November 3, 1969: President Richard Nixon's "Silent Majority" Speech

November 3, 1969: In the face of a massive demonstration against the Vietnam War on October 15 -- during Game 4 of the World Series between the New York Mets and the Baltimore Orioles -- and knowing that he had both lost the election for President in 1960 and won it in 1968 by razor-thin margins, and that he needed support from wherever he could get it, President Richard Nixon delivers a speech from the Oval Office, written by William Safire, later a Pulitzer Prize-winning longtime conservative columnist for The New York Times.

In 1956, when Nixon was Vice President, Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts gave him a copy of his book Profiles In Courage, which included these words in its introduction: "Some of them may have been representing the actual sentiments of the silent majority of their constituents in opposition to the screams of a vocal minority." Nixon took note of those words, and never forgot them, even as the friendship between them was fractured when they ran against each other for President in 1960, and Kennedy won by said slim margin.

In 1967, George Meany, President of America's largest labor organization, the AFL-CIO, gave a press conference in which he said union members who supported the Vietnam War were "the vast, silent majority in the nation." Nixon heard this, and remembered Kennedy having used the phrase.

So, needing support for his his policies, especially the one he announced at the beginning of the speech, called "Vietnamization" -- steadily taking U.S. troops out, and turning responsibility for the war over to South Vietnam -- Nixon gave Safire the phrase, and this section was the result: "And so, tonight, to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans, I ask for your support."

It worked, mostly. In 1966, Time magazine named "The Inheritor" -- or, as they said on the cover, "Twenty-Five and Under" -- as their collective "Man of the Year." People born after 1940 then made up nearly half the American population, and were most of those serving in Vietnam and most of those in the counterculture that, among other things, was opposing that war. In 1969, just 3 years later, as "Man and Woman of the Year," Time chose "The Middle Americans" -- clearly, a synonym for "The Silent Majority."

Despite an even bigger demonstration in Washington on November 15, the protests against Nixon's "Cambodian incursion" the following May, and the "May Day" demonstrations of May 3, 1971, those who opposed the war didn't turn up at the polls to punish pro-war Congressmen in 1970 and 1972, or Nixon himself when he ran for re-election in 1972. Those who supported the war had ceased to be a majority of the people in 1968, but they remained a majority of those who actually voted.

Nixon announced an end to the war within days of his 2nd Inauguration, on January 23, 1973. And when he was forced to resign on August 9, 1974, the war had only a tangential connection to it: Trying to get information on antiwar Congressmen and activists was why the Democratic Party offices at the Watergate were broken into and bugged.

Nixon was probably not aware of this, but the day before the speech, the band Creedence Clearwater Revival released an album titled Willy and the Poor Boys. For it, bandleader John Fogerty, one of the few genuine rock stars to have served in the U.S. armed forces (U.S. Army, 1966-67, before the band hit it big, serving stateside with no combat), wrote the song "Effigy," in which he sang, "Silent majority weren't keeping quiet anymore."

This was also the day on which PBS, the Public Broadcasting Service, was founded. I have a separate entry for that.

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November 3, 1969 was a Monday. The baseball season was over. There was no football: The NFL and ABC began partnering for Monday Night Football the following season. And while the NHL season had begun, no games where scheduled for that day.

Only 1 game was scheduled in the NBA: The New York Knicks beat the Milwaukee Bucks, 109-93 at the Milwaukee Arena. In 1974, it was renamed the Milwaukee Exposition, Convention Center and Arena, or "The MECCA." Since 2014, it has been named the UW-Panther Arena. Willis Reed scored 35 points, Bill Bradley 19, Dave DeBusschere 18, Dick Barnett 14, and Walt Frazier and Cazzie Russell each scored 10. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, then a rookie and still using his birth name of Lew Alcindor, scored 17 for the Bucks.

There was 1 game in the American Basketball Association: The New Orleans Buccaneers beat the Washington Capitols, 125-115 at the New Orleans Municipal Auditorium. Neither team survived to be admitted to the NBA.