US History Standards: SSUSH20 The student will analyze the domestic and international impact of the Cold War on the United States. d. Describe the Vietnam War, the Tet offensive, and growing opposition to the war. SSUSH23 The student will describe and assess the impact of political developments between 1945 and d. Describe the social and political turmoil of 1968; include the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, and the events surrounding the Democratic National Convention. SSUSH25 The student will describe changes in national politics since a. Describe President Richard M. Nixon’s opening of China, his resignation due to the Watergate scandal, changing attitudes toward government, and the Presidency of Gerald Ford.

By 1965, many children of WWII veterans, known as the Baby Boom Generation, began to graduate from HS The prosperity of the post-war years meant that many more young people had the opportunity to go college and college enrollment swelled What was created was a generation gap, a difference in the way of thinking of these young people and their parents

As participation in the war in Vietnam grew, students became more and more discontented with the way things were going Students organized protests against the war The draft was reinstated in 1951, but relatively few were drafted until the summer of 1965, when escalation occurred A draft-resistance movement began and young men began to refuse to cooperate with their local draft boards To avoid the draft, students took college deferments, claimed physical problems, and about 100K Americans are believed to have avoided the draft by going to Canada

By 1968, a majority of American disagreed with the war effort Robert McNamara had resigned after losing faith in the war effort Robert Kennedy, younger brother of JFK, announced in the spring of 1968 that he would run against Johnson for the Democratic nomination March 31, 1968 – Johnson shocked the world by announcing he would not seek another term as President Robert F. Kennedy Lyndon B. Johnson

After Johnson announced he wouldn’t run again and Robert Kennedy was assassinated, the Democratic party was in disarray Protesters outside the convention were beaten by police on national TV as the convention was about to nominate Hubert Humphrey The problems in the Democratic Party lead to the election of Richard Nixon in 1968 Hubert Humphrey Richard Nixon

Johnson began the Paris peace talks before he left office After Nixon took office, he began removing American forces from Vietnam and replacing them with South Vietnamese soldiers He didn’t want to lose the war, so bombing continued In 1970, the war spread to Cambodia

The invasion of Cambodia led to protests on college campuses At Kent State University in Ohio, students burned the ROTC building The Gov. ordered the National Guard to the campus – the students threw rocks at them, so the National Guard responded, first with tear gas, then with bullets The students were unarmed and engaged in a generally peaceful protest, yet 4 students were dead and 9 others were wounded Similar violence occurred at Jackson State Univ. in MS

Nixon was reelected in 1972 after ordering a major bombing campaign as a result of a North Vietnamese assault January 1973 – a peace treaty was signed with the following provisions the US would withdraw its forces within 60 days all POWs would be released all sides would stop military activities in Laos and Cambodia the country would be reunited – the 2 sides would fight for another 2 years until the North Vietnamese won

just before Saigon fell, the US dramatically evacuated their embassy the Domino Theory turned out to be untrue – the rest of the region never fell nearly 60K soldiers died in Vietnam, 300K were wounded the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was built in memory of the dead in Washington, DC in 1982

besides ending the Vietnam war, Nixon’s greatest foreign policy achievement was the détente, or a relaxing in tensions, between the US and the world’s 2 Communist giants, China and the Soviet Union In 1970, Nixon’s administration took steps to improve the relationship between the US and China – the US officially recognized China for the first time, lifted travel restrictions to China, and ended the trade embargo Nixon had an ulterior motive: he hoped that Chinese friendship could be used as a bargaining chip in his negotiations with the USSR – the USSR wouldn’t want China to get too close to the US Nixon traveled to China in February 1972 and met with Chinese leader Mao Zedong – eventually, relations between the 2 countries were normalized