The anti-Vietnam War movement was the most vocal and sustained in US history.

It began in the early 1960s in response to increased US participation in Vietnam , and then subsequently expanded in mid-1960s to peak in 1970.

The following are some of the most moving and memorable events from the Pentagon in Washington DC to Kent State University in Ohio, which saw American bloodshed and death nowhere near the battlefield, all in protest of the war.

Banned stamp

Vietnamese may know of Norman Morrison, one of the most well-known protesters of the Vietnam War.

Morrison set himself on fire in front of the Pentagon building on November 2, 1965, to protest the United States involvement in the war. At the time, he was a 32-year-old father of three.

On the morning he set himself on fire, he had taken his one-year-old daughter Emily with him, either setting her down or handing her off to someone in the crowd, before perishing in the self-set blaze.

"Whether he thought of it that way or not, I think having Emily with him was a final and great comfort to Norman," his widow, Anne Morrison Welsh, recalled in an interview.

"And she was a powerful symbol of the children we were killing with our bombs and napalm - who didn't have parents to hold them in their arms."

The government of the North of Vietnam then issued a postage stamp in his honor that year, the possession of which was prohibited in the US.

Seven days after Morrison’s death, Roger Allen LaPorte, a 22-year-old man, performed a similar act in New York City, in front of the United Nations building.

Height of demonstrations

By the mid-1960s antiwar groups and protests had begun to spring up around the US, with protests coming to a head when President Johnson started bombing North Vietnam in 1965.

By 1967 the antiwar movement had grown dramatically. Joining the opponents of the war were millions of Americans who believed that the US government had made a tragic mistake in attempting to wage a war in Vietnam.

The movement reached its height on November 15, 1969 when more than 250,000 protesters gathers in Washington DC in the largest-ever demonstration to occur during the Vietnam War. 

Protesters represented over 36 different anti-war groups, with 150 people arrested.  Many of the protesters were clubbed with nightsticks, some were sprayed with tear gas, and one was even thrown into a 10-foot wall.

Blood bath

In April 1970, in an effort to disrupt North Vietnamese supply lines, US president Nixon expanded the war into Cambodia. In response to the expansion of the war, protests exploded around the US.

On May 4, 1970, hundreds of students at Kent State University in Ohio gathered in a demonstration to oppose the war. The Ohio National Guard was called to the university, who after a time opened fire on the crowd of demonstrators, killing four young students and wounding nine others.

Volumes have been written on the blood bath and its aftermath, but it is certain that the soldiers of the National Guard who said they felt ‘threatened’ by the crowd were never within 100 meters of the protesters.

The impact of the shootings was dramatic. The event triggered a nationwide student strike that forced hundreds of colleges and universities to close.

Compiled by Ha Nguyen.