Queer Hostages for Hanoi

Abstract

Abstract This memoir of peace activism in the United States in the early 1970s, as the Vietnam war was drawing to a close, focuses on the difficulties of sustaining an effective anti-war campaign. It describes several key protests: sit-ins outside the Senate chamber in Washington, after one of which the writer was briefly jailed; the attempt to secure the Nobel Peace Prize for all those Americans who refused to fight in Vietnam; and in particular a keenly debated and eventually unsuccessful initiative, led by sexual dissidents, to enlist prominent Americans to travel to Hanoi to deter American bombing of the North Vietnamese capital. Based on his own experiences and recollections, Martin Duberman discusses the overlap between the peace movement, the emerging gay and feminist movements, and the sporadic attempts to ally with the Black liberation movement. He speculates, as well, about the overall effectiveness of the anti-war movement in helping to bring the disastrous conflict in Vietnam – which claimed more than two-million lives – to a close.