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CHAPTERS
1. STORY PREFACE
2. POLITICAL UNREST
3. WHY ARE WE IN VIETNAM?
4. STUDENT PROTESTS
5. THE WAR ESCALATES
6. LBJ LEAVES THE WHITE HOUSE
7. SCHOOLS IN TURMOIL
8. T. C. WILLIAMS HIGH SCHOOL
9. HERMAN BOONE GETS THE JOB
10. THE PENTAGON PAPERS
11. SECRETS LEAKED TO THE PRESS
12. "A BRIGHT SHINING LIE"
13. THE TRUTH ABOUT TONKIN
14. SCHOOL BUSING AN ISSUE AGAIN

PREFACE

Today’s objective is to eliminate from the public schools all vestiges of state-imposed segregation...

United States Supreme Court
Swann v Charlotte-Mecklenburg
Board of Education
April, 1971

Dr. Darius Swann, professor of theology, was upset. He wanted his son James to attend the nearby predominately white school, not the predominately black school located miles away. After all, the United States Supreme Court had ruled America's "separate but equal” treatment of African-Americans was unconstitutional. More than a decade had passed since 1955, when Justice Felix Frankfurter struggled to find the right words in Brown v Board of Education II: Integrate schools "with all deliberate speed".

By 1971, (the turbulent year of anti-war protests, the "Pentagon Papers," and more American deaths in Vietnam), public schools had not integrated "with all deliberate speed." But that was about to change. The case Dr. Swann had filed to protect his son's rights against a North Carolina Board of Education would redefine Justice Frankfurter's words. And the result of the case would add more turmoil to a country already swirling in political unrest.

CHAPTER 2 - POLITICAL UNREST

In 1971, America was fighting an undeclared war in Southeast Asia. Many people in the country did not support that war. From early American losses, during the Kennedy Administration, through the final U.S. withdrawal, U.S. citizens wondered what the fighting was about - and why they were doing it.

Interestingly, American help was first sought from the enemy himself - Ho Chi Minh - when he sent a telegram to President Truman in 1946. No American troops were sent into Vietnam at that time, however. It wasn't until later, after Vietnam split in two, that the Eisenhower administration sent its first "advisors" to South Vietnam in 1955. By that time, America’s adversaries had granted Ho Chi Minh’s request for help. The stage was set for possible confrontation.

When President Kennedy took office his Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, tried to determine whether American involvement in Southeast Asia was wise. By 1963, McNamara and General Maxwell Taylor (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) had learned some interesting facts:

Students in South Vietnam did not support their government Internal discontent with the South Vietnamese regime had "become a seething problem. The war could not be won without a change of leadership in South Vietnam South Vietnam could not win a war against the North without American help The "Viet Cong" were "putting up a formidable fight There wasn't much support for the South Vietnamese government. This is a Vietnamese war and the country and the war must, in the end, be run solely by the Vietnamese The Vietnamese people didn't care who won the war - they simply wanted peace

McNamara and Taylor even recommended that 1,000 American advisors be pulled out of Vietnam by the end of 1963. They believed U.S. involvement in the volatile political situation could be over by 1965 and recognized “...any significant slowing in the rate of progress would surely have a serious effect on U.S. popular support for the U.S. effort.”

During the Kennedy Administration (and those that followed) neither the press nor the public was told about those key points. Significant developments and events in Vietnam seemed to take on a different character by the time the news got to the people.

As American non-combat military "advisors" assigned to Vietnam were getting killed, however, families of dead soldiers didn't like what they learned. If their sons and brothers weren't fighting, why were they dying? And why were they in Vietnam in the first place? One family demanded some answers from the President.

CHAPTER 3 - WHY ARE WE IN VIETNAM?

Bobbie Lou Pendergrass was upset. On February 18, 1963 she wrote a letter to President Kennedy. Her brother's helicopter had been shot down in Vietnam. Her family was bitter. Asking JFK why her brother had been sent to Southeast Asia in the first place, Ms. Pendergrass made an observation that would be repeated countless times by other upset Americans during the next decade:

“ I can't help but feel that giving one's life for one's country is one thing, but being sent to a country where half our country never even heard of and being shot at without even a chance to shoot back is another thing altogether!”

Later in her letter, she asks the question people still ask today:

“If a war is worth fighting - isn't it worth fighting to win.”

In one of the most interesting documents listing reasons for American involvement in Vietnam, President Kennedy took the time to answer Ms. Pendergrass. As he concluded his remarks, the President wrote:

“...full scale war in Viet Nam is at the moment unthinkable.”

In less than two years, the "unthinkable" happened. By 1968, more than 500,000 U.S. military forces were in Vietnam. More than 30,000 Americans were dead.

CHAPTER 4 - STUDENT PROTESTS

Student protests during Lyndon Johnson's Administration intensified as U.S. troop build-up and American deaths increased. Despite the President's excellent record on Civil Rights, LBJ could not escape mounting popular dissatisfaction with the way that he was handling the conflict in Vietnam.

Americans were concerned about needless deaths: of innocent civilians as North and South Vietnam fought each other; of Buddhist priests who set themselves on fire because they disagreed with the leaders of South Vietnam; of Vietnamese soldiers. They were even more concerned about the escalating war and the rising body count of U.S. military personnel.

The President knew that would happen. In March of 1964, he was concerned about the same issues. Follow this link to hear recently released, secretly taped conversations between LBJ and a few of his most trusted advisors - like Senator Richard Russell. What you hear may surprise you. For example, the President observes:

“ I've got a little old sergeant that works for me over at the house, and he's got six children, and I just put him up there as the United States Army, Air Force and Navy every time I think about making this decision, and think about sending that father of those six kids in there. And what the hell are we going to get out of his doing it? And it just makes the chills run up my back.”

Senator Russell replies:

It does me. I just can't see it.

CHAPTER 5 - THE WAR ESCALATES

In April of 1964 (about a month after LBJ's conversation with Richard Russell), Senator Robert F. Kennedy gave an oral history to the Kennedy Library about his brother's intentions in Vietnam. The President and his advisors had been concerned about communism taking hold in Vietnam.His fear was the "Domino Theory."

Lyndon Johnson, as demonstrated by his taped conversations, had very strong initial reservations about sending American personnel to Vietnam. Both he and his long-standing closest advisors were concerned the American people would not support a war in that distant land. But instead of ending the war, the Johnson Administration sent more than half a million military personnel to Southeast Asia. How - and why - did that happen?

President Johnson had many of the same advisors as President Kennedy. Robert McNamara was still Secretary of Defense. McGeorge Bundy was still National Security Advisor. The Administration wanted a resolution from Congress to handle the situation in Vietnam as they saw fit. Between August 2-4, 1964 events occurred in the Gulf of Tonkin which gave them the power they had sought for months.

According to an article at the LBJ Presidential Library web-site, American naval ships had been attacked by North Vietnamese ships in the Gulf of Tonkin on August 2, 1964. The American people were told a second attack had occurred on August 4th.

The cover notes for LBJ's August 4th "Presidential Daily Diary" state the President received a message about the second attack during his mid-morning meeting with Congressman George Mahon. The Diary call regarding the second attack. There is a note of an "Off Record" event that took place during the meeting.

Between 12:35 and 12:58, the President had a meeting with his National Security Council where the reported second attack was discussed. He also had a luncheon meeting with his senior foreign policy advisors where the decision was made to respond with a limited air attack. The Diary reflects that meeting lasted 1 hour and 20 minutes. Immediately afterwards, the President met with Mrs. Johnson's "tea group," sent flowers to friends and submitted judicial nominations to the Senate.

Later in the day, after receiving clarifying information about the second attack, the President met with the National Security Council and the Congressional leadership. The Administration wanted a resolution from Congress to give the President power to respond to all North Vietnamese aggression with the force he deemed appropriate. Later in the evening, LBJ told the American people about the second attack in a live televised report. The next day, the President addressed the Congress.

On August 7th, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. It was as close as America would ever come to actually declaring war on North Vietnam. Within a week, the President's power in Vietnam had gone from providing military advisor support to doing whatever he thought wasnecessary.

Full-scale war, with many American casualties, was just around the corner.

CHAPTER 6 - LBJ LEAVES THE WHITE HOUSE

Protests against the war increased as more young men were "drafted" into the Army. "The Draft" was both feared and hated. Who would be called up next? Or, as many people thought at the time, who would end up in the next batch of body bags? After the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, both American and Vietnamese casualties increased dramatically. So did American knowledge of murders being committed in Vietnam.

In 1966, Bobby Kennedy was expressing his own views on the war. By 1968, he wanted America to get out of Vietnam.

Tensions in the country continued to mount. LBJ decided he could notseek another term as America's leader. He wanted to work full time to get Americans out of Southeast Asia. Campaigning for office would have interfered with that objective. He planned to tell the country his decision on March 31, 1968.

In a live televised speech, LBJ surprised the American people, and most of his supporters, with his decision. He had kept the news to himself and a few trusted people. He even waited to release the teleprompter copy of his address until shortly before air time. The words he wanted to keep secret until he spoke them on the broadcast?

“I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President.

The Presidential Daily Diary reflects LBJ's great personal certainty and relief about his decision. But President Nixon, eager to take office, did not learn from LBJ's mistakes. Student unrest and protest movements would grow dramatically during Nixon's Administration.

CHAPTER 7 - SCHOOLS IN TURMOIL

A change in presidential leadership did not end the war. "Peace with honor" seemed like an elusive concept. As Richard Nixon conducted a press conference on April 30, 1970 (to explain why he had sent B-52s into Cambodia to bomb "Viet Cong" strongholds), a protest at Kent State University was brewing. It began the next day (May 1, 1970). Among other reasons, students were upset that innocent Cambodians were being killed.

By May 4th members of the Ohio National Guard, sent to the Kent State campus, were ready for battle. Armed with tear gas, rifles and fixed bayonets, they looked as though they were about to end an armed insurrection. Examining the police photographs today, one can only wonder what both sides must have been thinking when the National Guard fired into the crowd of people milling about on campus.

Four unarmed students were killed at Kent State. Not all the dead students were part of the protest movement. After the shootings, an injunction temporarily closed the University. Students and their professors had to find other means to finish the term.

Meanwhile, African-American students were still trying to find other means to begin equal educational opportunities. The case filed by Dr. Swann was making its way to the United States Supreme Court.

By April of 1971 (eleven months after the Kent State shootings), the high court delivered its judgment to the country. In Swann v Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, the now famous case that permitted busing of students to achieve racial integration, the high court sent a message to the country. Public schools could no longer ignore the mandates of Brown v Board of Education, the case that was supposed to have ended America’s policy of "separate but equal." All schools had to become integrated immediately. That included schools in Alexandria, Virginia - a place where football was king.

CHAPTER 8 - T. C. WILLIAMS HIGH SCHOOL

Virginia - like many other Southern states - had a history of segregated schools. “Jim Crow Laws” long upheld by federal courts, had effectively created two separate societies. African-Americans who endured humiliating treatment still remember what it was like. The two societies were “separate,” but they were hardly “equal.”

Many Southern towns had duplicate schools - one for blacks and one for whites. Alexandria, Virginia (hometown of George Washington) was no different, although it actually had three high schools. Parker-Gray (started in 1920) served the needs of black students while George Washington High served the needs of whites. In 1956, Francis C. Hammond High opened to accommodate the increasing white student population. Bill Yoast, a popular white coach, ran the varsity football program at Hammond High in 1971.

In the 1960s - well before the Supreme Court issued its 1971 Swann decision - the City of Alexandria planned to eliminate school segregation. George Washington High was integrated and remained a 4-year high school until 1971. After the Swann case authorized busing to speed up the integration process, T. C. Williams High School (which had opened in 1965) became the only senior high school in Alexandria.

While integrating all students into one high school - T. C. Williams - was the goal, the process created a “problem.” Black and white members of competing football teams were now part of the same school. If there was only one high school, there would be only one football team. Who would be on the team? And, more importantly, who would be its coach?"

CHAPTER 9 - HERMAN BOONE GETS THE JOB

Herman Boone, a black assistant coach who came to T. C. Williams High in 1969, had less experience than his job competitor. Bill Yoast, the winning white head coach of the winning Hammond High football team had a great record in Alexandria. He had the support of white football parents. He had what it took to stay on top. He had everything going for him - but he didn't get the job. Herman Boone did - and that led to even more unrest inthe city of Alexandria. After all, the history of high school football with Coach Yoast was already known, and he was the "obvious" choice.

Football itself, especially in its unique American form, has an interesting history. How did it change from ancient times when people played "ball" with their "feet?" From Japanese "Kemari" to Russian "Ballspiel" to French "LaSoule," the game has evolved. The first American version -"ballown began at Princeton University in the 1820s, around the same time as British chaps were playing their own version of football in the streets of London.

Many historians believe American football was initially based on Rugby (the fast-paced game invented at the famous boy's school in Rugby, England) and later shaped by Walter Camp ("the father of American football"). The Rugby boys' school is still standing and rugby balls are still made by hand in the village. But the fast-paced, non-stop nature of today's rugby is much different from today's American football.

No matter the version, football is a team sport. In order to win championships, a team has to play as one. When Herman Boone was picked to coach the Titans of T. C. Williams High, he didn't have a "team." He had a group of resentful young men. Blacks didn't want to work with whites; whites didn't want to work with blacks. Bill Yoast, the former head coach of the team's white players, was now Herman Boone's assistant, while Paul Hines was the offensive line coach.

By all accounts, the school's football program was in shambles. "Built-in" beliefs about other people are tough to shed. But the Titans and their coaches would soon rise above long-held misconceptions to play together as a winning championship team. Along the way, they would learn a few important lessons about how to live life.

The Nixon Administration, working in Washington D.C. (just across the Potomac River from T. C. Williams High School), could have learned a few good lessons from the Titans. As the football team flourished under great leadership, the country's chief executive floundered under the weight of burgeoning political scandals.

CHAPTER 10 - THE PENTAGON PAPERS

Richard Nixon and his Oval Office predecessors were about to undergo the kind of scrutiny no presidential administration wants to face. Two months after the Supreme Court issued its Swann decision, ordering the end of segregated schools, the Court would be called upon to end another battle. This time it was the federal government versus the American press.

Robert McNamara, the Secretary of Defense for both JFK and LBJ, had commissioned a top secret study of American involvement in Vietnam from the end of World War II to May of 1968. One of the researchers who worked on the study, Daniel Ellsberg, was employed by the Rand Corporation. He was assigned as a consultant to the Pentagon.

The study was damaging for the government. Top-secret documents had revealed arrogance, ineptitude and miscalculation by high-ranking federal government officials. Worse, the study confirmed what many Americans had long been thinking: Government officials were not fully disclosing the extent of U.S. military involvement in Southeast Asia.

One of the most shocking aspects of the study revealed a completely different version of the August, 1964 Gulf of Tonkin events. The very facts that had caused Congress to grant extraordinary powers to the President may have been twisted. Escalation of American involvement in Vietnam started to look like it had been based on deliberate misrepresentations. This was the stuff of great news stories - except that the study was top secret and not available to the press.

CHAPTER 11 - SECRETS LEAKED TO THE PRESS

Daniel Ellsberg, the Rand employee assigned to the Pentagon, leaked information about the study - and its top secret documents and conclusions - to the New York Times. On June 13, 1971 the Times ran its first story. It didn’t take long for the government to file litigation to stop the presses.

CBS News aired a Special Report on June 23, 1971. Walter Cronkite interviewed Daniel Ellsberg who discussed why he had disclosed the secret information to the Times.

Within two weeks, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the media’s right to publish the stories. By early July, everyone was reading about the government’s non-disclosures, misrepresentations, faulty planning and manipulation of facts. The government obtained an indictment against Ellsberg, but a federal court dismissed all charges against him on May 11, 1973. The reason for the dismissal? The government had acted improperly in the first place.

Were legitimate security risks at stake, thereby explaining the government’s reasons for misleading the American people? How accurate were the conclusions of the secret study made famous as "The Pentagon Papers?" What are the facts about the Gulf of Tonkin? Some of the primary source material is available on-line. It isn’t very flattering for the government.

CHAPTER 12 - "A BRIGHT SHINING LIE"
Even before the "Pentagon Papers" were leaked to the press, reporters like Neil Sheehan did not believe America was winning the war in Vietnam. As early as 1962-63, based on his own first-hand observations,
Sheehan thought U.S. commanders in Vietnam "were lying to us." Later, he came to believe the generals who briefed reporters really did believe America could win - despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Not all high-ranking military advisors thought so, however. Lt. Colonel John Paul Vann, the U.S. Army’s senior adviser to the South Vietnamese infantry division in charge of the northern Mekong Delta in 1962, argued the issue with his commanding general. Vann said America was losing the war. His superior disagreed. Vann left the Army the next year. In describing what he had observed in Vietnam to an Army historian, Vann said:

“We, too, were among...the bright shining lies”.

Vann returned to Vietnam in a civilian capacity. He died in a helicopter crash on June 9, 1972. On the 16th of June, his funeral was attended by high-ranking government and military officials. General Westmoreland was one of his pallbearers. Sheehan eventually wrote a book about Vann and the Vietnam war. He called it: A Bright Shining Lie. Were there other bright, shining lies about the Vietnam War? What about the Gulf of Tonkin incident? Were the targets real or not real? President Johnson is alleged to have commented on those targets in 1965:

“For all I know, our Navy was shooting at whales out there.”

CHAPTER 13 - THE TRUTH ABOUT TONKIN

Navy pilot Commander James Stockdale (later a Vietnam prisoner of war, winner of a Medal of Honor, Navy Vice Admiral and Ross Perot’s Vice Presidential running mate in 1992) was flying in the skies above the Gulf of Tonkin that August night. He had also been there two nights before - on August 2, 1964 - when U.S. Navy ships had been attacked by the North Vietnamese. Here is what Admiral Stockdale recalls about the night of August 4:

I was out there, I wasn’t waiting for orders, I took it upon myself to get out there where they thought the boat was and try to kill it if they didn’t. But it was fruitless and as time went on, one guy said...I think I got a PT boat trailing me. I said, I have you in sight, I’ll fly up from behind and I’ll take care of him if I see him. And there was nothing there.

During the 1992 presidential campaign, Admiral Stockdale told reporters:

I had the best seat in the house to watch that event and our destroyers were just shooting at phantom targets - there were no PT boats there...There was nothing there but black water and American fire power.

Senator J. William Fulbright, the long-standing Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, ultimately held hearings on the Gulf of Tonkin incident. In his 1989 book, The Price of Empire, he wrote that the Pentagon had misrepresented the actual events:

Only when we began those later hearings on the Tonkin Gulf did it really begin
to dawn on me that we had been deceived. In the beginning-before Vietnam,
that is--it never occurred to me that presidents and their secretaries of state
and defense would deceive a Senate committee.

Senator Fulbright draws a sobering conclusion from the hearings he conducted:

I thought you could trust them to tell you the truth, even if they did not tell
you everything. But I was naive, and the misrepresentation of the Tonkin
Gulf affair was very effective in deceiving the Foreign Relations Committee
and the country, and me, because we didn't believe it possible that we could
be so completely misled.

Many more people were massively injured and killed before the war was finally over. Nine-year-old Kim Phuc, whose village was bombed in 1972 by a South Vietnamese pilot with bad information, pierced the hearts of people around the world when they saw her terror-filled face and her napalm-burned body. (She is still alive today and is living in Canada.)

Many other "bright shining lies" were revealed before the Vietnam War was finally over. In the wake of those lies, President Richard Nixon resigned and America’s soul was shaken to the core.

CHAPTER 14 - SCHOOL BUSING AN ISSUE AGAIN

As America tried to make her peace with the wounds of Vietnam and the scars of segregation, schools implemented plans for racial diversity. Swann v Charlotte- Mecklenburg Board of Education had long been a closed case when new events in North Carolina caused it to be reopened. This time white plaintiffs allege that race-based integration plans discriminate against children who are not black. Three decades after the Supreme Court declared it would eliminate from the public schools all vestiges of state-imposed segregation... a new set of white plaintiffs assert race-conscious admission policies are discriminatory. In other words, they allege the Swann case has become unconstitutional.

William Capacchione filed a lawsuit against the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system because his daughter was twice denied admission to the school her family selected for her. The school system has defended by asserting it has NOT fully integrated and should not be released from court-ordered desegregation. The Swann attorneys agree with their former adversary!

Several other similar cases are pending throughout the country. In some, however, courts have to find that the school district has become "unitary." That means school boards have complied in good faith with court orders and have eliminated traces of illegal segregation.

Believing that schools in Charlotte, North Carolina ARE fully integrated, Robert D. Potter, a federal judge, ruled in favor of the Capacchione plaintiffs and against the Board of Education and the Swann plaintiffs.

The last word on the case has not been spoken, however. It will surely make its way back to the United States Supreme Court. Currently the appeal is pending at the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. During arguments before that court, judges intently questioned lawyers representing the Capacchione plaintiffs.

But the climate of America is much different as the Swann case returns to the Supreme Court. The turbulent days of 1971 are completely unknown by an entire generation. Even for people who lived through gut-wrenching days of political unrest, student protest and seemingly endless war in Vietnam, those times are becoming a distant memory.

It seems fitting, then, to Remember the Titans as they and their coaches confronted not only the internal pressures of integration, but also the external pressures of political unrest. To have become champions despite formidable odds against them is a tribute to the character of T. C. Williams High, its football team, and their coaches. It is also a testament to the power of the human spirit in overcoming the most extraordinary obstacles imaginable.