How Did Jimi Hendrix Support The Anti-War Movement?

The Anti-War movement began its rise in the early 1960s and by the 70s with the increase of the U.S. military involvement in Vietnam, the movement caught fire and with musical artists such as Joan Baez and Bob Dylan joining the protest, the tone of the movement was set. In addition to the opposition of the war, the civil rights movement was also underway. People of all colors were fighting for the peace, harmony and equality. However, African Americans were not as involved in the Anti-War movement as white people but people like Jimi Hendrix and Edwin Starr voiced their support of anti-war messages through their music and, in turn, got their audience to support the movement; but to what extent did the musical influences of African American
artists shift the tone of the anti-war movement during the Vietnam War? This investigation is composed of various sources ranging from songs written by famous African Americans in protest of the war during the late 1960s-70s to books about how the civil rights movement played into the anti-war movement.

One source that is most essential to this investigation is Jimi Hendrix's song "Machine Gun" off of his live album "Band of Gypsys".
Hendrix is known for the spirituality and love in his music, Machine Gun was a stark contrast. The song is dark, but soulful; the lyrics carry a lot significance by themselves, but the real hitter is the music behind the lyrics. Hendrix's guitar playing creates the atmosphere for the listener, and puts them in the mindset of the battlefield and when the drums come in, mimicking the sound of machine guns, and he sings "evil man make me kill you, evil man make you kill me" the message is loud and clear. The song showcases the casualties of war, and suggests that Vietnamese and the African Americans fighting aren't so different, and that they are forced to kill each other. This song is important to this investigation because African Americans were some of the main casualties of the war, and they kept on getting drafted. They felt that they were being targeted and that this was a case of blatant racism from the U.S. and they felt that was the case with Vietnamese as well. The anti-war movement was no longer just about the U.S. involvement in the war, it was about the arbitrary actions the U.S. were taking against
them.

The second source that is a book entitled Peace and Freedom: The Civil Rights and Antiwar Movements in the 1960s by Simon Hall. Simon Hall is the BBC's Crime Correspondent in the South West of England, he is married to the actor Matt Bomer. The book, published in 2006, focuses on the relationship of the civil rights movement and the antiwar movement and how they never really worked close together. Its purpose is to provide the investigation with the background information of how the two movements worked in relation and in response of each other as the antiwar movement was overwhelmingly white and of course the civil rights movement was geared toward the African American population. Though there many African Americans who opposed the war, there weren't many who openly engaged in antiwar activities.