In February 1965, the administration of Lyndon Johnson unleashed a systematic bombing campaign against North Vietnam dubbed Operation Rolling Thunder. The next month, two full U.S. Marine battalions arrived to protect the American air base at Danang. It was the beginning of the Vietnam War’s escalation. And the beginning of a greater pushback against the administration from many of America’s cultural leaders.Protests began happening on college campuses and the president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters spoke out against the escalation.
At the beginning of June, poet Robert Lowell—whom the White House had invited to read at its upcoming Festival of the Arts—withdrew his earlier acceptance and published his letter of refusal in the New York Times. It was signed by dozens of others who had either been invited or were on the to-be-invited list. The White House was shocked and Johnson was outraged. Telegrams from other writers and artists, along with petitions, began arriving at the White House and appearing in newspapers encouraging the President to deescalate the conflict.Meanwhile, Johnson grumbled about the White House complaining about these critics and alternately threatening to call off the Arts Festival or simply not show up at it.
Of the over 100 artists, writers, and critics who were invited to the festival, only a few in addition to Robert Lowell publicly declined to attend. Fourteen others, from Ansel Adams and Edward Hopper to Leonard Bernstein and John Steinbeck sent their regrets, giving reasons that ranged from poor health to prior commitments.
For his part, John Steinbeck wanted to make sure that LBJ had not misinterpreted his absence from the event. “I want to make it very plain that my absence had nothing to do with foreign policy,” he wrote to the White House. “Of course I don’t like our troops in Vietnam and I believe the President hates it worse than I do.” “Please make sure the boss knows my sentiments in this matter. I would hate him to think that I ran out on him.”
Despite the sour taste left in his mouth by some of the artists at the Festival, Johnson continued to believe and say that “the Federal Government can and should provide both leadership and resources to advance the arts.”
Later that summer, when he visited at the White House with a youth choir from California, he said that “all too many of our talented individuals and groups [in the arts] are forced to struggle from day to day to survive, to maintain their existence.” To Johnson this was clearly unacceptable in a Great Society. “[F]or too long the arts have had an uncertain footing,” he said, but now “I believe it is time for a change.”He wanted the National Endowment for the Arts to be that change.
