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The rain that fell intermittently on the morning of Saturday April 15, 1967 did not deter tens of thousands of Americans from taking to the streets of San Francisco to protest against America’s ongoing involvement in Vietnam. About 30,000 gathered at the foot of Market Street, and walked four miles through the heart of the city to Kezar Stadium, at the edge of Golden Gate Park. As the sun came out, the crowd at the afternoon rally swelled to 75,000—a record turnout for a West Coast antiwar protest. The main speakers in the packed stadium included civil rights leaders Coretta Scott King and Julian Bond, as well as Robert Vaughn (star of television’s Man from Uncle). One journalist noted that the civil rights movement was “represented more conspicuously than before.” Coretta King told the crowd that “freedom and justice in America” were “bound together with freedom and justice in Vietnam,” while Georgia legislator Julian Bond attacked the “growing cancer” of American militarism. He urged that the “screams of the children in Harlem and Haiphong” be replaced with “cheerful, loving laughter.” TV star Vaughn asked, “Haven’t enough men been killed, enough women slaughtered, enough babies burned?” The National Guardian commented on the demonstration’s countercultural Xavor, explaining that participants left the stands to hand out daffodils and paper Xowers, while artists including Country Joe and the Fish provided musical entertainment.1 In a show of solidarity it also rained in New York, where tens of thousands of Americans Wltered into Central Park. At Sheep Meadow, at 11 a.m., a group of around 100 people gathered to burn their draft cards. By the time the twenty-block march to the UN plaza began shortly after noon, some observers estimated that about 400,000 Americans had turned out. The demonstrators came from all walks of life—there were blacks, whites, and native Americans; children and grandparents; hippies Chapter 4 Racial Tensions Black people are in no mood for marching to [the Pentagon] and listening to folk singing. —Omar Ahmed, 1967 and church members; military veterans and Viet Cong sympathizers; businessmen and students; housewives and teachers; priests and doctors. Many were protesting against the war for the Wrst time.2 Martin Luther King, James Bevel, pediatrician Benjamin Spock, and black entertainer Harry Belafonte led the swarming mass of protesters in the procession from Central Park to the UN, where King, Stokely Carmichael, and Floyd McKissick were among the featured speakers. Although a heavy downpour ended the rally at 5 p.m., marchers continued to arrive at the UN for another hour. The massive demonstrations in New York and San Francisco were organized by the Spring Mobilization Committee, an antiwar coordinating coalition that had been founded in November 1966 and which later became the National Mobilization Committee (Mobe). The actions were, according to university professor and veteran leftist Sidney Peck, “successful beyond all expectations .” Historian Tom Wells has explained that the April protests “showed the Johnson administration and public that the antiwar movement had carved out a large political base in the United States.”3 The 1967 protests occurred within a context of deepening crisis at home and drift abroad. Growing antiwar activism combined with urban riots and the ongoing war in Vietnam to undermine Lyndon Johnson’s presidency. Public approval of the president had fallen from 67 percent in 1965 to 47 percent two years later. However you looked at it, Johnson was in trouble politically, and it was becoming increasingly difWcult for the president to leave the White House without encountering Werce demonstrations. In the spring of 1967 only 40 percent of Americans supported the administration’s Vietnam policy, and by the end of the year McGeorge Bundy, Johnson’s national security advisor, told the president that “public discontent with the war is now wide and deep.” The increasing unpopularity of the war led Johnson to choose what he viewed as a “middle course”—neither unleashing the full might of America’s military power nor withdrawing, but engaging in limited escalation. Thus, while Johnson announced plans to send a further 50,000 troops to Vietnam in August, this fell short of General Westmoreland’s request for 200,000. But however “limited” the escalation, the effect on the antiwar movement was to increase despair and militancy. With traditional tactics seemingly ineffective, more radical methods, such as draft resistance, began to Xourish. Indeed, the growing anguish and rage within the New Left over the ongoing war would lead...

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