American Experience

Semester 2 Persuasive Speech Topics

VIETNAM

1. America needed to become involved in Vietnam to contain the spread of Communism.

2. America should not have become involved in Vietnam because…(insert your own reason).

3. America was right to have become involved early it the Vietnam conflict, but should have left the conflict earlier.

4. People opposed to the Vietnam War were right to protest and resist the draft as a way of pressuring the government to withdraw from Vietnam.

5. People opposed to the Vietnam War should have done more to try and stop our involvement.

CIVIL RIGHTS

1. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s methods of civil rights protests (non-violent resistance) were the best way to change American society’s attitudes towards African Americans.

2. Malcolm X’s methods of civil rights protest (violent resistance) was the best way to change American society’s attitudes towards African Americans.

3. The best way to make civil rights a reality for African Americans was through forced, immediate integration with the support of federal troops.

4. The best way to make civil rights a reality for African Americans was through a long-term process relying on changing attitudes of most whites.

 Vietnam Web Search

All of the sites listed below are working sites as of the day of this assignment.  If they do not work at first, check your spelling and the _,-/ to be sure it was accurate.

After you have accessed a site, look around and try some of the links before taking notes.  Try to focus on things that interest you rather than doing it just to “get it done.”

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/vietnam/

An excellent site on the PBS Vietnam series

The “In the Trenches” link has information on My Lai, weapons, and MIAs

 http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/vietnam/trenches/my_lai.html

Stories about Vietnam war

“The Common Man” is thought provoking.

http://www.vhfcn.org/stat.htm

Good site on myths and statistics of Vietnam.  Well referenced.

http://grunt.space.swri.edu/thewall/thewallm.html

Search the wall for a name…Robert Kalsu or William Stocks

How do you feel seeing someone you know about reduced to a few basic statistics?

http://www.wmf.org/

Good site with an area for students (link on the bottom)

http://www.war-stories.com/index.htm

An excellent veteran-run site.  Full of stories.  Check out the link at the bottom to “Student Research.”

 http://www.rjsmith.com/war_myth.html#tet

Challenges to some of the common “myths” about Vietnam.

http://www.vwip.org/topics/_top-ten.htm

Some of the same sits as above, and some others.

For at least two of the sites, complete the following:

1) Who is the author/sponsor of the site (what person or organization is behind the site, and what are the credentials of this person or organization?)

 2) What is the focus of the site?  What is its intended purpose? (propaganda, education, soldier’s point of view, etc.)

 3.) What are two-three things you learned from this site? (What was interesting?)

Revised 08/25/2008