It’s hard to explain to young Americans today, especially with an all-volunteer military, how obsessed many in my generation were with the Vietnam War. Our parents had lived through World War II and had told us stories about America’s spirit of sacrifice during that time and the consensus among people after the bombing of Pearl Harbor that America needed to fight. With Vietnam, the country was divided, leaving us confused about our own feelings. My friends and I constantly discussed and debated it. We knew boys in ROTC programs who looked forward to serving when they graduated, as well as boys who intended to resist the draft. We had long conversations about what we would do if we were men, knowing full well we didn’t have to face the same choices. It was agonizing for everyone. A friend from Princeton finally dropped out and enlisted in the Navy, because, he told me, he was sick of the controversy and uncertainty.
The debate over Vietnam articulated attitudes not only about the war, but about duty and love of country. Were you honoring your country by fighting a war you considered unjust and contrary to America’s self-interest? Were you being unpatriotic if you used the system of deferments or the lottery to avoid fighting? Many students I knew who debated and protested the merits and morality of that war loved America just as much as the brave men and women who served without question or those who served first and raised questions later. For many thoughtful, self-aware young men and women there were no easy answers, and there were different ways to express one’s patriotism.
Some contemporary writers and politicians have tried to dismiss the anguish of those years as an embodiment of 1960s self-indulgence. In fact, there are some people who would like to rewrite history to erase the legacy of the war and the social upheaval it spawned. They would have us believe that the debate was frivolous, but that’s not how I remember it.
Vietnam mattered, and it changed the country forever. This nation still holds a reservoir of guilt and second-guessing for those who served and those who didn’t. Even though as a woman I knew I couldn’t be drafted, I spent countless hours wrestling with my own contradictory feelings.
In hindsight, 1968 was a watershed year for the country, and for my own personal and political evolution. National and international events unfolded in quick succession: the Tet Offensive, the withdrawal of Lyndon Johnson from the presidential race, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the assassination of Robert Kennedy and the relentless escalation of the Vietnam War.
By the time I was a college junior, I had gone from being a Goldwater Girl to supporting the antiwar campaign of Eugene McCarthy, a Democratic Senator from Minnesota, who was challenging President Johnson in the presidential primary. Although I admired President Johnson’s domestic accomplishments, I thought his dogged support for a war he’d inherited was a tragic mistake. Along with some of my friends, I would drive up from Wellesley to Manchester, New Hampshire, on Friday or Saturday to stuff envelopes and walk precincts. I had the chance to meet Senator McCarthy when he stopped into his headquarters to thank the student volunteers who had rallied around his opposition to the war. He nearly defeated Johnson in the New Hampshire primary, and on March 16, 1968, Senator Robert E Kennedy of New York entered the race.
Dr. King’s assassination on April 4, 1968, near the end of my junior year, filled me with grief and rage. Riots broke out in some cities. The next day I joined in a massive march of protest and mourning at Post Office Square in Boston. I returned to campus wearing a black armband and agonizing about the kind of future America faced.
Before I arrived at Wellesley, the only African Americans I knew were the people my parents employed in my father’s business and in our home. I had heard Dr. King speak and participated in exchanges with black and Hispanic teenagers through my church. But I had not had a black friend, neighbor or classmate until I went to college. Karen Williamson, a lively, independent-minded student, became one of my first friends there. One Sunday morning, she and I went off campus to attend church services. Even though I liked Karen and wanted to get to know her better, I was selfconscious about my motives and hyperaware that I was moving away from my past. As I got to know my black classmates better, I learned that they too felt selfconscious. Just as I had come to Wellesley from a predominantly white environment, they had come from predominantly black ones.
Janet McDonald, an elegant, self-possessed girl from New Orleans, related a conversation she had with her parents shortly after she arrived. When she told them, “I hate it here, everyone’s white,” her father agreed to let her leave, but her mother insisted, “You can do it and you are going to stay.” This was similar to the conversation I had with my own parents. Our fathers were willing―even anxious―for us to come home; our mothers were telling us to hang in there. And we did.
Karen, Fran Rusan, Alvia Wardlaw and other black students started Ethos, the first African American organization on campus, to serve as a social network for black students at Wellesley and as a lobbying group in dealing with the college administration. After Dr.
King’s assassination, Ethos urged the college to become more racially sensitive and to recruit more black faculty and students and threatened to call a hunger strike if the college did not meet their demands. This was Wellesley’s only overt student protest in the late 1960s. The college addressed it by convening an all-campus meeting in the Houghton Memorial Chapel so Ethos members could explain their concerns. The meeting began to disintegrate into a chaotic shouting match. Kris Olson, who along with Nancy
