Amazing reading! Chicago '68: A Chronology (Wow!)

[G_j]

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/1553/c68chron.html

-this actually covers events from '67 to '75. ----

just a few samples:

'67
August 31: Five-day convention of the National Conference for a New Politics opens in Chicago. 3,000 delegates from some 200 left, community, and civil rights groups convene to discuss an electoral strategy for 1968. Some want a third-party slate with Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., running for President and Dr. Benjamin Spock for Vice-president. But the conference breaks up in rancor and division. Leftists who want to be active in a national race have nowhere to turn but the Democratic Party.
<snip>

November 30: Senator Eugene McCarthy officially enters the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, running on an antiwar platform.
<snip>

'68
January 30: The Tet offensive begins in South Vietnam; Vietcong and North Vietnamese troops strike at targets across South Vietnam, reaching even the grounds of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. Often cited as a turning point in public support for the war. American troops will peak at 542,000 during 1968.
<snip>

March 31: Lyndon Johnson withdraws from the Democratic primary race. Read the New York Times story.

April 4: Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. Riots break out in more than a hundred cities. On the west side of Chicago, nine blacks are killed and twenty blocks are burned.
<snip>

May 14: J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI, sends a memorandum to all FBI field offices initiating a counter-intelligence program (COINTELPRO) to disrupt new left groups.

June 5: Senator Robert Kennedy is assassinated in Los Angeles moments after declaring victory in the California Democratic presidential primary.

June 14: Dr. Benjamin Spock and four others are convicted of conspiring to counsel draft evasion.
<snip>

August 21: Soviet tanks and troops roll into Czechoslovakia to crush the "Prague Spring" reform movement.

<snip>

..and it hasn't even got to the '68 Democratic Convention in Chicago yet.

-much more with some great links:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/1553/c68chron.html

-------------------------
From the introduction:

They called it "Czechago." Nowhere else during that decade was dissension so dramatically opposed as on the streets of Chicago during the turbulent Democratic National Convention in August 1968. The barbed wire-laced jeeps in Grant Park evoked images of Russian tanks in the streets of Prague.

<snip>

[G_j]

1. kick

[G_j]

2. kick

[zwielicht]

3. kick

Nice coincidence, I discovered this site a few days ago, too, and really enjoyed reading it :)

[candy]

4. God,what a year that was!!!

I remember it all like it was yesterday.

[zwielicht]

5. Wow!!

Thank you so much, the world would be much worse today if you all wouldn't have been so active those days :hug:

[candy]

6. I wasn't an activist-----

I gave birth to my fifth child in 1968( 5 in 6 years) so spent most of my time in the kitchen and laundryroom(no Pampers then),but the news and changes in that year were unbelievable.

Time Magazine came out with a special edition in 1993 commemorating the chaos and changes of 1968.I gave it to my son who was born that year and he still has it.

[zwielicht]

7. Oh, sorry I misunderstood!

Well, i'm quite sure my thanks will reach some other people who were involved and read this...

It must have been a very exciting time.. Did those events make you hope for a better future for your kids or was it maybe scary at that time?

[Eloriel]

8. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times

To coin a phrase. ;-)

Despite the horrible things, it was also a very uplifting time. There was so much more hope than now, tho I think the hope is returning these days (depends on getting Bush out of office as a start[]/i]).