Vietnam Conflict

The 1960's began with a partial mobilization of the National Guard as part of the U.S. response to the Soviet Union's building of the Berlin Wall. Although none left the United States, nearly 45,000 Army Guardsmen spent a year in Active Federal Service.

As the decade progressed, President Lyndon Johnson made the fateful political decision not to mobilize the Reserves to fight the Vietnam War, but to rely on the draft instead. But when the bombshell of the Viet Cong Tet Offensive struck in 1968, 34 Army National Guard units found themselves alerted for active duty, eight of which served in South Vietnam.

Some National Guard units that remained in the U.S. still found themselves on the front lines. As urban riots and then anti-war demonstrations swept parts of the country in the late 1960s, the Guard, in its role as a state militia, was called upon increasingly for riot control duties.

For the country as a whole, the 1960's were a period of social change. Those changes were mirrored in the National Guard, particularly in its racial and ethnic composition.

Beginning with New Jersey in 1947, the northern states began the process of racially integrating their National Guards. The landmark Civil Rights Act of 1965 forced the Southern states to follow suit, and 25 years later African-Americans made up nearly one-quarter of the Army National Guard.

African-American men had a history of militia service stretching back to colonial days; women, regardless of race, did not. Because the Militia Act of 1792 and the National Defense Act of 1916 had referred specifically to "males", it took special legislation to allow women to join. For 15 years the only women in the National Guard were nurses, but in the 1970s, all the armed services began expanding opportunities for women. Following Army and Air Force policies, the National Guard saw its number of women recruits begin a steady rise that continues today.