First Vietnam War Teach-in at University of Michigan
A massive “teach-in,” attended by 3,000 people. was held at the University of Michigan on this day to discuss and to protest the escalating American involvement in the Vietnam War.
The event launched the teach-in, essentially a long public forum, as a means of protesting the war. The term was obviously derived from the civil rights sit-ins.
The Vietnam War created a number of civil liberties crises. They include (1) the lack of a Congressional Declaration of War as required by the Constitution (June 3, 1970); (2) threats to freedom of the press in the Pentagon Papers case (June 30, 1971); (3) spying on the anti-war movement by the CIA (August 15, 1967); (4) threats to freedom of expression, for example high school student protests (February 24, 1969); censorship of television programs (February 25, 1968); and directly and indirectly some of the events that led to the Watergate Scandal (May 9, 1969; January 27, 1972).
Watch a video of the teach-in (University of Michigan Bentley Library):
http://bentley.umich.edu/research/guides/video/stuprotest.phpRead: Louis Menashe and Ronald Radosh (eds), Teach-Ins: U.S.A.: Reports, Opinions, Documents (1967)
Learn more about the anti-Vietnam War movement: Thomas Powers, The War at Home: Vietnam and the American People, 1964–1968 (1973)
Watch a documentary on how the Vietnam War affected America: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGeFPzFNkQg
Read first-hand accounts of 1960s-1970s radicals: Clara Bingham, Witness to the Revolution: Radicals, Resisters, Vets, Hippies, and the Year America Lost its Mind and Found its Soul (2016)