HISTORICALLY
—————- current events through a historical lens————————
With campus protests, history comes full circle
There is no doubt that colleges across the nation are more and more starting to look like the 1960s. Within the last month buildings have been taken over and tent cities have sprung up on dozens of campuses filled with students protesting the war in Israel.
The demands of the students are varied. The most recent call is for colleges to divest themselves in every way from Israel. But within the movement is still the call for the elimination of Israel with the chant, “From the river to the sea, Palestine must be free.”
In the 60s many of these students’ grandparents protested on these same campuses against a different war. There are a lot of similarities between the two generations but there is also an interesting twist.
1968 is considered the most radical year of the Vietnam protest era. The year began with the Tet Offensive that took the lives of more than 4,000 American soldiers with close to 20,000 wounded. Yet, in the midst of the conflict, General William Westmoreland and President Lyndon B. Johnson both claimed America was winning and had the enemy right where we wanted them. While militarily they were correct, students disagreed. Students saw the war as military oppression. They saw friends shipped off to foreign lands to support a corrupt regime. They saw thousands of innocent Americans and Vietnamese being killed. The Tet Offensive also seemed to show that if he thought American forces were winning the war when Saigon itself was under attack, Johnson was seriously out of touch with reality.
In the summer much of the protestors’ attention turned to the upcoming Democratic primaries. While LBJ promised to stay the course in Vietnam, a new candidate, Eugene McCarthy, had emerged to support the anti-Vietnam movement. He promised that as president he would bring all the troops home.
In a real political shock, McCarthy beat the sitting president in the New Hampshire Primary. That shock doubled when Robert “Bobby” Kennedy changed his mind and entered the race as an anti-war candidate. Bobby was the man students had wanted all along. Brother of liberal icon President John F. Kennedy, he seemed to represent all the protestors’ hopes and dreams. They believed he would finish what his brother had started: ending racism, poverty, inequality and most importantly, the war.
It would be an uphill battle for Bobby. He not only had to beat fellow anti-war McCarthy but also defeat a sitting president-something only done three times before. Fortunately, Johnson decided to drop out of the race. He was replaced by his vice president, Herbert Humphrey, who vowed to keep fighting the war. On the other side, McCarthy had a head start and was going strong winning the primaries until May 7 when Kennedy won both Indiana and Washington D.C. and started to get his campaign rolling. Coming into June it looked like Kennedy would pull ahead of McCarthy.
On June 4, the real prize was California. Kennedy looked strong entering the race and really looked like the frontrunner as he won the state. The next day there was a reception for him at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. After speaking to the crowd, he exited through the kitchen where shots rang out. Kennedy was shot several times and was rushed to hospital where he died the next day.
The assassination of the second Kennedy brother crushed the nation. Both men were seen as brilliant lights that had been extinguished. The nation mourned Bobby’s death. None more so than Mc-Carthy and Humphrey who suspended their campaigns. Humphrey would go on to win at the convention during a week full of violence all around the venue. He went on to lose to Richard Nixon in the general election.
Bobby’s death was a sad day for all Americans; even Republicans mourned the loss. Including Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and JFK, Bobby Kennedy was the last of several prominent men assassinated in the 1960s. It was also hard for people to understand the cause of Bobby’s assassination, which is what brings us full circle with the twist. Bobby was killed by a man named Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian who was upset that the Kennedys supported the Nation of Israel.
Bobby’s assassination was the first in a string of lives lost around the world to the hands of Palestinian terrorists— a string that continues today.
James Finck is a professor of history at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma. He can be reached at HistoricallySpeakingl 776@gmail.com.
