The 1967 Pentagon Protest: The Armies of the Night

Background
As the Vietnam War escalated after the passage of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964, opposition to the war also grew. One of the first major national demonstrations occurred on October 21, 1967 when approximately 20,000 demonstrators marched on the Pentagon (Patterson 624-630).

Author Norman Mailer attended the demonstration and gave this description of the marchers crossing the Potomac River from Washington to the Pentagon.

“It was never, however, to become a routine parade. The majority of demonstrators, if one counted the women, had never marched in ranks; there were no leaders sufficiently well-known to command order easily; indeed it was impossible to keep physical contract with a majority of demonstrators while they were on the bridge, for the bridge was too crowded to pass back and forth. Communication depended on the portable loudspeakers; order on the good will and wit of the speaker employing them. . .still-shouting their slogans, ‘Hell no, we won’t go,’ ‘LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?’ it is possible any other group so large, so leaderless, so infused with anxiety for the unknown situation ahead and so packed upon the bridge would have erupted, but finally it was a pacifist crowd” (Mailer 112).


Here is the film



Discussion

Do you think the newsreel portrayed the protests accurately?

How did the selection of images used affect your perception of the demonstration?

What footage might have changed your mind about the demonstration in either a positive
or a negative light?


Sources
Norman Mailer. The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, The Novel as History. New York: Penguin, 1968.
James T Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States 1945-1974. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.