This political cartoon by Tom Darcy portrays the divisive impact of the Vietnam war on American society. According to public opinion polls taken in May 1970, when this cartoon was published, 64% of Americans thought the U.S. had made a mistake…

In 1959, at the age of seventeen, Joe McDonald joined the Navy. After his discharge three years later, he enrolled in a Los Angeles college where he became involved in the Civil Rights Movement. In 1965, McDonald moved to Berkeley, California just as…

Support for the communist Viet Cong was strong among many ordinary South Vietnamese people. This song describes one way civilians on the homefront supported V.C. against U.S.-led forces during the Vietnam War. The song was collected and published by…

In this activity students analyze the lyrics to a popular Vietnam War protest song and discuss how music can be used to motivate people and for protest. Then students will create a new stanza for the protest song "I-Feel-Like-I'm Fixin'-To-Die Rag."…

On April 4, 1967, Martin Luther King delivered his first major public statement against the Vietnam War, entitled "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence." Addressing a crowd of 3,000 at Riverside Church in New York City, King condemned the war…

Ho Chi Minh, the revolutionary name of Nguyen That Thanh (1890-1969), was the leader of the Vietnamese independence movement against the French, and later the United States. He was educated in France, where he became a communist. He returned home to…

Despite Nixon's campaign promises to end the war, his first term in office saw an expansion rather than a reduction of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. By 1970 the reasons for this involvement had become increasingly unclear.

This photograph from the Detroit News, December 16, 1978, shows a Vietnamese family arriving in the United States. In the aftermath of the Vietnam War, thousands of refugees fled Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos in search of new lives in the United…

The small nation of Laos, along Vietnam's western border, became entangled in the Vietnam War. Laos was invaded by the North Vietnamese Army and covertly bombed by the U.S. After the Communist Pathet Lao emerged victorious in 1975, the country became…

Sergeant Jay Roberts was a reporter with the Public Information Department of the 11th Brigade. He accompanied Charlie Company during the assault on My Lai and witnessed the killings, but after the incident on March 18, 1968, he wrote a press release…