When America Took to the Streets — Vietnam War Protests By the late 1960s, opposition to the Vietnam War surged into one of the largest protest movements in U.S. history. College campuses became hubs of activism, where students organized teach-ins, marches, and nationwide demonstrations demanding an end to the conflict. Major American cities were transformed into protest centers. Washington, D.C., New York, and San Francisco hosted crowds numbering in the hundreds of thousands. Antiwar messages