who were young during the war in Vietnam and during the peace movement in America at the time.
Nearly 60,000 Americans died during the long and bloody Vietnam War. Today the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is the most-visited memorial on the National Mall in Washington. Since its dedication in 1982, some 5 million visitors annually come to the somber memorial to pause, reflect and remember friends and loved ones who fell in a war long ago and half a world away. The stark black granite memorial’s chevron shape resembles a private’s stripe on a military uniform. Etched into the granite wall are the names of the American dead.
Entering the memorial is reminiscent of our entry into the Vietnam War—gradually at first, then deeper and deeper into the maelstrom. Finally, at the middle of the memorial, we are engulfed by the waves of war as the names of the American dead—thousands of names—are engraved on granite walls that tower high above our heads, reflecting the shadowy figures of the living who touch the names of the dead.
Near the wall stands the Three Servicemen statue, dedicated on Veterans Day in 1984. Depicting three war-weary soldiers in a lifelike tableau, the statue is a tribute to American military men during a faraway conflict. Close by is the Vietnam Women’s Memorial, dedicated in 1993, depicting three women caring for a fallen soldier. It honors American women who served and the eight who died during the war. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is a poignant place any time, particularly on the anniversary of a war that ended half a century ago.
In Ohio on May 4, hundreds gathered on the campus of Kent State University to remember the four students killed and nine wounded by the Ohio National Guard during campus protests in 1970, campus killings that inspired Neil Young’s haunting song, “Four Dead in Ohio.” Just 10 days after the Kent State killings, two more students were killed by police gunfire during protests at Jackson State, a historically Black college in Mississippi. Within days of the deaths at Kent and Jackson, thousands of Americans converged on Washington to protest the killings at home and President Richard Nixon’s expansion of the war in Asia. Today, 55 years later, sad remembrances of the killings continue every year on the campuses of the two universities that were joined by tragedy in 1970.
Another significant anniversary of the Vietnam era received only scant coverage recently, but Apr. 17, 1965—60 years ago—was the date when some 20,000 Americans marched through the streets of Washington to call for a halt to this nation’s burgeoning war in Vietnam. In the next few years protests against the war would swell in number as peace rallies with tens of thousands of participants took place in Washington, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and other cities across the nation. Campus protests continued, including large peace rallies at the University of Georgia here in Athens after the Kent State killings. The antiwar movement also made inroads into high schools and small towns of America. A nation that had supported the Vietnam War became disillusioned by the conflict as the body count climbed, and trust in war hawk presidents like Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon plummeted.
I attended many protests against the Vietnam War, first in 1968 when a ragtag group of a few hundred citizens marched from Atlanta’s 8th Street to a rally in Piedmont Park. Dissent would grow larger and louder but the war would drag on for seven more years. The Vietnam War ended 50 years ago, but its scars remain on America’s body politic today.
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