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THE VIETNAM WAR

Fast Facts

1. The Civil Rights movement exploded in America in the mid '50s as African-American citizens held sit-ins and marches to demand an end to social restrictions such as segregation.
   
   
2. THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE by Betty Friedan was published in 1963, and many young women began to join the Feminist movement and demand more opportunites outside of their traditional domestic roles.
   
   
3. On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and Americans began to worry about the future of their country.
   
   
4. In August of 1964, an American ship was threatened by the North Vietnamese in the Gulf of Tonkin. President Johnson ordered bombing raids over North Vietnam, and by 1965 US Marines were being sent to South Vietnam.
   
   
5. In the mid '60s Harvard Square in Boston became one of many gathering places for young people to voice their opinions. Some students burned their draft cards, others demonstrated against the antiwar groups.
   
   
6. The Hippie movement of the 1960s became symbolic of the rebellion among young people. Although it began as a peace movement, Hippies were eventually considered "drop outs" of society who were involved with drugs like LSD and Marijuana.
   
   
7. By 1968 the number of American soldiers fighting in Vietnam had increased to half a million.
   
   
8. The battle of Khe Sanh lasted approximately 77 days. The 6,000 Marines stationed at that base were surrounded by as many as 40,000 North Vietnamese troops, and casualties were high. Although American troops managed to hold onto the base, it was abandoned shortly after the end of the siege.
   
   
9. In April 1968, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Two months later Senator Robert Kennedy, presidential candidate and brother of President John F. Kennedy, was assassinated.
   
   
10. Television and news coverage of the Vietnam War in the late '60s contributed to the growing antiwar protests that were tearing America apart. Instead of a hero's welcome, returning soldiers were often treated with widespread disrespect.
    
    
11. At the 1968 Democratic Party Convention in Chicago hundreds of antiwar protestors were injured and arrested. In 1970 antiwar protestors clashed with National Guardsmen on the campus of Kent State University. Guardsmen opened fire on the crowd, killing four students.
    
    
12. Prior to 1971, 18-year-olds could be drafted to serve their country in time of war but couldn't vote in national elections. In 1971 Congress passed the 26th Amendment to the Constitution, lowering the voting age to 18.
    
    
13. In the early 1970s, President Nixon began withdrawing troops from Vietnam and in 1973 the American involvement ended. In 1975, the North Vietnamese took control of the entire country of Vietnam.
    
    
14. In 1982, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated in Washington, DC. There are currently 58,229 names on "The Wall."
    
    
15. A total of nearly 2.7 million men and women served in Vietnam throughout the war. Several hundred of them still remain officially missing in action and unaccounted for.
    
    

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