From the vantage point of 50 years later, many of the events of the watershed year that was 1968 seem to be symbols of something broken — from the Vietnam War turning point that was the Tet Offensive, to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., to student and labor strikes in Paris to the Prague Spring. The Democratic National Convention that August was a nominating convention for an extraordinary year, in which incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson decided not to run again and candidate Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated as his campaign was gaining steam. It was part of the larger pattern, and remains a half-century later a symbol of a broken system. Inside the convention hall, party leaders nominated Vice-President Hubert Humphrey for the top of the ticket, even though he hadn’t run in any primary races, which would help prompt major reforms in how the Democratic Party picks its candidates. And outside, in the streets of Chicago, a massive wave of resistance — an estimated 10,000 demonstrators — drew a harsh response from city authorities, becoming a seminal moment in the history of American protest. By the time the convention ended, 668 protesters had been arrested, and hundreds of people had been injured. The public would get to know some of those arrested better during the roughly five-year legal battle that followed. Eight participants were charged with conspiracy and crossing state lines to incite a riot: John Froines, Lee Weiner, David Dellinger, Rennie Davis, Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and Bobby Seale. In the walk-up to the anniversary of the most famous police-crowd confrontations of the week, those of Aug. 28, TIME spoke to several who protested about their memories of that time, the impact of the protests on the anti-war movement — and how what happened in 1968 is still playing out today. Why They Went and What They Wanted Protesters flowed to Chicago in the days before the Aug. 26 start of the convention. Some young Democrats tried to work within the system, trying to get anti-war candidate Sen. Eugene McCarthy (D-MN) nominated. Others worked the streets and the parks, believing something more revolutionary had to take place to end the War in Vietnam. And, in a commentary on the quality of candidates available, Yippies (members of the Youth International Party) “nominated” a pig for president. Michael Kazin, then a member of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and now co-editor of Dissent magazine and professor of History at Georgetown University: I, and others in Students for a Democratic Society, went to Chicago to convince the kids in their teens and early 20s, who’d been campaigning for McCarthy, to give up their illusions about getting change within the system — break from Democratic Party and start their own party. Judy Gumbo, then a Yippie, still an activist: We didn’t see the use of electoral politics. We hadn’t seen it do anything to end the war. Our job as we saw it was to do provocative acts of theater that would inspire others to repeat those acts wherever they were [based]. The [planning] roles were gendered; the boys went to try to negotiate for a permit, and the women were in the park making signs. The cornerstone of my experience was being in these male-dominated [planning] groups and getting up the nerve to make a point. That was a very empowering experience. To create a more integrated movement, they wanted to have someone come to speak from the Black Panther Party. I was the one who suggested Eldridge Cleaver. I had to say it about two or three times, but eventually they said that’s a good idea. He couldn’t come, but the Panther party leadership sent Bobby [Seale] instead. Bobby Seale, co-founder of the Black Panther Party: I went because we were for human rights and against this damn war. We, the black people, shouldn’t have to be fighting this war, dying in Vietnam, if this country isn’t recognizing our civil, democratic, human rights. Abe Peck, then-editor of alternative newspaper The Chicago Seed, now at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism: How can you organize people who would rather die than go to a meeting? You do it by spectacle. You do it by bringing a band, nominating a pig. Media coverage was our oxygen, so the claims had to get bigger and bigger to keep having coverage. I tried to warn [people]. It’s not like I was saying ‘don’t come,’ but I just wanted people to know what they were getting into, that the police were really going to try to snuff it out and you may be at risk. Yippies parading their Presidential candidate, Pigasus the pig, during the 1968 Democratic National Convention Julian Wasser—The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images Confrontations With the Police Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, who had taken an infamously harsh approach to the riots that had swept the city following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. that April, prepared for the convention by supplementing his nearly 12,000 Chicago police officers with 5,000 state National Guardsmen and 6,500 federal troops. Peck: We’re sitting in our [newspaper] office and heard the windows crack. There were bullets in the window. A police car cruised by. We called the police, and they asked, Who do you think did that? Well, we think you did it. Seale: In my speech in Lincoln Park, I said you’ve got a right to defend yourselves. If they come at you with a billy club, you gotta reach up and grab the billy club and try to get it out of his hand so you can swing back. [The protesters] learned Police Brutality 101. It was a course, and they all passed it with As. Gumbo: I remember walking up and down the line of National Guardsmen outside of the Hilton with [the singer] Phil Ochs. They all had their rifles pointed at us, but one of them told Phil he had been to one of his concerts. I watched Phil stand and talk to this guy for some time, and at a certain point the guard lowered his rifle and just had a one-on-one conversation with Phil. That was the kind of interaction that we had hoped to have with the police. Lee Weiner, a sociologist, then a Chicago community organizer, who went on to work for Americares and the Anti-Defamation League: On Aug. 28, during the huge battle on Michigan Avenue with the National Guard, I separated myself from the crowd to stand on the steps of the Art Institute and watch the crowd of people. It was the only time in my life I thought a revolution might happen in the United States. Police and demonstrators in a melee near the Conrad Hilton Hotel on Chicago's Michigan Avenue during the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 28, 1968 Bettmann/Getty Images Get our History Newsletter. Put today's news in context and see highlights from the archives. Please enter a valid email address. * The request timed out and you did not successfully sign up. Please attempt to sign up again. Sign Up Now An unexpected error has occurred with your sign up. Please try again later. Check the box if you do not wish to receive promotional offers via email from TIME. You can unsubscribe at any time. By signing up you are agreeing to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Thank you! For your security, we've sent a confirmation email to the address you entered. Click the link to confirm your subscription and begin receiving our newsletters. If you don't get the confirmation within 10 minutes, please check your spam folder. Assessing the Impact of Protest Hubert Humphrey officially accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination for President on Aug. 29, and the convention came to an end. Humphrey would be defeated in the general election by Richard Nixon. Weiner: Did we accomplish what we wanted to accomplish? No, the war kept going. But I think it made the notion of resistance more legitimate. Peck: I wouldn’t call it a success or a failure.<doc-sep>It was 50 years ago this week that the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago became a national spectacle, as a major political event veered into chaos that culminated with a police riot, much of it unfolding on live national television. The 1968 DNC came in the middle of a year of mass protests against the Vietnam War. Protests also erupted and civil disorders in April, when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Then, on June 5th, Robert Kennedy was killed as he sought the Democratic Party nomination for president. Watch Video: SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT Never Miss a Beat. Get our best delivered to your inbox. Democrats had to select a nominee after President Lyndon Johnson announced he would not seek another term amid fallout over Vietnam. His vice president, Hubert Humphrey, was ultimately nominated for president without competing in the primaries and after party bosses arranged for his support from most delegates. As protests raged outside the convention, inside, Aretha Franklin, whose funeral will be held Friday in Detroit, was invited to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Read the full transcript here.<doc-sep>Rumours were floated by some of the more imaginative protesters that they were going to inject LSD into the city's drinking water, and send out "stud teams" to seduce the wives and daughters of the delegates - all designed to unnerve the Democrat delegates and keep the Chicago police and investigative agencies guessing.<doc-sep>
Fifty years ago today, one of the fiercest battles of the 1960s took place not in the jungles of Vietnam, but on the streets of Chicago. On Day 3 of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, police clashed violently with antiwar demonstrators before a rapt television audience of 90 million Americans. The Battle of Michigan Avenue, as the episode came to be known, in many ways prefigured the culture wars that dominate American politics today. Protesters had converged on Chicago because the Democratic Party was set to disregard the antiwar presidential candidacies of Minnesota Sen. Eugene McCarthy and the late Robert Kennedy by nominating Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who supported the Vietnam War. But there was more to the Chicago conflict than Vietnam. Old-guard Democrats viewed the white working class as the backbone of the country and protesters as ungrateful interlopers who didn’t appreciate what made America great. Protesters saw the white working class and its hawkish, insular attitudes as part of the problem. The violence percolated over the first two days of the convention, and protesters certainly deserved some of the blame for it. They hurled rocks, bottles and garbage at police, as well as insults such as “fascist pig,” “oink, oink” and “seig heil.” But their actions paled in comparison to the violence let loose by police. The Battle of Michigan Avenue foreshadowed the America we inhabit today: divided, distrustful, aggrieved and entrenched in opposing cultural camps. According to the Walker Report, an official investigation of the protests conducted by a special commission, the police unleashed “unrestrained and indiscriminate” terror throughout the week, bloodying not just demonstrators but also medics, seminarians, journalists and other bystanders. The conflict culminated in a 17-minute melee outside the main convention hotel, the Conrad Hilton, just before the Democrats were to nominate Humphrey. Wielding billy clubs, rifle butts, tear gas and mace, police overtook the demonstrators, some shouting “kill, kill” as they advanced. At one point, police pushed spectators through a plate-glass window, “sending screaming middle-aged women and children backward through the broken shards of glass,” as the New York Times later reported. Some demonstrators fought back with firecrackers, rocks or other makeshift weapons, but the protesters’ main defense was to chant a refrain: “The whole world is watching!” The Walker Report ultimately concluded that the event was “a police riot.” It wasn’t long after the violence ended that a larger battle erupted over its meaning. Protesters thought they had unmasked America as a police state. In a speech to the convention, Connecticut Sen. Abraham Ribicoff immortalized the police violence as “Gestapo tactics in the streets of Chicago.” The press condemned Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley for giving his officers free rein to brutalize demonstrators. “The pictures and sound of the Chicago Police Department speak for themselves,” CBS News President Richard Salant said at the time. But a large majority of Americans disagreed. In a poll conducted shortly after the convention, 71% said that the police measures were justified and 57% rejected claims that the police used excessive force. Millions of Americans simply couldn’t believe that the police — who defended their communities and reflected their values and way of life — could act in the manner they saw on TV. They didn’t call it “fake news,” but many Americans thought it was. Newspapers were inundated with letters saying that the TV news “cannot be trusted” and accusing the press of giving radicals a voice while “totally ignoring responsible Americans.” TV networks also heard from viewers directly. “We got thousands of calls from people saying they didn’t believe their eyes, accusing us of hiring cops to beat up kids,” said the Washington bureau chief for CBS News, Bill Small. To some public officials, the press was as culpable and disdainful as the protesters. “The intellectuals of America hate Richard J. Daley because he was elected by the people — unlike Walter Cronkite,” said the director of public information for Chicago’s police. Daley himself derided “commentators and columnists,” blamed the media for inciting the violence and called the news coverage “distorted and twisted.” Enter the Fray: First takes on the news of the minute from L.A. Times Opinion » Perhaps taking their cues from Daley, the police had singled out reporters and photojournalists for assault that week.