PEACE NOW!

A thoughtful study of the role of ethnic minorities, students, women, and labor activists in ending an unpopular war. —A people’s revolt contributed to the ending of U.S. participation in the Vietnam War,— writes Jeffreys-Jones (American History/Univ. of Edinburgh, Scotland; Changing Differences: Women and the Shaping of American Foreign Policy, 1995). That popular revolt began on college campuses, fueled not only by self-interest—for college students were cannon fodder, particularly those who failed or got into trouble with the dean—but also by high-minded notions of social justice and democratic ideals. But, he continues, the struggle against the war soon spread into other sectors of society. It was especially pronounced in the African- American community, for black Americans served—and died—in disproportionate numbers. (The book opens with a fine vignette in which the singer Eartha Kitt berates Lyndon Johnson at a White House luncheon, charging that blacks had no reason to obey the law at home if they were only going to be sent off to Vietnam to die.) When the government amended the draft system so that white college students faced the same chance of being pressed into military service as did those black Americans, Jeffreys-Jones observes, the antiwar movement began to spread into the middle class, largely through the efforts of women; their opposition, she suggests, hastened the American withdrawal after President Nixon’s —Vietnamization— of the conflict and helped put the lie to —the myth that a silent majority supported a military solution.— Organized labor, the author writes, was among the last segments of American society to turn against the war, and it helped return Nixon to office in 1972. Yet even then, antiwar activists were working within the AFL-CIO and other organizations, eventually weakening labor’s support of Nixon’s policies—on which, perhaps coincidentally, the war came to an end. A solid contribution to Vietnam-era history.