Guns or Butter

by Bernstein, Irving;

  Salisbury called Reston as soon as he returned to arrange a meeting with the President and Reston phoned Moyers to set it up. The word came back that Johnson did not want to talk to him. Reston then asked Rostow, who said he would be “delighted” to see him. But, Salisbury said, “I know Walt very well, that it would be him telling me what was going on … a silly exercise.” He wound up with Rusk, who made speeches, and William Bundy, who listened carefully. But nothing came of it.9

  During 1967 opposition to the war widened and deepened, reaching a climax in Washington in October. Early in the year the peace movement grew significantly, particularly in the churches through Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam, in the colleges among both professors and students, and in that sector of the black community that was morally offended by the war and was disturbed by a seeming disproportionate number of black casualties in Vietnam.

  Clergy and Laymen was predominantly Protestant and had significant influence in the National Council of Churches, but included among its leaders a number of priests and rabbis. William Sloane Coffin, the Yale chaplain and an experienced organizer, was its executive secretary. Martin Luther King became co-chairman. It stressed political realism, persuasion over confrontation, and a moral commitment to peace. Some of its members were uncomfortable with the dress, hair styles, and language of their peace colleagues from the counterculture. It became the largest peace organization. With Clergy and Laymen, Charles DeBenedetti wrote, “The antiwar movement had enlisted a constituency with direct access to the American center.”

  The Reverend James R. Adams was the rector of St. Marks Episcopal Church in Washington. The President and his family occasionally attended services there and Harry McPherson was a parishioner and a friend of the rector. The Washington Ad Hoc Viet Nam Draft Committee asked Adams for permission to hold a meeting at the church on the evening of May 7, 1967, in preparation for a lobbying visit to Capitol Hill, and he agreed. About 70 attended, mainly students from New York and Boston universities, but including representatives from SDS, the Progressive Labor Party, the Black United Action Committee, and the Spring Mobilization for Peace, along with agents of the Secret Service.

  The agents reported to the President the strong antiwar statements of James Bevel, presently director of the Spring Mobilization. He called Johnson “that cat in the White House.” They also noted that Adams was “very sympathetic to this group.” Johnson, evidently, complained to his aide.

  McPherson wrote the President on May 15 that “this is my day for defense counselling.” Jim Adams thought an “urban church should throw open its doors to the community.” It had welcomed Young Americans for Freedom, the Young Republicans, the Young Democrats, Women Strike for Peace, Alcoholics Anonymous, and a Library of Congress Chess Club. “Politically it made no sense to let this crowd in the door; but the church, as I long ago learned, marches to a different drummer.”

  Clergy and Laymen took the lead in the marches against the war by the Spring Mobilization on April 15, 1967. In New York an immense throng, estimated between 100,000 and 400,000, crowded into Central Park. In the Sheep Meadow about 70 young men, mainly from Cornell, burned their draft cards. This was followed by a huge march to Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza at the U.N., where King was the principal speaker. He told David Dellinger that there were more people than had been at the March on Washington. In San Francisco 50,000 paraded up Market Street to Kezar Stadium for a round of speeches. In both cities the demonstrators called for an end to American intervention in Vietnam. On May 18, Dr. Spock, Coretta King, and Bevel went to the White House to present a Spring Mobilization resolution to the President. Neither he nor any significant aide would receive them. In fact, they were kept outside on the sidewalk and Nathaniel Davis (position unknown) accepted the paper.

  The political news that reached the White House during 1967 was grim. Congressman Chet Holifield, the California Democrat, received a bill on joint funding simplification. There was “nothing wrong” with it, but the President ought to “quit sending new ideas to Congress.” This was just not the time. The Republicans and the southern Democrats would tear it to pieces. On August 11 Cater talked to Rowland Evans, the columnist, who had been a reliable hawk. Now he was “deeply disturbed.” The Republican House leaders Gerald Ford and Melvin Laird have “embarked on a deliberate policy of setting conditions,” Cater wrote Johnson, “which you cannot possibly meet.” They are laying the groundwork for a “Get Out of Vietnam” policy. Evans saw signs that congressmen who had been on the “hawkish side of the debate are now shifting 180°.” Cater had dinner with a group at which Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri “held forth … on the necessity to tuck tail and get out of Vietnam.” On August 24 McPherson had a “long, dispiriting talk with Joe Tydings,” the Maryland Democratic senator, who had supported the war. He now thought it a “political albatross.” “People are so frustrated and negative in Maryland,” he said, “that any reasonably good Republican could clobber me this year and probably next.” On October 24 Cater had his “bi-monthly clash with Reston.” The columnist continued to think the war was a disaster and he “lamented the spectacle we were creating throughout the world of an idealistic nation that was coming more and more to rely on pure power.” On October 18 the Arizona congressman Morris Udall, the brother of the Secretary of the Interior, wrote the President that he was a “loyal Democrat” who admired Johnson’s “exceptional leadership” and accomplishments. “After many months of careful and responsible deliberation, I have concluded that our Vietnam policies are unwise and should be substantially modified. I will express these views in a major address in Tucson next Sunday.”

  Another chapter in Mike Mansfield’s seemingly endless and fruitless endeavor to move Lyndon Johnson arrived on April 29, 1967. He proposed seeking a settlement through China or the U.N. and he again condemned the bombing. He closed with a touching personal note:

  You may recall that when you were the Majority Leader and I was your Deputy sitting next to you, that on occasion I would lean over and tug at: the back of your coat to signal that it was either time to close the debate or to sit down. Most of the time, but not all the time, you would do what I was trying to suggest. Since you have been President I have been figuratively tugging at your coat, now and again, and the only purpose has been to be helpful and constructive. … One last word—in my opinion, the hour is growing very, very late.

  Johnson, Rusk, McNamara, and Rostow, at least, could not appear on a college campus without evoking protest, if not provoking a riot. On May 23 George C. Bedell of the University of North Carolina wrote his old friend Harry McPherson a powerful argument against the war. “I cannot help but feel,” he concluded, “that we are headed straight on a course toward WW III. So far as I can tell we have nothing to gain and everything to lose by continuing our present course in Vietnam.” On June 9 Under Secretary of Agriculture John S. Schnittker had just returned from a visit to Kansas State University where he had discussed the war with a dozen administrators and professors. Not one supported the Vietnam adventure. All thought it could lead to war with China. They agreed that there was no significant element at the university that backed the war. At the urging of Allard Lowenstein, an activist New York lawyer, the student body presidents and newspaper editors at 200 American universities, including about every significant one, wrote an open letter to the President expressing deep concern about the war and the draft. Prior to publication they asked for a “candid off-the-record discussion of the Vietnam situation” with the President. He refused to see them. Cater suggested Humphrey, William Bundy, or Zbig Brzezinski of the State Department. Johnson wrote, “Not the V.P.—this is a luxury Pres. and V.P. should not have.” The students published their letter and their committee met with Bundy. Though he did an “excellent and patient job,” Cater wrote, “it did not make any visible converts.”

  In September, Tip O’Neill, emerging as a Democratic leader in the House and destined to become Speaker, came out against the war. He he
ld Jack Kennedy’s old district, part of Boston and Cambridge, that was overwhelmingly working-class ethnic and hawkish. But it had 22 colleges, including Harvard and MIT. Tip had supported Johnson without thinking about the war. But the students in his colleges and his own kids shook him up. He checked widely among military, CIA, and diplomatic people he knew and was shocked by the number who wanted to pull out of Vietnam. He wrote his constituents that his conscience no longer allowed him to support the war. His loss was a big loss to the President.

  Walt Rostow, the National Security Adviser, was a prominent Yale graduate. On November 21 the Yale Draft Refusal Committee sent him its statement “because of your personal association with Yale.” The committee announced that 303 students and faculty members “would refuse to be drafted into the military so long as the United States continues to fight in Vietnam.” The signers consisted of 12 faculty members, 139 undergraduates, and 151 students in graduate and professional schools. The names were published in the Yale Daily News and in The New Journal, a student magazine.

  During 1967 Martin King lent his powerful, though dissonant, voice to the peace movement. Both King and his wife had become increasingly concerned about the war, but he had said nothing publicly. Lowenstein; Carey McWilliams, the editor of the Nation; Coffin; and Norman Thomas urged him to take a stand and were talking about him as a third-party candidate for President in 1968. The FBI wiretappers recorded the phone conversations and, presumably, passed them on to the White House. On January 14 King read Ramparts, which had an article on the children of Vietnam, showing their burn wounds from American napalm bombs. He froze and at that moment committed himself to trying to end the war.

  King delivered his first anti-Vietnam speech in Los Angeles on February 25, 1967, where he joined four peace senators—Ernest Gruening, Mark Hatfield of Oregon, Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota, and George McGovern of South Dakota. A few days later he got into an angry and insulting argument with Whitney Young of the Urban League over the war and Johnson. On March 6 King met with a group of his trusted advisers over whether he should take part in the Spring Mobilization. Only Bevel urged him to do so and King agreed with him. On March 24 he joined Dr. Spock in his first peace walk, leading 5000 people through downtown Chicago to a meeting at the Coliseum. On April 4 King spoke under the auspices of Clergy and Laymen at the Riverside Church in Manhattan on “Beyond Vietnam.” This powerful address was probably the most eloquent moral argument made against the war at the time.

  There was, he said, an obvious connection between the war and civil rights. The poverty program had held out hope for the poor in the ghettoes, but now the funds to help them were being spent on Vietnam. Young black men who were “crippled by their own society” were being sent to “guarantee liberties in southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and east Harlem.” King had built his leadership in civil rights on nonviolence. “I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettoes without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today—my own government.” He had been awarded the Nobel Prize for peace. It imposed a duty upon him to work for peace in Vietnam.

  King proposed a program for ending the war: stop the bombing in the North and the South; declare a unilateral cease-fire; withdraw militarily from Thailand and Laos; admit the Vietcong to peace negotiations and, ultimately, to participation in the ensuing government; and set a date for removal of all foreign troops.

  Despite its eloquence, this address, like everything King did at this time, failed. Friends like Phil Randolph and Bayard Rustin declined to comment for publication. Roy Wilkins and Whitney Young sharply dissociated themselves from King. Neither the NAACP nor the Urban League would sever the connection with Johnson. The speech did not play well in the press. His closest adviser, Stanley Levison, said the text was unbalanced and not clearly formulated.

  During the summer of 1967 the black ghettoes in the cities erupted. The Kerner Riot Commission identified 24 disorders in 23 cities, provided profiles of eight, and identified two massive riots—Newark and Detroit.

  In Tampa on June ll a policeman shot a black youth and a riot ensued with the burning of buildings, looting, and several killings. The National Guard was called out. In Cincinnati the next day a similar incident led to a sharp confrontation between blacks and the police. There were 404 arrests and 63 injured people. Again, the guard was brought in to restore order. In Atlanta another police episode led to a confrontation with little evident damage. Northern New Jersey erupted in rioting—Plainfield, New Brunswick, and Newark.

  On the evening of July 12 the Newark police arrested a black taxi driver for a traffic violation. A rumor swept the city’s immense ghetto that the police had beaten him to death and a large riot broke out with fires, looting, violence, and property destruction. New Jersey’s Democratic Governor Richard Hughes branded the action a “criminal insurrection” and he called out the National Guard. The President, who hoped to stay out, nevertheless phoned Hughes and offered to help. By the next day, 15 were dead and 1000 had been arrested. Sniper fire was widespread against both firemen and guardsmen. But Hughes, to Johnson’s relief, insisted on handling the situation himself and by July 19 had the city under control. The death toll was 26, 1500 people were injured, and hundreds of homes and stores had been destroyed.

  Now the Congress ran wild. Over the President’s opposition, a bill passed on July 19 to make a federal crime of crossing a state line to incite or participate in a riot. The rat extermination bill to assist slum-dwellers the administration had proposed and expected to pass easily was defeated in the House 207 to 176. Southern Democrats and Republicans ridiculed Johnson by calling it the “civil rats bill” and suggested that he “buy a lot of cats and turn them loose.” He did not get it through until December 4, 1967.

  Only a short while after Newark, Detroit burst into the greatest riot of the decade, surpassing even Watts. In the early hours of Sunday, July 23, police raided a black drinking club on the West Side. Again, a rumor spread of police brutality in beating a man and a woman. Massive rioting ensued and Republican Governor George Romney, who had presidential ambitions, called out the National Guard, who were unable to control the city. Before 3 a.m. on Monday, Romney informed the Attorney General that 20 people had been injured and 650 arrested, and there were 150 fires. He suggested sending in federal troops. Clark awakened the President and he ordered the Army put on alert. Romney continued to call Clark with the same message and the latter suspected a political ploy.

  The President called in Justice Abe Fortas and they devised a strategy to compel Romney to comply with two federal statutes governing the deployment of troops. Under the first the President would accede to a governor’s request if necessary to suppress an insurrection; the second kicked in when violence deprived persons of their constitutional rights and the state was incapable of protecting them. Johnson demanded that Romney comply with both, which he was extremely reluctant to do. The situation, however, was so alarming that at 9:45 a.m. on Monday he phoned Clark to ask for 5000 troops because there was “reasonable doubt” that order could be maintained. Johnson insisted on having the request in writing, but the telegram did not arrive till 12:35 p.m.

  The mobilization took effect immediately. Lieut. Gen. John L. Throck-morton was in command at Self ridge Air Force Base 30 miles northeast of Detroit. Some 170 aircraft moved a 2400-man brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division from Fort Bragg, and an equal number from the 101st Airborne at Fort Campbell. The first plane touched down at Selfridge at 4:00 and the others landed at two-and-a-half-minute intervals. One hundred buses leased from the Detroit Bus Company began leaving Selfridge for Detroit at 4 p.m. A civilian team headed by Cyrus Vance, Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense, and Warren Christopher, Deputy Attorney General, had arrived at Selfridge at 3:00. With Throckmorton they proceeded to police headquarters, where they met Romney, Mayor Cavanaugh, and Police Commissioner Girardon. The latter had 700 sta
te police, 900 local police, and 3000 guardsmen on the streets. Vance told them to commit the reserve of 4000 guardsmen. The local and federal people toured the riot area, which was now quiet. Since Vance considered the Detroit police and the Michigan National Guard “excellent” and in control, he preferred to keep the federal force out of the city. As Califano put it, the President “couldn’t stand the thought of American soldiers killing American civilians.”

  But about 8:30 p.m. the rioting resumed and became worse that night. The paratroopers moved to the fairgrounds. At 10:31 the President signed a proclamation ordering the rioters to disperse, a preliminary before federal troops could enter the city. At 11:00 Vance made a radio-television appeal for law and order. At 1.1:22 Johnson signed Executive Order 11364 federalizing the Michigan National Guard. General Throckmorton was now in command of all troops. The paratroopers occupied Detroit east of Woodward Avenue and the guard the west.

  Federal forces remained in the city for five days. Virtually all rioting ended on Thursday; the paratroopers moved out on Saturday; the curfew was lifted and the National Guard departed on Tuesday, August 1, 1967. The toll was formidable: 40 dead, 2000 injured, 5000 arrested, and 5000 homeless.

  President Johnson was badly shaken by the riots and by the nasty political conflict with Governor Romney, which reverberated in the press. On July 27 he addressed the country, opening, “We have endured a week such as no nation should live through: a time of violence and tragedy.” He announced the appointment of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders with Governor Otto Kerner of Illinois as chairman.10

  During the fall of 1967 the smell of confrontation and violence was in the air. According to the recollections of Attorney General Ramsey Clark, this was “the moment that the fever broke in the whole antiwar movement.” Now it became “energized” and that “spelled the beginning of the end for American involvement in the war.”