Chisholm '72: In Context: A Brief Guide to 1972

• Vietnam and the Anti-War Movement
• The 1968 Democratic Convention
• The 26th Amendment
• Women's Rights
• Nixon's Record
• Timeline

Vietnam and the Anti-War Movement

The American presence in Vietnam peaked in 1968, as did public opposition to the war. More than 30,000 U.S. soldiers had died by that point, and the average age of a casualty in Vietnam was 20. Sixty-one percent of all the men who fought in Vietnam were 21 or younger. In January, North Vietnamese forces launched the Tet Offensive, one of the largest battles of the war, in which they attacked nearly all of the south's regional capitals and the American base at Khe Sanh. Although the Tet Offensive failed to inspire an uprising of South Vietnamese, it demonstrated that the war was not proceeding as well as many Americans believed. That year, opinion polls demonstrated that a majority of Americans had doubts about the war.

Antiwar demonstrations and activities spread throughout the country in the following years, with more than 500,000 marchers converging in Washington, D.C. in November 1969. Students occupied the administration buildings at universities throughout the country, most notably at Columbia University, which sometimes provoked violent clashes between student organizers and police. The closing years of the 1960s also saw revelations about the American conduct of the war: military veterans and journalists documented egregious violations of the laws of war, including the massacre of civilians at My Lai and the indiscriminate bombing of enemy territories.

The antiwar movement gained popularity, but lost some of its focus after the 1968 Democratic convention. Disagreements over tactics and political values split the movement into several factions. Believing that a purist nonviolent approach was doomed to failure, groups such as the Weathermen began to directly attack governmental targets, including non-lethal bombings of the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, military offices, and police buildings. When the president announced in April 1970 that American forces had begun bombing targets in Cambodia, spontaneous demonstrations occurred across the country. At one such demonstration, National Guard soldiers fired on a crowd of student protesters, killing four and wounding 16. At the same time, a backlash against the countercultural movement and its association with drugs and sexual liberation undermined popular support for the antiwar effort. While over 20,000 Americans died in Vietnam between 1968 and 1972, Vietnamization and the withdrawal of American troops was largely successful in blunting the force of antiwar protests.

Next | The 1968 Democratic Convention »

Sources
» Boston.com: Return of the Weathermen
» The Oxford Companion to American Military History: The Anti-War Movement in the United States
» Wikipedia: Tet Offensive
» Wikipedia: Weathermen

• Vietnam and the Anti-War Movement
• The 1968 Democratic Convention
• The 26th Amendment
• Women's Rights
• Nixon's Record
• Timeline

The 1968 Democratic Convention

The 1972 Democratic National Convention in Miami was carefully organized to distinguish it from the 1968 convention in Chicago, which was characterized by vociferous dissent within the party and violence in the streets outside. Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley used 20,000 police, National Guard soldiers, and Secret Service agents to try to control antiwar demonstrators. Inside the convention hall, supporters of antiwar candidate Eugene McCarthy felt marginalized by the party's elites, who used convention rules to place Hubert Humphrey on the ticket, despite the fact that Humphrey had won zero primaries or caucuses.

To ensure that 1972 would be different, the party chose George McGovern to head a convention reform commission. Among the reforms implemented were rules that convention delegates should "fairly reflect" the preferences of state voters, rules calling for proportional inclusion of women and minority groups, and open-procedure rules intended to decrease the authority of state party officials in choosing delegates.

Next | The 26th Amendment »

» CNN All Politics: Democratic National Convention
» Howstuffworks: How Political Conventions Work

• Vietnam and the Anti-War Movement
• The 1968 Democratic Convention
• The 26th Amendment
• Women's Rights
• Nixon's Record
• Timeline

The 26th Amendment

One reason for the intensity of the 1972 presidential election was that it was the first in which all Americans over 18 would be eligible to vote. Before the passage of the 26th Amendment, most states required voters to be 21, while all men over 18 were eligible to be drafted into the army. In the late 1960s, with troop commitments in Vietnam near their peak, the average age of an enlisted man was 19, meaning that the bulk of soldiers in Vietnam could not vote.

There had been previous political movements to lower the voting age: the first such effort was made just after the Civil War. The idea reappeared sporadically during the 20th century, gaining the most support during times of war. During World War II, both Senator Arthur Vandenberg and Representative Jennings Randolph proposed constitutional amendments to lower the voting age nationally. Neither measure was acted upon. Over the next two decades, Jennings Randolph, who later became a senator, proposed a voting-age constitutional amendment ten times. Each measure won a majority of senator's votes, but fell short of the required two-thirds majority. In 1968, both party platforms called for extending voting rights to 18-year-olds, and opinion polls showed a majority of Americans supported the idea. Senator Edward Kennedy proposed legislation to lower the age, and both houses of congress quickly passed the measure. Some states disputed the law's constitutionality, however, and the Supreme Court ruled in Oregon v. Mitchell that congress only had authority to lower the voting age in federal elections.

Sensing the logistical difficulty of maintaining two election systems -- one for local and state elections and another for federal elections -- both houses of congress moved quickly to pass a constitutional amendment. The 26th Amendment was approved by the senate on March 10, 1971, and was quickly ratified by state legislatures. Three fourths of the state legislatures must approve an amendment before it is ratified, and the 38th and 39th states (Oklahoma and North Carolina) ratified the amendment on July 1. It was the quickest ratification process of any constitutional amendment. Because of the new amendment, eleven million extra voters were eligible in 1972 -- citizens who were 18, 19, or 20 years old. Fifty percent of them cast votes that year, a proportion that has never been equaled.

Next | Women's Rights »

Sources
» Close Up Foundation: The 26th Amendment (PDF File, 55 KB)
» National Park Service: 26th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
» USConstitution.net: Notes on the Amendments

• Vietnam and the Anti-War Movement
• The 1968 Democratic Convention
• The 26th Amendment
• Women's Rights
• Nixon's Record
• Timeline

Women's Rights

The campaign to win equal rights for women was one of the largest social movements of the 1960s, mobilizing millions of women and like-minded men. American women were instrumental in each of the decade's large social movements, including the antiwar movement and the struggle for civil rights, but they were often marginalized by male-dominated structures. The women's movement in this era focused largely on issues of economic inequality and women's differential legal status.

Women's Rights

Abortion rights were a key issue for women's groups, but before the Supreme Court's decision in the 1973 Roe v. Wade case, legalization efforts focused on state legislatures. A handful of states permitted abortions in cases of rape and incest, and in 1970 New York became the first state to permit abortion on demand up to the 24th week of pregnancy. The Roe decision was anticipated by Eisenstadt v. Baird, in which the Supreme Court ruled that the law could not discriminate between married and single people in determining access to contraception.

The Nixon administration was supportive of some of the women's movement's goals, and offered qualified support for the Equal Rights Amendment banning gender discrimination, which was first approved by congress in 1972. That year also saw the passage of Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in the funding of education and related activities. The statute led to enormous growth in women's participation in sports.

Next | Nixon's Record »

Sources
» Planned Parenthood: The Constitutional Right to Privacy
» U.S. Department of Education: Title IX: A Sea Change in Gender Equity in Education
» Wikipedia:
Abortion in the United States

• Vietnam and the Anti-War Movement
• The 1968 Democratic Convention
• The 26th Amendment
• Women's Rights
• Nixon's Record
• Timeline

Nixon's Record

Public sentiment solidified against the Vietnam War in the late 1960s, and Richard Nixon was elected in part because he pledged to end the war and bring what he called "peace with honor." To that end, the Nixon administration inaugurated the strategy of Vietnamization. The goal of the policy was to gradually withdraw American troops while continuing to support the armies of South Vietnam. American troop levels in Vietnam peaked in 1968 at 536,000, and by 1972 fewer than 30,000 American soldiers remained. At the same time, President Nixon and his national security adviser Henry Kissinger expanded the focus of the war into neighboring Cambodia and Laos. They also intensified the bombing campaign against North Vietnam.

Nixon's 1968 and 1972 campaigns also appealed to many Americans' sense of unease about the rise of the counterculture along with the antiwar movement. In 1968 Nixon became one of the first presidential candidates to emphasize crime in a national campaign, famously referring to the "silent majority" of Americans who longed for a society of law and order. Playing to voters' anxieties about the upheavals of the late 1960s proved a successful strategy for Nixon, who was elected with a solid majority of electoral votes.

Nixon's domestic program focused on decreasing the size of federal government bureaucracy and delegating responsibility for social programs to the states. Considered a "New Federalist," Nixon favored local control of issues such as school desegregation and welfare, but he also supported environmental regulation and women's rights. He proposed the Clean Air Act, which was passed by congress in 1970, and he created the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Natural Resources. Under his direction, the Department of Justice initiated legislation to enforce the sex discrimination provisions of the Civil Rights Act, and Nixon appointed more women to administration positions than any previous president.

With the assistance of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Nixon proposed the Family Assistance Plan, a guaranteed national income program, to replace the federal welfare system. The program was unpopular with conservatives who opposed welfare, and also with liberals who felt the proposed benefits were insufficient. Nixon had limited success with his social programs, but he succeeded in redirecting billions in federal funds to local and state governments.

Next | '72: The Year in Review Timeline »

Sources
» PBS - American Experience: The Presidents (Richard M. Nixon)
» U.S. National Archives and Records Administration: Statistical information about casualties of the Vietnam conflict
» Wikipedia: Vietnamization

• Vietnam and the Anti-War Movement
• The 1968 Democratic Convention
• The 26th Amendment
• Women's Rights
• Nixon's Record
• Timeline

Timeline

SOURCES
» Wikipedia: 1972

PHOTO CREDITS
(Top to bottom)
President Nixon meets with China's Communist Party Leader, Mao Tse-Tung, 2/29/1972. Source: National Archives.
The Goodyear blimp. Source: National Archives.
Angela Davis. Source: Library of Congress.
Cover of first issue of Ms. Magazine.
Launch of Apollo 17. Source: NASA.