The writer Tom Wolfe famously referred to the 1970s as the "Me Decade." Wolfe was referring to those former activists who, having grown weary of political action, turned their attention inward in those years. Wolfe is a clever sloganeer, but the decade was about more than that -- a lot more.
President Nixon
The most dominant figure in the first half of the decade was Richard Nixon. America was a divided country in 1970, in large part because of the President's conduct of the Vietnam War. While thousands of students actively opposed the war, Nixon's so-called "Silent Majority" supported it. In April, his decision to widen the war into Cambodia generated immediate protests on college campuses. On May 4, four students at Kent State University were shot and killed. On May 14, two more students were killed by police at Jackson State. Many campuses were closed down in protest.
Across the country, bombs were set off in buildings in protest against the war. One bombing, at the University of Wisconsin, claimed the life of a promising young physicist who was in the school's Sterling Hall laboratory when the blast went off. The war wasn't the only target of major protests. In September 1971, a riot at the Attica State Prison in New York resulted in the death of nearly forty inmates. In May 1972, following the publication of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, members of the American Indian Movement took over the town of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in protest against the treatment of Native Americans. Five years later, Leonard Peltier was convicted of killing two FBI agents and sentenced to life in prison, where he remains, still asserting his innocence. Another group of protesters targeted by the government were the Harrisburg Seven. They were charged with, among others things, conspiring to kidnap Henry Kissinger and to blow up underground steam tunnels in Washington, DC. The charges were later dropped. In 1977, the first major antinuclear protest of the decade took place at the site of the planned Seabrook nuclear reactor in New Hampshire. If the protesters hadn't done enough to make the country aware of the dangers of nuclear power, a frightening accident at Three Mile Island in 1979 certainly succeeded.
In 1971, the New York Times and the Washington Post began publishing the so-called Pentagon Papers, previously secret reports on the origins of the Vietnam War that had been leaked by Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony Russo. When the Nixon Administration sought to prevent their publication, the case went to the Supreme Court. The ruling in the case in favor of the Times was a landmark victory for freedom of the press. Two years later, the Court handed down another historic ruling, Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion in America.
There seemed to be little that could harm Richard Nixon's chances for re-election. In 1972 he made historic visits to China and the Soviet Union. He was so far ahead in the polls that a break-in at Democratic headquarters that was tied by the Washington Post to high-level members of his campaign staff did little to dent his margin of victory over George McGovern. The presidential race was marred by two major events: the shooting of George Wallace and the replacement of Thomas Eagleton on the Democratic ticket by Sargent Shriver after it was revealed that he had previously been treated for a mental illness. Two months after Nixon's victory, a peace treaty ended the Vietnam War.
Nixon's fall was steep and quick, however. In March 1973, a letter to Judge John Sirica from one of the Watergate burglars, James McCord, alleging that the burglars were forced to commit perjury opened up the Watergate scandal to further scrutiny. In June, Americans were riveted by the television coverage of the House committee investigating the scandal. When the existence of a taping system in the Oval Office was uncovered, it was the beginning of the end for the President. After fighting their release and losing in the Supreme Court, transcripts were turned over to prosecutors that proved the President had engaged in an attempt to cover up the break-in. The President resigned on August 9, 1974. Taking his place was Gerald Ford, who had been appointed Vice President in 1973 after Spiro Agnew pleaded no lo contendre to accepting bribes. One of Ford's first acts as President was to pardon Nixon from prosecution. That decision may have cost him the election in 1976.
While Watergate dominated much of President Nixon's time, he had to deal with other crises as well. In September 1973, a CIA initiative to overthrow the government of Salvadore Allende in Chile was successful, resulting in the deaths of thousands of political prisoners on the instruction of Chile's new leader, Augusto Pinochet. In October, Israel was attacked. Subsequently, an Arab oil embargo of the United States created a severe energy shortage.
The Vietnam War was brought to a complete close in January 1975 after the last American helicopter took off from the US Embassy roof, fleeing from the final North Vietnamese takeover of the South.
Tired of Watergate and Vietnam, the country elected former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter to the presidency in 1976. Carter campaigned as an outsider promising never to lie to the American people. Carter pardoned many draft resisters, returned the Panama Canal to Panama, recognized Communist China and helped broker a historic peace agreement at Camp David between Egypt and Israel. He was not, however, able to turn around the economy, which was still reeling from the energy shortage. His support of the Shah of Iran, which led to the taking of American hostages from the United States Embassy, is what ultimately doomed his presidency.
The 1960s
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