A part of our For the Record series.

Share your stories about the legacy of the Vietnam War. Join us for a special screening of the groundbreaking, Oscar-winning documentary Hearts and Minds and local news footage of the anti-war movement in Columbia.

Director: Peter Davis

A film of tremendous historical and cultural resonance. Released in the midst of the Vietnam War, the Nixon presidency, and eleven months before the Fall of Saigon, Hearts and Minds was praised by the New York Times in 1975 as “extraordinary” and “the true film for America’s bicentennial.” Combining combat footage, Hollywood film clips, and interviews with key figures including General William Westmoreland, Davis’ film reimagined the terms of political documentary prompting Michael Moore to hail it as the “definitive” account of the war.

A presentation of WIS-TV footage of anti-war and countercultural protests in Maxcy Gregg Park and to save the UFO coffee house accompanies the screening. Courtesy of Moving Image Research Collections. University of South Carolina.

A conversation moderated by Kent Germany, Associate Professor of History at USC follows the screening.

Kent Germany is Associate Professor of History at the University of South Carolina. He is an expert in American history of the 20th century with a particular emphasis on the post-World War II period, poverty, civil rights, and citizenship. He has completed several book-length projects on the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson: New Orleans After the Promises: Poverty, Citizenship, and the Search for the Great Society (University of Georgia Press, February 2007), and multiple volumes in the presidential recordings collection including The Kennedy Assassination and the Transfer of Power: The Presidential Recordings: Lyndon B. Johnson and Toward the Great Society: The Presidential Recordings.

Special thanks to our series sponsor:
Susan Thorpe and John Baynes