People don’t talk about it a whole lot, but 1970 was the most significant midterm election of the Vietnam War. The Dems picked up twelve house seats and lost 3 Senate seats, including Al Gore’s father’s seat. Just looking back, it’s easy to see how bad the news was.
February 18 – A jury finds the Chicago Seven defendants not guilty on charges of conspiring to incite a riot in charges stemming from the violence at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Five of the defendants are found guilty on the lesser charge of crossing state lines to incite riot.
March 17 – My Lai massacre: The United States Army charges 14 officers with suppressing information related to the incident.
April 1 – American Motors introduces the Gremlin.
April 10 – Paul McCartney announces that the Beatles have disbanded.
April 11 – US spaceflight Apollo 13 launches for the moon, carrying Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, and Jack Swigert. On April 13, an oxygen tank in the spacecraft explodes, forcing the crew to abort the mission. The crew returns to earth safely on April 17.
April 29 – U.S. invades Cambodia to hunt out Viet Cong. Massive protests against the war continue in the U.S.
May 4 – The Kent State shootings: Four students at Kent State University in Ohio are killed and 9 wounded by National Guardsmen at a demonstration protesting against the incursion into Cambodia.
May 9 – 100,000 people demonstrate in Washington DC against the Vietnam War.
May 14 – In the second day of violent demonstrations at Jackson State College in Jackson, Mississippi, state law enforcement officers fire into the demonstrators, killing 2 and injuring 12.
September 3-6 – Israeli forces fight Palestinian guerillas in southern Lebanon.
September 7 – An anti-war rally is held at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, attended by John Kerry, Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland.
September 11 – Spiro Agnew refers to the press as “nattering nabobs of negativism” and “hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.” (sidenote: the Ford Pinto is introduced).
September 18 – Jimi Hendrix dies of barbiturate overdose in Europe.
September 29 – US Congress gives president Richard Nixon authority to sell arms to Israel.
October 4 – Janis Joplin dies of a heroin overdose inside her hotel room in Los Angeles, California.
October 8 – US foreign office announces that it renews its arms sales to Pakistan.
October 8 – Vietnam War: In Paris, a Communist delegation rejects US President Richard Nixon’s October 7 peace proposal as “a maneuver to deceive world opinion.”
October 9 – The Khmer Republic is proclaimed in Cambodia.
October 12 – Vietnam War: US President Richard Nixon announces that the United States will withdraw 40,000 more troops before Christmas.
October 30 – In Vietnam, the worst monsoon to hit the area in six years causes large floods, kills 293, leaves 200,000 homeless and virtually halts the Vietnam War.
That is one hell of a string of bad news. And I didn’t even include some doozies. Our country has been thru some hard times before. We’ve been led by corrupt and venal leadership in the past. We’ve fought on in a hopeless war before, for years, with the Republicans looking to paint realists as appeasers, or communist sympathizers, etc. And it was successful in the 1968-1972 period. What people forget is that reality caught up to the Republicans and they paid a heavy price. The press thinks it is 1972. I think it is 1974.
Regardless, do you remember 1970?
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Your ending, did you mean 1970?
Extending the historic similarity, Bush 2008 will be Nixon’s 1974.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
Childhood memories that are fairly scattered. Mostly the times my uncle babysat – mainly memories of going to head shops, him showing me his record collection, things of that nature.
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During that time in the White House, he [Rumsfeld] begins to push for quicker action to bring the Vietnam War to a close. … Nixon and [Chief of Staff H.R.] Haldeman and [Secretary of State Henry] Kissinger sit around and talk about firing Rumsfeld because he is too much of a dove on Vietnam.
As Chief of Staff under President Ford: Halloween Massacre
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
I shipped off to Vietnam.
I remember sitting in an Officer’s Club somewhere in the Central Highlands, listening to a static-filled radio broadcast as Willis Reed walked out of the tunnel into Madison Square Garden and led the Knicks to the NBA Championship.
I remember training a group of Vietnamese teen-agers to be People’s Self-Defense Forces (PSDF), part of the “Vietnamization” program, where South Vietnamese forces were supposed to move up and take the place of the American forces. The PSDF were supposed to replace the South Vietnamese forces in defense of hamlets and villages. After a three-week training where we gave the kids weapons, taughgt them how to use them, and gave them some rudimentary small unit tactics, we had a graduation ceremony, gave them all colorful neckerchiefs, and sent them back out to their hamlets. Six weeks later, they all (23) walked off and joined the NLF, of course taking their weapons with them.
I remember well the October 30 monsoon. The military compound I worked from was located on the Song Bo River in Thua Thien Province, about twenty miles north of Hue. The whole area for miles around was flooded. Our teamhouse was knee-deep in water. We put the bunks up on beer cans, and stayed, living in the knee-deep water for over a week. We were right on Route 1, the major north-south route between Hue and Quang-Tri. A huge American tractor-trailer tried to plow its way through the flooding, and dozens of Vietnamese civilians had jumped on in an effort to get to the other side. The truck ran off the road, and about eight or nine people drowned, including the truck driver. I remember pulling the bodies out as they bobbed to the surface.
1970. Among the most significant years in my life. Most of what I am today is the result of the experiences of that year.
I think my current husband was there with ya. He told me the same beer can story… or maybe that happened more than one place… 1970 was a defining year for him, too.
Show him my post. If he was there, he’d recognize the things I mentioned.
Twenty years old, I left my parents home in Minnesota to live communally in Sonoma, California. My older brother was in the navy in Long Beach, my younger brother and my future husband graduating from high school with low enough draft lottery numbers. I remember all those events well – I was really there in one form or another. Now I wonder at the perspective of the people in our government now.
1970 was the year letter carriers went on strike, laying the groundwork for me to earn a decent and safe living years later. The next year brought the murder of George Jackson and the slaughter at Attica. I hope we’re not in 1970 now, there must be some progress – it’s a spiral not a wheel.
I couldn’t believe that a big Stones fan like you would have left their free concert at Altamont speedway off your bad news list.
I didn’t attend, even beforehand it sounded like a bad scene. That may have been 1969, but it was the virtual beginning of 1970.
I was a junior in high school. I remember a national war protest… a Moratorium on the war. We all wore black armbands. I went to parochial high school. The telling thing was, even the nuns had those black armbands on. The feelings against the VietNam war were deep and widespread.
I remember that Mad Magazine did a whole spread on My Lai… Alfred E Newman on the cover as Seargent Cali (was that his name?) “What My Lai?” (instead of his “what, me worry?)
Ah, that’s the summer I didn’t go to Woodstock. I would have had to run away to go and I just wussed out.
Lieutenant William Calley, I remember his name so well, and wonder why it made headlines for months (in my memory anyway) but the war criminals today are largely invisible to the public view.
1970 marked the guessing game year for the many who had draft lottery numbers from the initial 1969 draft, but they did not know what their numbers meant in terms of likely being called in many cases. Therefore the uncertainties for the social makeup of America were even exaggerated further by Vietnam!
Looking back, I believe this draft-caused uncertainty may have been one of the most powerful forces leading to the overwhelming anti-war feelings of the early 1970s and the protests. It further supports my idea that a fair draft is just what’s needed to wake-up the American electorate to pay closer attention to the foreign policy of their government, something they know little of or care little about now because, in the words of that Saturday Night Live skit, They don’t have to!!
I married my first husband in June of 1970. We lived in a roach-infested apartment in what is now a highly-priced area and only paid $95 a month for rent. Can you even imagine a four-room apartment for $95! Despite the roaches, it was pretty cool with high ceilings and you could paint the walls any color you wanted. We had a purple dining room, a terra cotta living room and a sky blue bedroom.
We had a VW Beetle that my husband took to his job as a photogrpher’s assistant and I had a 10-speed bicycle that I rode to my job at a hippie t-shirt and paraphernalia shop. The owner used to reward the person with the highest sales for the month with a half pound bag of weed! What a great job that was. Between customers, I read R. Crumb Comix.
We had a lot of friends who lived in the same building. Two other women and I were in charge of cooking for everyone. One guy had a tv and another couple had a great sound system. So depending on what the gang felt like, we’d gather at one apartment or another, get stoned, listen to music or watch tv, hang out and laugh like maniacs.
Every weekend, we organized an acid drop. One or two people would be designated “ground men” and guide the trip. The best one was a kindergarden experience. We got big rolls of brown paper, crayons, colored chalks and fingerpaints. The woman in charge pretended to be our teacher and we all acted like we were four-year-olds. No matter what we did, she told us how special we were, how talented, how smart and clever. The self-confidence that got programmed into me lasted for a long time afterwards.
Bad news was happening out there but I didn’t pay attention. I was very happy.
One thing I learned as a letter carrier – never ask a geezer a question, because they won’t ever shut up.
Anyway I wanted to give you a link to this article in The American Conservative about the man I first voted for as President.
Got that from Barbara O’Brien at the Mahablog, who remembers much more articulately and perceptively than I. She had a great post about it yesterday, always good commentary too.
I still have my McGovern button. And McCarthy, too. I really paid more attention than my previous comment admits. I marched and rallied and was angry. But, back then I believed we could change the world. I was optimistic and so bad news didn’t bum me out the way it does now.
We knew we had a future. Now we can’t be sure.
I worked in Brattleboro for a Dem Senate candidate who lost in that year, Phil Hoff of Vermont. His issue was that he has denounced the war. The winner, the forgettable Win Prouty, ran as “I’m your Senator,” sort of like Lieberman, though a Republican.
Hoff lost because half the tiny state of Vermont had seen him drunk while governor. He had sobered up by 1970 but previous antics were apparently unforgettable. Prouty was also a drunk, but he did his boozing in DC where Vermonters didn’t see it. He died shortly after.
All politics is local?
June 19, 1970 watched “Cactus Flower” on a chartered United DC-8 from Cam Rahn Bay to McCord AFB, Washington State.
The Controlled Substances Act becomes law and begins the reimposition of Jim Crow in America.
SEE:Drug Busts=Jim Crow by Ira Glasser
What I remember about 1970 would not be that interesting to anyone here. I was a sophomore in high school living in a small town in East Texas in a community of right-wing christian fundamentalists. All of you were heathen pinko communists to me back then.
I feel real shame for that. But perhaps there is a bright side to it as well. Some of us can grow up and out of all that. I’m proud of my journey out – but there were some important people who helped make it possible:
My poli-sci professor at a christian fundamentalist college
One of the few African American students at that school
An inter-racial church in urban Minneapolis
A professor of theology at the seminary I attended
Writers like Riane Eisler and Merlin Stone
There is hope for the kool-aid drinkers!!
Hell of a year it was. Newly arrived in Vietnam, went to Cambodia, shot, a month in hospital in Cam Ranh, back out to the field, hit with a grenade, 8 months in various hospitals around the globe, lost 65 pounds and various extraneous body parts, and finally got out and was promptly turned down trying to buy a beer in the DFW airport..said I wasn’t old enough to drink. Heh…