1968 was chaotic and tumultuous and it seemed at times that things were falling apart because the center could not hold. It felt that anarchy was loosed on the world and the blood-dimmed tide and the hour of the rough beast were loosed. Remember these highlights – illustrated version.
Some of the 83 members of the crew who were captured, detained, abused and tortured for 11 monghx
Digitus impudicus
North Korea seizing the spy ship U.S.S. Pueblo (January 23)
Hue
The Tet offensive (starts January 30) “Crack the Sky, Shake the Earth”
Between 347 and 504 unarmed people massacred
Lt. William Calley, the sole officer convicted with respect to the massacre
My Lai Massacre (March 16)
(Delano Middleton, Henry Smith, and Samuel Hammond)
The Orange massacre (the killing of three young black men by South Carolina Highway Patrol officers in Orangeburg, South Carolina, on the South Carolina State University campus (February 8)
(Czech: Pražské jaro, Slovak: Pražská jar)
Liberal reformist Alexander Dubček
The Prague Spring (January 5) and subsequent Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia (August 20-21
The challenges to President Johnson by Eugene McCarthy (November 30, 1967 and Robert Kennedy (March 16), leading to Johnson’s decision not to run for re-election (March 31)
“I have been to the mountaintop…” (click photo for speech)
The assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (April 4)
Washington D.C.
Chicago
Indianapolis, Robert F. Kennedy’s speech on the assassination helped keep the city quiet (click photo for speech)
Riots after the assassination (Washington D.C., Chicago, Baltimore, Kansas City, Detroit, New York, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Trenton, Wilmington, Louisville)
Mark Rudd
Tthe SDS-led uprising at Columbia University (April 23-30)
The student-worker strike in France (May 2-June 23)
Edward Kennedy eulogizing his brother (click on photo to hear the eulogy)
Funeral train, Elizabeth, New Jersey
The assassination of Robert Kennedy (June 5)
The Democratic National Convention in Chicago (August 26-29)
The Tlatelolco Massacre – Mexican army murder of 300-400 protestors in Mexico City (October 2)
The Black Power fist salutes by Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the Mexico City Olympics (October 16)
The election of Richard Nixon as president with 43.4% of the popular vote (November 5)