Personal collection of Vietnam era anti-war stickers and buttons. Many of the major events are represented:
– April 15, 1967. Spring Mobe protests in New York City (300,000 meet in Central Park and march to the United Nations) and in San Francisco.
– October 21, 1967. March on the Pentagon. 100,000 are on the National Mall in Washington DC. Norman Mailer’s book The Armies of the Night describes the event.
– October 15, 1969. National “Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam” was a massive demonstration and teach-in across the United States. Over a quarter of million people attended the Moratorium march in Washington, D.C.
– November 14, 1969. National student strike and “March against Death” in front of the White House.
– November 15, 1969. The Mobe’s 2nd Moratorium March mobilizes 500,000 in Wash DC and San Francisco. The news of the My Lai Massacre had broken a few days earlier.
– April 24, 1971. Demonstration on the National Mall draws approximately half a million protestors to D.C. In addition over 100,00 participate in San Francisco, the largest demonstration on the West Coast.
– The large blue button commemorates the peace treaty signed on January 27, 1973. Hoa Binh is Vietnamese for Peace.
– Eugene McCarthy’s 1968 presidential campaign challenged Lyndon B. Johnson on a primarily anti–war platform. Riding a wave of dissatisfaction after the Tet Offensive McCarthy finished in a strong second place in the New Hampshire primary, prompting LBJ to decline a run for re-election.
– Nixon resigned to avoid impeachment during the Watergate scandal. It all began with Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon papers published in 1971. The White House approved the formation of “The Plumbers” to silence Ellsberg. Led by G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt, the crime committed was to burglarize Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office to search for damning information to use to discredit him. They found nothing. The bungled operation started Nixon and his cohorts down the slippery slope of crimes that culminated in the botched break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex nine months later.
Parallel Narratives 