Recent scholarship on postwar U.S. history has demonstrated how the antiwar movement of the 1960s shaped American politics in the 1970s and 1980s. As mainstream politicians aimed to combat the “Vietnam Syndrome” during the early 1970s—well before the war’s conclusion in April 1975—peace activists sought to head off popular critiques of the movement, using their power and social capital to mobilize against U.S. actions in Southeast Asia, while linking their activism to a broader transnational critique of US foreign policy and the national security state. The antiwar Left in the 1970s—not the 1960s—therefore determined the possibilities of the Left in the latter years of the Cold War.

Michelle Nickerson will focus on a group of antiwar activists who broke into a draft board in Camden, New Jersey. The “Camden 28” were part of a movement of antiwar activists who raided draft boards, breaking into more than eighty of these offices. Led by priests, nuns, and lay Catholics, these raiders hit facilities in struggling cities, where draft boards poached the lives of men from working-class families. This “Catholic Left” not only disrupted the operations of the selective service, but also exposed illegal surveillance, political infiltration, and prosecutorial overreach by the FBI. The story of the Camden 28 illustrates how the high-stakes activities that marked opposition to the war in the early 1970s made government interference into the political activities of its citizens more difficult.

Michael Koncewicz will examine Tom Hayden’s shift toward the mainstream in the early-1970s, from his support of Daniel Ellsberg to leading antiwar seminars with congressional staffers. Together with his future wife, Jane Fonda, the SDS founder created the Indochina Peace Campaign (IPC). Beginning as an organization that sponsored Fonda and Hayden’s tour of Middle America in 1972, the IPC established a national network that distributed and eventually led a successful lobbying effort to cut funds to South Vietnam. It was also an extension of Hayden’s campaign to mainstream the past, present, and future of antiwar activism. The memory of the Vietnam War was frequently at the forefront of Hayden’s presentations, identifying as a form of political power in the 1970s.

Brian Mueller’s paper will cover how the legacy of the Vietnam War became linked with US foreign policy in Central America. As President Reagan tried to kick the “Vietnam syndrome,” activists with the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES) had other plans. They tried to convince Americans to oppose Reagan’s policies in Central America by pointing to the similarities to the nation’s early involvement in Vietnam. While many Americans could not point to El Salvador on a map, they knew that the same policies undertaken by Reagan—sending advisors to El Salvador—resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers in a country most had never heard of prior to the 1960s. As a result, CISPES ensured that the nation remained infected with the “Vietnam syndrome” and prevented Reagan from expanding the war in El Salvador.