Fifty Years Ago Today, US Soldiers Joined the Vietnam Moratorium Protests in Mass Numbers
Fifty years ago today, the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam protests swept the entire United States and showed that the antiwar movement was undeniably mainstream. Soldiers who had fought in Vietnam weren’t pitted against that movement — in fact, many were actually part of it.
A crowd of people display the peace sign during an antiwar rally in front of the Washington Monument, Washington, DC, October 15, 1969.Getty
Today marks the fiftieth anniversary of the October 15, 1969 Moratorium, perhaps the most important US protest during the war against Vietnam.
Millions turned out across the United States in a historic day of action. Nothing else so conveyed the breadth of the antiwar movement. Life magazine described the Moratorium as “a display without historic parallel, the largest expression of public dissent ever seen in this country.” With the Moratorium, wrote Fred Halstead, “the antiwar movement for the first time reached the level of a full-fledged mass movement.”
The Moratorium’s organizers urged people across the country to dedicate October 15 to protesting the war. With the hawkish Nixon in the Oval Office, and with the war showing no end in sight, antiwar forces needed to make a powerful statement that would jolt the political climate in the United States.
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