Anti-Vietnam War Movement, 1963–1973

During the Second Indochinese War between communist North Vietnam and US-backed South Vietnam (1955‒1975), the US government escalated American involvement in Southeast Asia. In response, anti-war activists and university students in Minnesota, along with demonstrators across the nation, took to the streets to protest.

The US first intervened in Vietnam in the early 1950s, when it backed French troops during the First Indochina War. As the Second Indochina War began, the CIA and US government under Dwight D. Eisenhower backed pro-democracy South Vietnamese leaders. American interference in Southeast Asia continued as subsequent administrations slowly escalated the war throughout the 1960s.

Most Americans were at first supportive of the US government’s efforts to purportedly fight communism and ensure democracy in Southeast Asia. However, anti-war critics believed that this was the Vietnamese people’s fight—first for independence from colonial rule and then for reunification. The US was intervening in a conflict that was not its own, and it was causing more deaths than saving lives. This argument rang true for young college-age Americans who could be drafted into the army, had friends risking their lives abroad, or had already served and were disillusioned with the government.

Protesters across the nation took their concerns to the streets as well as the ballot box. In Minneapolis, anti-war demonstrators organized a march in Dinkytown in April 1967, carrying signs with slogans such as "War is darkness; peace is light." Later that month, activists attended a rally at the University of Minnesota’s St. Paul campus to hear Martin Luther King Jr. speak out against the war.

Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota was also an outspoken critic of the war. Supported by young anti-war activists, he won a high percentage of votes at the 1968 New Hampshire primary. Minnesota Senator Walter Mondale initially supported the conflict but shifted his stance in the late 1960s. In 1965 he had visited South Vietnam, where he talked to reporters from newspapers such as the Minneapolis Tribune and revealed what was going on behind the scenes.

In response to President Nixon’s decision to send troops into Cambodia in April 1970, students on over 700 college campuses gathered to protest. On May 4, 1970, Kent State University students clashed with the Ohio National Guardsmen, which left four students dead and nine injured.

University of Minnesota (U of M) and Macalester College students organized protests in response to the invasion of Cambodia as well as the Kent State deaths. In May 1970, thirty people attended anti-ROTC demonstrations at Morrill Hall. Seventeen were arrested and charged with unlawful assembly. Faculty also got involved and released statements protesting the arrests. Another group of anti-ROTC demonstrators posed as wounded or dead war victims outside the doors of an All-University Senate meeting. Meanwhile, twenty to thirty students conducted an all-night occupation of Coffman Hall, which ended peacefully when policemen escorted them out of the building.

Students carried their protests beyond the campus to locations throughout the Twin Cities. On May 11, 1972, seventy-five demonstrators spent the night on Washington Avenue in Minneapolis and blocked traffic to make their point. Three hundred policemen and National Guardsmen, called in by Governor Wendell Anderson and Minneapolis Mayor Charles Stenvig, told the demonstrators to clear the street. Most complied, though 150 students returned and were joined by more students. Although this could have become a violent standoff, the police eventually withdrew. 3,000 protesters had gathered by then, either reconstructing blockades along Washington Avenue or moving on to other streets (including Interstate 94).

A few days later, over 3,500 protesters marched from Northrop Mall to the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul. Later that month, Minnesotans gathered at the Metropolitan Sports Center in Bloomington for a “Dump the War” rally, which featured McCarthy, John Kerry (Vietnam Veterans against the War spokesman), and several Congressmen as speakers. It was considered the largest anti-war assembly in Minnesota to date.

Protests in Minnesota took place within a nationwide context of anti-Vietnam War demonstrations, as well as other social movements that mobilized large numbers of people. Such acts of protest and resistance drew public attention and built up domestic pressure on the US government to gradually withdraw American troops from Vietnam by 1975.