Lauren Mottle

Prior to the Vietnam War, struggles for Black equality were deeply intertwined with conceptions of national belonging, masculinity, and military service, epitomized by the Double V campaign of World War II. The persistence of inequalities, however, despite the legislative victories of the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War’s integrated military, opened the door to a new cultural model that defined manhood and national belonging in oppositional and racial terms. Given the far reach of the Selective Service, draft resistance as a new masculine standard engaged young Black men in Black Power rhetoric, culture, and ideas, regardless of their active, or even knowing, involvement in the contemporary Black freedom struggle. Draft resistance during the Vietnam years became a key organizing tool and a critical site for movement. Resisting the draft became an important way to support the larger struggle for Black liberation. Furthermore, the relationship between draft resistance and Bl...

ABSTRACT This paper argues for the inclusion of the GI Movement in narratives of the New Left. Through an analysis of the GI underground press this article explores activists’ emphasis on participatory democracy, making America’s professed ideals a reality for all, and their critiques of authority and existing power structures of the Establishment. Despite diverging from popular images of the Sixties protest, GI activism achieved significant successes as the military adapted its policies; a response, in part, to GI dissent. By exploring GI dissent this paper contributes to scholarship which continues to reassess the scope and impact of the New Left.

Throughout the Sixties numerous ordinary Americans ‘challenged the integrity and virtue of basic institutions and values that had taken on the cover of American tradition.' While historians have extensively explored the anti-war activism of civilians, minimal attention has been given to the activism of anti-war soldiers. This thesis examines the activism of draft resisters, active-duty soldiers and veterans. Using the lens of the citizen-soldier ideal, it explores this activism’s impact on enduring assumptions around patriotism, citizenship, race and manhood. A long-standing tenet of American national identity, this ideal asserts that the highest patriotic duty of a male citizen was his unhesitating service in the armed forces in times of national crisis. I argue that anti-war soldiering severed the relationship between soldiering and the perceived duties of republican citizenship in American national identity. Where previous generations saw patriotic citizenship and a willingne...

This paper argues for the inclusion of the GI Movement in narratives of the New Left. Through an analysis of the GI underground press this article explores activists’ emphasis on participatory democracy, making America’s professed ideals a reality for all, and their critiques of authority and existing power structures of the Establishment. Despite diverging from popular images of the Sixties protest, GI activism achieved significant successes as the military adapted its policies; a response, in part, to GI dissent.  By exploring GI dissent this paper contributes to scholarship which continues to reassess the scope and impact of the New Left.

Students on the campus of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University were at the center of 1960s civil rights activism.  However, the current historiographical narrative does not afford these students the same importance in the subsequent antiwar movement.  An examination of student critiques at NC A&T, however, reveals that a growing antiwar consciousness proves essential to an understanding of the corresponding rise in Black Power.  Through contributions to The A&T Register, A&T’s student newspaper, it becomes clear that ideas crucial to the Black Power movement were introduced to A&T’s campus through their criticism of the Vietnam conflict. Prior to the rise of Black Power, A&T students supported the war as a continuation of the  “double-V” strategy: the belief that valor abroad in battle would advance claims for equality at home. However, from 1967 forward, students employed an increasingly racial critique of the war.  Students emphasized the disproportionate drafting of poor, black men and the contradiction between fighting for “freedom” abroad and the lack of freedom afforded to blacks at home.  This new critique became increasingly intertwined with ideas of racial pride and separatism characteristic of the Black Power Movement.

Questions of identity politics are central to the study of social activism in later twentieth­century America. Scholars of the feminist and GI movements suggest that racial identities prompted parallel trajectories of activism, rather than multiracial collaboration. A superficial analysis of race by white organisers alienated many people of colour. Indeed, the unique oppressions and experiences of activists of colour undermined the ideal of a shared gendered identity lauded by white organisers. However, collaborations occurred around their shared gendered experience of institutionalised oppressions, and multiracial alliances were forged to tackle specific issues. In the GI movement, dissenting soldiers hindered the ability of the American military to fight the Vietnam War. Perceiving the military structure as the source of their repression, white GIs attempted to organise around a collective masculine identity. For black GIs, oppression they faced in the military was indicative of and in addition to the broader societal racial discrimination that they experienced. The different understandings of their oppression hindered multiracial activism. While white GIs were eager to involve their black brothers­in­arms in their protest, collaboration typically only occurred around specific issues, such as riot control and military discipline. Similarly, specific moments and issues prompted transient multiracial collaboration in second wave feminism. White­dominated organisations sought to recruit racially diverse members based a perceived shared identity as women. Conscious of their socio­economic differences and of a legacy of gendered racial discrimination, women of colour were reluctant to subscribe to this shared identity and frequently chose to organize separately. However, specific issues, such as sterilization abuse and welfare reform, proved problematic enough to unite feminists across race in short­term, pragmatic collaborations. In portraying these different racial activisms as inherently separate, current scholarship has not fully explored the formation and significance of multiracial organizing, which can and did occur around specific issues.

The tumultuous 1960s witnessed a mass movement against the unpopular Vietnam War. While the civilian anti-war movement is widely explored in the literature, the equally significant contemporary anti-war movement within the US army remains overlooked. By 1971, over half of soldiers surveyed claimed involvement in some act of resistance, including engaging with underground newspapers and attending GI coffeehouses. Both facilitated the growth of GI activism by directly addressing issues most relevant to GIs. However, given the transitory nature of military service and the strength of military justice, underground papers and on-base anti-war organisations proved incredibly difficult to maintain. As civilian anti-war organisations became increasingly aware of the growing dissent within the military, they founded the first GI coffeehouses in military base towns. Initially meant to create a relaxed space where GIs could escape the rigidity of military life, these establishments quickly evolved into movement centres. Activist GIs utilised coffeehouses to debate and organise against the war. As the movement grew, national organisations began supporting coffeehouse projects across the country. I argue that coffeehouses provided essential stability and support to the GI movement. Without them, the anti-war activism of active-duty servicemen would have likely been restricted to individual acts of resistance. By providing physical, ideological and monetary resources, civilians created grassroots structures that permitted the growth and development of a sustained movement. Moreover, by receiving support from national organisations while continuing to organise around local issues, coffeehouses provided a space to simultaneously develop local activism and contribute to a national consciousness.