Civil Rights Movement Between 1970 And 1970

On a Friday, sitting next to the Victory Bell on the commons of Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, there were one thousand young students giving a nonviolent protest about the Vietnam War currently being fought by US troops. This particular protest didn’t differ from any of the other universities’ protests, but when Saturday night came, some twenty-five protesters set the ROTC building ablaze. These twenty-five did this to start a movement for civil rights in America. This was the beginning of the defining year of the USA: 1970.

The year 1970 has changed the way that young Americans have looked at civil rights and is the most defining year of the twentieth century. America had restated rights to assemble and protest, and enforced the right

The choice to use military force against its citizens was in retrospect an over reaction. The United States needed to mess up to realize how far from the ideals of the constitution the people had strayed. Changes were needed to secure many and reinforce the US Citizen 's basic first amendment rights to assemble, their right to speak, their right to protest, their right to have an opinion, and the citizen 's right to be apart of what the government is doing. The massacre at Kent State University started off as a peaceful weekend protest. It began on May first, 1970; five hundred students gathered on the grassy commons of the university. Their goal was to protest the United State’s involvement in both Cambodia and Vietnam. The students held a peaceful protest for the morning and then went to class at one in the

The Vietnam War was a highlight in the news around the seventies. It was the reason for the protests and demonstrations held by veterans and college students, The War was the center of controversy that sparked up a lot of interest from the people. The people had strong opinions towards the draft, the war, and the way that soldiers were treated on their return to the states.

Vietnam was a war that many US citizens saw as an unnecessary war with a very high casualty rate. Vietnam was very gruesome and took half a million lives. These lives consisted of men that were drafted into the war by the Selective Services. These lives were mainly of a minority, or of lower social class.

Protesters were against the draft because of the unfair rules. The people that had to go to war had no reason not to; they had no school to attend and no money to pay for a school. This was usually the poor and the minorities with less opportunity to become anything but poor. The drafted soldiers mainly consisted of men from 18-21 years of age. This is the age that also didn’t have a vote towards what the government was