Daniel S. Lucks
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780813145075
- eISBN:
- 9780813145310
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813145075.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
Chapter 3 focuses on the simultaneity of the Johnson administration's escalation of the war in Vietnam and passage of the landmark Voting Rights Act, marking the end of de jure segregation. While the ...
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Chapter 3 focuses on the simultaneity of the Johnson administration's escalation of the war in Vietnam and passage of the landmark Voting Rights Act, marking the end of de jure segregation. While the African American public and the mainstream civil rights movement were delighted with the end of segregation, the war in Vietnam gripped SNCC and other militants from the beginning. They were struck by the administration's hypocrisy: it was willing to send troops to faraway Vietnam but reluctant to send federal marshals to protect civil rights workers in the Deep South. For a brief moment in early 1965, the civil rights and antiwar movements overlapped at the SDS march on Washington. By the end of the year, the passions unleashed by the Vietnam War were displacing civil rights as the nation's most pressing problem. As Johnson militarized the war, the riots in Watts erupted, antiwar dissent grew, and SNCC debated whether to formally take a stand against the war. The war in Vietnam diverted attention from the civil rights movement, and dissent and debate over the war aggravated preexisting generational and ideological schisms in the movement. It was a harbinger of future strife.Less
Chapter 3 focuses on the simultaneity of the Johnson administration's escalation of the war in Vietnam and passage of the landmark Voting Rights Act, marking the end of de jure segregation. While the African American public and the mainstream civil rights movement were delighted with the end of segregation, the war in Vietnam gripped SNCC and other militants from the beginning. They were struck by the administration's hypocrisy: it was willing to send troops to faraway Vietnam but reluctant to send federal marshals to protect civil rights workers in the Deep South. For a brief moment in early 1965, the civil rights and antiwar movements overlapped at the SDS march on Washington. By the end of the year, the passions unleashed by the Vietnam War were displacing civil rights as the nation's most pressing problem. As Johnson militarized the war, the riots in Watts erupted, antiwar dissent grew, and SNCC debated whether to formally take a stand against the war. The war in Vietnam diverted attention from the civil rights movement, and dissent and debate over the war aggravated preexisting generational and ideological schisms in the movement. It was a harbinger of future strife.
