The Vietnam War (November 1955-April 1975) stirred major anti-war movements across the United States. Many Americans saw the connections between the US military violence against Vietnamese people abroad and the US state violence against non-white Americans at home. On the West Coast and in New York, various Asian American students and activists participated in the Asian American Movement and mobilized against the war.

Emory did not have its own Asian American Movement during the Vietnam War. However, many students participated in anti-war protests. In 1968, Emory students chanted poems, burned dolls, and ultimately occupied Cox Hall in a major demonstration to protest Emory’s complacency in the Vietnam War. Though just a small part of a national college-led anti-war movement, members of Emory’s Students for a Democratic Society demanded that the university distance itself from the Dow Chemical Company. Dow manufactured napalm, a flammable chemical that’s infamous for critically burning or horribly disfiguring victims, for the US military.

Emory students invited speakers to address the issues of the Vietnam War. An important speaker was Masako Yamanouchi, a graduate of Bryn Mawr College who had worked with the American Friends Service Committee in Vietnam. Sponsored by the Fellowship of Reconciliation, Yamanouchi toured college campuses to speak about the experiences of Vietnamese people. She visited Emory from January 16 to 18, 1969.