Starting in the summer of 1964, we and many of our friends were preoccupied with the war in Vietnam. We did not believe the official declaration about the incidents at the Gulf of Tonkin on the first and second of August, which led to the Senate resolution which voted 98 to 2 for giving President Johnson a free hand in Vietnam. The skepticism of Wayne Morse, one of the two senators who had voted against the resolution, was proved justified, as became clear from the hearings in the Fulbright Commission in the Senate in 1968. Johnson had ordered the bombing of North Vietnam, although the attack of a North Vietnamese torpedo boat against an American destroyer had not been confirmed. In the fall of 1964, a group was formed, consisting mainly of colleagues at the various Chicago universities with the purpose of enlightening the public. Our group organized several demonstrations against the war and placed ads in the Chicago newspapers and in the New York Times. Teach-ins took place at universities throughout the whole country; the goal was to discuss the Vietnam policy in its historic context.
Source: Wilma and Georg Iggers, Two Lives in Uncertain Times, New York: Berghahn Books, 2006, p. 108