Highlights
For five days in August, the nation's Democrats assembled in Chicago to nominate a presidential candidate at a convention that would quickly spiral out of control and reflect the domestic chaos of the Vietnam era. Between 10,000 and 15,000 demonstrators were arrayed against 12,000 police and 6,000 National Guard troops, with an international press contingent of more than 1,000 on hand to record events inside the International Amphitheatre and outside at locations from Lincoln Park to Grant Park. Chants of "the whole world is watching" were broadcast as hippies, Yippies and the National Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam (Mobe) clashed with police at dozens of locations. The climax came W...
For five days in August, the nation's Democrats assembled in Chicago to nominate a presidential candidate at a convention that would quickly spiral out of control and reflect the domestic chaos of the Vietnam era. Between 10,000 and 15,000 demonstrators were arrayed against 12,000 police and 6,000 National Guard troops, with an international press contingent of more than 1,000 on hand to record events inside the International Amphitheatre and outside at locations from Lincoln Park to Grant Park. Chants of "the whole world is watching" were broadcast as hippies, Yippies and the National Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam (Mobe) clashed with police at dozens of locations. The climax came Wednesday night, as a melee broke out near the Conrad Hilton Hotel across from Grant Park, and police began beating bystanders as well as protesters, using clubs, fists, knees and Mace. Some militants fought back with their own caustic sprays, bottles and concrete chunks, enraging police all the more. Officers pushed people through a plate-glass window and then, according to witnesses, attacked the dazed victims as they lay amid broken glass. A group of police cheered a soldier as he bashed a demonstrator and attacked a photographer who filmed the scene. About an hour later, film of the violence was shown at the Amphitheatre, with the effect of a thunderbolt. Sen. Abraham Ribicoff, at the podium to place Sen. George McGovern's name in nomination, decried the use of "Gestapo tactics." A livid Mayor Daley stood up as TV cameras zoomed in but what he shouted has never been precisely determined. Later that night, as the riots continued, Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota easily won the nomination. There were hundreds of injuries, but no deaths. A national inquiry chaired by Chicago Crime Commission director Daniel Walker, later elected governor of Illinois, called the confrontations a "police riot." The city's version, called "What Trees Do They Plant?" blamed the disturbances on extremists and provocateurs. The tumult led to the infamous Chicago 8 trial, later the Chicago 7 trial, in which organizers were charged in federal indictments with rioting and conspiring to riot. They were: Bobby Seale, head of the Black Panthers; Tom Hayden, co-founder of SDS; Dennis Roberts, an Oakland-based civil rights lawyer; Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman, founders of the Youth International Party, or Yippies; veteran pacifist and Mobe leader David Dellinger; and academics Lee Weiner and John Froines.
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Chance for the community to create change
You could almost hear the world's collective sigh of relief. This year's U.S. presidential election was a global event in every sense. Barack Hussein Obama, the son of a black Kenyan father and a white Kansan mother, who grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii,...Tags: National or Ethnic Minorities, Hawaii, Grant Park, Frederick Douglass, Family
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CHANGE
In 1967, I became a Chicagoan—by moving to a third-floor walk-up apartment in Wicker Park—and a journalist—by landing a job as an assistant editor at the Tribune-owned American, one of four major dailies here at that time. This past...Tags: Demonstration, Grant Park, National Government, Philadelphia (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), Sculpture
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Barack Obama elected 44th President of the United States
Associated Press WriterDemocrat Barack Obama wrote his name indelibly into the pages of American history Tuesday, engineering a social and political upheaval to become the country's first black president-elect in a runaway victory over Republican John McCain. Less than an hour...Tags: National Government, Grant Park, The White House, Illinois, Primaries
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'Stories Done: Writings on the 1960s and Its Discontents' by Mikal Gilmore
The revolution -- the one that took place in the 1960s -- was in fact televised. The music, the antiwar movement, the drug culture and the social upheaval of the era became major benefactors of the first wave of saturation media coverage. To the...Tags: Johnny Cash, Bob Marley, George Harrison, Allen Ginsberg, Los Angeles
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Voice of the People
Wiping away the stain of 1968 As I sat watching the election returns with my wife, both of us choking back our emotions, I realized the significance and wisdom of Barack Obama choosing Grant Park as the site of his acceptance rally. It is impossible to...Tags: River Forest, National Government, Grant Park, Martin Luther King Jr., Illinois
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New Season Of 'Celebrity Rehab'; Weird Sitcom 'Living With The Wolfman'
It would seem to be the most inexcusably invasive of the celebrity stalking shows, where once-familiar faces are now ravaged and at their worst, for our entertainment. And certainly the roster for the second season of "Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew"...Tags: Stylista (tv program), Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Gilda Radner, Television Industry, Celebrity Mothers
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Daley reins in radicals — the Chicago Way
Turn on the TV news when John McCain is picking up undecided voters by invoking Barack Obama's relationship with unrepentant American terrorist William Ayers and, invariably, some liberal talking head will sniff in disgust and say Ayers is no big deal...Tags: Wages and Pensions, Bill Ayers, Interior Policy, Bernardine Dohrn, Law Enforcement
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Psychiatrist in leftist causes
Chicago Tribune reporterAaron Hilkevitch was the last surviving Illinois member of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, the U.S. volunteers who went to Spain to fight the fascists in the 1930s. Dr. Hilkevitch, 96, died of natural causes Saturday, Oct. 4, in his Hyde Park home, said his...Tags: Crimes, Illinois, Hyde Park, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Democratic National Conventions
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The Watcher recommends
Sunday: "Easy Money" (8 p.m., WGN-Ch. 9) Morgan (Jeff Hephner) confronts Bobette (Laurie Metcalf) about the inconsistencies in her stories about his upbringing. She's forced to reveal what secrets remain about his becoming a Buffkin. Monday: "How I...Tags: Stargate Atlantis (tv program), How I Met Your Mother (tv program), James Cagney, Movies, Democratic National Conventions
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Ex-mayor's busy personal sleuth
Chicago Tribune reporterJack Clarke was Mayor Richard J. Daley's personal gumshoe. For more than a decade, he conducted clandestine investigations for the mayor, in part to make sure Daley found out about city corruption before federal investigators. An expert on organized...Tags: Prosecution, Crimes, Theft, Prisons, Death and Dying
Nov 12, 2008
|Resource Link| Chicago Tribune
Nov 13, 2008
|Story| Hampton Roads Daily Press
Nov 4, 2008
|Resource Link| Chicago Tribune
Nov 9, 2008
|Story| Chicago Tribune
Nov 4, 2008
|Story| Orlando Sentinel
Nov 6, 2008
|Story| Los Angeles Times
Nov 6, 2008
|Story| Chicago Tribune
Oct 19, 2008
|Column| Hartford Courant
Oct 11, 2008
|Column| Chicago Tribune
Oct 7, 2008
|Story| Chicago Tribune
Oct 19, 2008
|Story| Chicago Tribune
Oct 9, 2008
|Story| Chicago Tribune
Original site for 1968 Democratic Convention topic gallery.
