Like the American involvement in the Vietnam War (1954–75), the movement to protest that war started slowly. Before President Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973; served 1963–69) asked Congress for authorization to broaden American involvement in Vietnam in August of 1964, most Americans did not even realize that the United States had a stake in the small country in Southeast Asia. But those few political activists who knew Vietnam and its history as a French colony perceived it to be a small, impoverished country that wished to shake off the yoke of French domination and practice self-government—much like the United States had done when it freed itself from British rule two hundred years earlier. These activists hoped that the United States would help North and South Vietnam unite under a policy of self-rule. When it became obvious that the United States would rather support a corrupt but capitalistic government...