Chicago Subways and Elevated to Carry Anti-Vietnam War Ads
The subways and elevated trains in Chicago began allowing anti-Vietnam War ads on this day.
The Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) had refused to carry the ads for two years. The Illinois ACLU sued on behalf of the Chicago Women for Peace and the North Shore Women for Peace, chapters of the Women Strike for Peace organizations. The federal judge dismissed the suit when the CTA capitulated and agreed to carry the ads. The ad, addressed to President Lyndon Johnson, read: “War is Not Peace. Tyranny is Not Freedom. Hate is Not Love. End the War in Vietnam.”
In additions to many incidents similar to this one, 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).
Learn more about the anti-Vietnam War movement: Thomas Powers, The War at Home: Vietnam and the American People, 1964–1968 (1973)
Learn more at the National Coalition Against Censorship here.
The “Sixties” really began in the mid-1950s and ended in the early 1970s. Read: Christopher B. Strain, The Long Sixties: America, 1955-1973 (2016)