The First Violent Protest | American Experience | PBS (2024)

FAQs

Where was the first violent protest? ›

The October 1967 demonstration against the Dow Chemical Company (and by proxy, against the Vietnam War) at the University of Wisconsin was the first violent antiwar demonstration to take place on a university campus. But from that point on, the antiwar movement grew larger.

Examples of violent protests include the Watts Riots, the Black Panther takeover of the California legislature, among others. The two MLK groups will confer together, as will the two Malcolm X groups.

The October 1967 Pentagon riot, the first national protest against the war, exemplified the agonizingly divisive debate over Vietnam. Ironically, the demonstrators helped the federal government confirm its own commitment to civilian control. Civilian Deputy Marshals, not soldiers, arrested them.

Still, the anti-war movement did force the United States to sign a peace treaty, withdraw its remaining forces, and end the draft in early 1973.

The Boston Tea Party was the first significant act of rebellion by American colonist against the British.

Among the most famous protests in U.S. history is the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Organizers described this event as a “living petition.” The day is perhaps most remembered for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

Violent protests are sometimes called riots.

1947 – Partition riots, India and modern-day Pakistan and Bangladesh, the hardest hit region was the densely populated state of Punjab (today divided between India and Pakistan), death toll estimates between 500,000 and 2,000,000, the deadliest riots known to humankind.

Many prominent intellectuals of the time, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau (see Civil Disobedience) and William Ellery Channing contributed literary works against war. Other names associated with the movement include William Ladd, Noah Worcester, Thomas Cogswell Upham, and Asa Mahan.

The summer of 1967 was also known as the "Long Hot Summer," witnessing racial unrest in American cities such as Detroit, Newark, and Cincinnati. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech “Beyond Vietnam” brought awareness to the volatile subject of the U.S. military involvement in Vietnam.

Who opposed the Vietnam War? ›

Soon, Martin Luther King Jr., Coretta Scott King, and James Bevel of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) became prominent opponents of the Vietnam War, and Bevel became the director of the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam.

The US army had superior conventional weapons but they were ineffective against a country that was not industrialized and an army which employed guerrilla tactics and used the dense jungle as cover.

Having rebuilt their forces and upgraded their logistics system, North Vietnamese forces triggered a major offensive in the Central Highlands in March 1975. On April 30, 1975, NVA tanks rolled through the gate of the Presidential Palace in Saigon, effectively ending the war.

People opposed the war for different reasons. Some saw the conflict as a civil war in which the United States should not interfere. Others saw South Vietnam as a corrupt dictatorship and believed defending it was immoral. Thousands of demonstrators held protests against the war.

1947 – Partition riots, India and modern-day Pakistan and Bangladesh, the hardest hit region was the densely populated state of Punjab (today divided between India and Pakistan), death toll estimates between 500,000 and 2,000,000, the deadliest riots known to humankind.

A group of Quakers in Germantown, Pennsylvania, in 1688 created the “first written protest against slavery in the new world,” according to the Germantown Mennonite Historic Trust. The group saw the enslavement of others as a contradiction to its religious values and its history of fleeing oppression from the British.

The largest and most organized anti-war movement in American history arose during the Vietnam War. After the escalation of bombing of North Vietnam, protests questioning the war's morality sprouted on college campuses in 1965 as faculty and students staged “teach-ins” with anti-war seminars replacing regular classes.

The Right to Peaceful Protest: What the Constitution Says

The First Amendment protects freedom of speech, of religious expression, and of the press. In addition, it stops Congress from "prohibiting ... the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."