Our journey through life is marked by significant events…births, deaths, weddings. It is no less true for nations. Our country’s history is most remembered for our birth in 1776, Lincoln’s assassination and the end of slavery in 1865, Pearl Harbor in 1941 and the dropping of the atomic bomb in 1945. But for me, and many in my generation, we will never forget 1968. An ignominious year, whose earthquake-like events reverberate to this day.
The year had begun with 400,000 American troops fighting in Vietnam. President Johnson, under the urgings of his Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, and the head of his military, General William Westmoreland, authorized an additional 150,000 men. After all, victory was just around the corner. Nearly 17,000 more men would be killed in 1968, nearly doubling the total casualties of that conflict. It would be the war’s deadliest year as more families considered sending their children to Canada to avoid the draft. And, as George Bush, Donald Trump, and Bill Clinton all managed to elude conscription, so did most of the ‘privileged,’ the burden fell unfairly on those without the resources necessary to bend the rules, especially minorities.
In January a U.S. naval ship, the Pueblo, was captured by North Korea and more than 80 sailors were taken hostage. North Vietnam launched the Tet Offensive overrunning multiple American and South Vietnamese positions.
In February, racial events in Memphis and South Carolina energized a more aggressive Civil Rights movement just as a government report concluded “we are moving toward two societies, one black, one white–separate and unequal.”
A month later, President Johnson, who had won easily in 1964, announced he would not seek reelection. Reverend King, the leader of the Selma and Washington D.C. marches, and the face of the Civil Rights movement, is assassinated while in Memphis to support a Sanitation Worker’s strike. Riots break out across the country as memories of the killing of JFK resurface, and a national paralysis begins to spread.
Robert Kennedy has taken the baton of the antiwar movement from Eugene McCarthy and support for him to win the Democratic nomination builds until it, too, is shattered at a rally held at the Los Angeles Ambassador hotel, assassinated by a bullet from Sirhan Sirhan, apparently for RFK’s support of Israel.
Now, three national leaders have been taken from us. This was not supposed to happen in America.
Between those deaths both antiwar and racial demonstrations become everyday lead stories on evening television as small groups broke into draft boards and burned files. College students demonstrated against their university’s support of military research or ROTC on their campus.
In August the Democratic convention in Chicago led to massive rioting, televised, police and activists in an all-out melee. Arrests would lead to the ‘trial of the Chicago seven,’ all leading antiwar activists.
Elsewhere, the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia, halting ‘the Prague Spring.’ Arthur Ashe won the U.S. Open Tennis, the first black male to win the event. The Beatles released ‘Hey, Jude.’ CBS’ 60 Minutes debuted. Tommy Smith and John Carlos, medal winners at the Mexico City Olympic games, raised gloved fists at the awards ceremony to protest racial conditions in America. They were summarily stripped of their medals and sent home. Yale University finally accepted women students.
In November Richard Nixon narrowly won the Presidential election because of five southern states voting for a 3rd party candidate rather than Hubert Humphrey.
The war would continue until the fall of Saigon in 1975. Nearly 70,000 Americans, 200,000+ South Vietnamese, and more than 1 million North Vietnamese had given their lives for hubris and ignorance. In 1969 the Stonewall riots would launch demands from another minority, the LGBT community. In 1971 the release of the Pentagon Papers would reveal repeated government lying further shattering national trust in our institutions.
Other black leaders would emerge to continue efforts toward racial equality but even the election of Barack Obama would not succeed in ameliorating our nation’s expanding divisiveness.
More than a half-century has passed, and we still can’t seem to get it right!