American Views About War

Vietnam Protest Songs of the 1960s and 1970s

H. Ben Auslander

By the late 1960s, rising casualty figures and draft quotas for the war in Vietnam fueled a growing antiwar sentiment among young Americans. Popular folk musicians gave voice to this counterculture by performing anti—Vietnam songs and other general protest music that emerged as rock and roll became a venue of social criticism. The first protest song to mention Vietnam by name debuted in 1964, and the number of Vietnam protest songs peaked in 1967. That year, CBS tried to ban folksinger Pete Seeger from performing his antiwar allegory "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy," but relented after accusations of censorship. The anti—Vietnam song genre died out after 1970 as Americans became increasingly weary of the war and exasperated by the failed efforts to end it.

H. Ben Auslander was studying American literature at the University of Delaware when he published the Journal of American Culture article.....

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