1968 (Your Help, Please!)
“Arguably the most historic year of modern times, 1968 was full of tragedy.” -- CNN
Episode 8 of CNN’s series about “The Sixties” airs tonight at 9 pm/est. (The program replays later tonight.) The earlier episodes have been, in my opinion, of a quality well worth watching. They have covered issues including the Cuban Missile Crises, Civil Rights movement, JFK’s murder, the Beatles, and the space race. Tonight’s program focuses on 1968.
The Tet Offensive; McCarthy’s New Hampshire upset; LBJ steps aside (kind of); King is killed; RFK is killed; the Democratic National Convention; Nixon; the White Album; and much, much more.
If you weren’t alive back then, watching tonight’s documentary may help put 1968 into perspective. It was, quite literally, a revolutionary year in American history. There was something close to a civil war, though there were more than two sides fighting.
If you were around back then, I would also recommend watching it. I do not tend to watch CNN much, myself, but I have enjoyed this series. I suspect that you will like tonight’s episode!
Now, if possible, I’d like your help, to make this both an entertaining and worthwhile thread. If you experienced 1968, what events stick out in your mind? And why?
If you weren’t alive back then, what are your impressions of that year, based upon what you have learned about it? Also, do you have any questions about 1968 -- and what made it so special -- that you might pose to D.U.’s elders?
Thank you for your consideration, and hopefully, participation. And enjoy the show!
Your friend,
H2O Man
= new reply since forum marked as read
It was a kind of soothing finale to a very turbulent year.
I don't remember King's assassination, but I certainly remember RFK being shot, just after summer vacation started. I remember hearing about the Tet Offensive on TV, but not really understanding what it was all about. I remember the nightly news reports about US and VC/NVA casualties, and hearing my friend talk about his brother being shot down, but rescued by friendly forces. And I remember not being able to watch Laugh-In because my mother was afraid that we kids were going to repeat Laugh-In stock phrases (like "Very interesting" and "You bet your bippy"
in front of her very conservative parents.
Luckily, they ended up not sending us. We had absolutely no training for civil protests (we'd been trained only for Vietnam combat). 
The happenings in the Black Panther Party captured most of my attention because it was very local, and by extension, very personal. Would have, Could have, Should have been...
Doing up some killer ribs and reflecting on stuff with Bobby (The BPP is dead) Seale is on my bucket list.
I was in college, my fiancé got drafted, and we eloped! A milestone year for us!
The assassinations, the moon landing, and the Dem. convention are probably the events that stand out the most, as most people have already mentioned.
I was devastated by RFK's assassination. I loved him and wanted to see him elected president. I saw him speak at a rally in DC early that year. He was mesmerizing.
Jim got into the Army the way you did, though the juvie referee had to be convinced he was acceptable to the Army.
Getting a job was tough because stories about vets "acting out" made a lot of employers gunshy about hiring VN vets. I got lucky when I was interviewed by a senior bureau director at a federal agency who'd served as a grunt in WWII. We hit it off, and in that case being a VN vet actually helped me get the job.
Apart from that, though. I learned to keep my VN service to myself. After being called "baby-killer" and other names I avoided letting anybody know.
Welcome home, brother! I'm glad you made it. 
Though Long Binh Jail, the stockade known to the troops as LBJ (for obvious reasons), was also at Long Binh. I had to take a prisoner there once, and the place was less than inviting, to put it mildly.
1967-1969AW(after Woodstock) have gotten a little fuzzy. After all, I was like WAY older than you at 21.
.
Point Hudson was built to accommodate an 8 man crew.[6] She was powered by two 600 hp (447 kW) VT600 Cummins diesel main drive engines and had two five-bladed 42 in (1.1 m) propellers. The main drive engines were later replaced by 800 hp (597 kW) VT800 Cummins engines. Water tank capacity was 1,550 US gallons (5,900 L) and fuel tank capacity was 1,840 US gallons (7,000 L) at 95% full.[4][6] Engine exhaust was ported through the transom rather than through a conventional stack and this permitted a 360 degree view from the bridge; a feature that was very useful in search and rescue work as well as a combat environment.[7]
The design specifications for Point Hudson included a steel hull for durability and an aluminum superstructure and longitudinally framed construction was used to save weight. Ease of operation with a small crew size was possible because of the non-manned main drive engine spaces. Controls and alarms located on the bridge allowed one man operation of the cutter thus eliminating a live engineer watch in the engine room. Because of design, four men could operate the cutter; however, the need for resting watchstanders brought the crew size to eight men for normal domestic service. The screws were designed for ease of replacement and could be changed without removing the cutter from the water. A clutch-in idle speed of three knots helped to conserve fuel on lengthy patrols and an eighteen knot maximum speed could get the cutter on scene quickly.
Air-conditioned interior spaces were a part of the original design for the Point class cutter. Interior access to the deckhouse was through a watertight door on the starboard side aft of the deckhouse. The deckhouse contained the cabin for the officer-in-charge and the executive petty officer. The deckhouse also included a small arms locker, scuttlebutt, a small desk and head. Access to the lower deck and engine room was down a ladder. At the bottom of the ladder was the galley, mess and recreation deck. A watertight door at the front of the mess bulkhead led to the main crew quarters which was ten feet long and included six bunks that could be stowed, three bunks on each side. Forward of the bunks was the crew's head complete with a compact sink, shower and commode. Accommodations for a 13 man crew were installed for Vietnam service.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USCGC_Point_Hudson_(WPB-82322)
through college. Yes, it was revolutionary. 1968 forever changed me and how I thought about our country and government. Because of that year I've always been a vigilant observer of national events.
When I turned 21 in 1969, I realized that no more major battles would ever be won the same way The People had won them. I knew that our government had separated itself from being of, by and for The People, and that a Deep State was being born.
No amount of any "power of positivity" cultural hoohah after that could make me turn a blind eye to any subsequent events that there were or were not reported by "official" stories from media. I looked to alternative anything beyond TV and mainstream print. Half of my generation went on to business school and became all the old corporate assholes I despise today. This hippy wanted to be like Jesus, so I went into teaching. (Years later I showed "1968" of this series to my high school students to give them context for understanding modern American lit we were reading.)
Abbie Hoffman, John Lennon and Daniel Ellsberg were my living heroes after that. Hallucinogens opened me to how insignificant it all was in the universe. The Whole Earth Catalog and Foxfire series informed my rejection of consumer capitalism. My inner hippy lost her trust that public effort would get results.
That's why I've not felt at all surprised by the fascist surveillance state we live under. 1968 shocked us who chose to see its larger meaning. It was the fatal rip in the hull of this democratic ship that I could feel was sinking slowly while a few more skirmishes played out on deck (e.g., the silly too-little, too late Weather Underground that came later.) Whole families had split over the Vietnam war and the civil rights movement.
What I saw was that it's not as if millions of us who witnessed 1968 didn't try to patch that breach, or sabotage the PTB at every turn, and with some success after that. But, among other reasons, the technology wasn't there to amplify the power and influence that now I only can dream we might have used to break the power of the military over civilian command.
Anyway, I'm feeling maudlin. The series is the best historical video document of that time, and your presenting its importance here means a lot to me. Thank you, H2O Man. 
Edit: The following year, this song, along with the birth of my daughter, helped me a little to get over those events.
I remember telling my mother, seemed like in the early morning hours, only a couple months after MLK's assassination, that RFK had been assassinated that night/early morning. I distinctly remember her just slumping against the wall of my bedroom for support - utterly traumatized and stunned by the news. 
My parents were great civil rights and anti-war supporters - liberals to the core. Their spirit lives on in me, my sister, my daughter and my nephews.
My buddy David Peel was forming his group, The Lower East-Side Gang, there at that time. A few years later, he would play with John's Plastic Ono Band. While the influence of Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin is often associated with the Nixon administration's effort to deport Lennon, a large part of that effort was tied to David .....those FBI files haven't seen the light of day yet! It was tied to some funding from "Luck of the Irish" (from "Sometime in New York City" going to the Old Sod.
Last edited Fri Aug 1, 2014, 03:59 AM - Edit history (1)
There's a part of me that has never recovered, and it's why I held my breath during so much of Barack Obama's campaign in 2008. I still fear for him. I don't understand the hatred and contempt some express here -- don't they know hatred has consequences for our people?
I was in community college in So Cal and my friends and I ran the McCarthy for President HQ in our town. No point in a campus office because the majority of the students in jr. college were under 21, so we were interacting with settled adults as it were. The day after the election we did have the satisfaction of finding out we had won the district we had worked so hard in, but really all hope was gone with Bobby's loss.
We hung around the HQ all by ourselves watching the donated TV until about 10:00 pm, when it was totally obvious McCarthy had lost California. I went home to my little apartment and listened to my transistor radio until the battery died. I didn't know about the assassination until the next morning, when I went downstairs to "do up" for the elderly couple who owned the house, and found the two of them sitting stunned in front of their TV. With them I watched Mankiewizc age a thousand years on camera.
Damnation it hurts to remember this. Now I've got tears on my glasses.
During the summer I moved back in with my parents while I got ready to transfer from community college to University of Hawai'i, which had accepted me in the first place just before we moved to California. It was in my parents' living room that I watched the Chicago Convention and the riots outside it, shaking and in disbelief. My friend who had recruited me to work on the McCarthy campaign had friends who were there, so we got an almost-first-hand account of the police riots. My friend's friend was in an office when the cops broke in and slammed him up against the file cabinets.
The day I went to the Los Angeles Airport to catch my flight Home I saw people deplaning from a Chicago flight. They were wearing black armbands.
I couldn't take living on the Mainland any more. The summer we moved to California the Watts Riots broke out. Then it was one assassination and riot after another, and I thought to myself how can people live like this?! I was just a kid from some islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. I never ever wanted to live on the Mainland by then, and indeed it was over a decade before I returned to California to stay.
I haven't been able to watch much of the series, although it is well done. I've been afraid of doing what I'm doing now, I guess, which is sobbing.
I saw part of the episode on Hubert Humphrey last week and that man's fate just wrenched my heart all over again. He was a good man, and he didn't deserve what happened to him at LBJ's hands -- or Nixon's. LBJ was a good man but flawed; he even had greatness in him though he did some mistaken things and some very bad things. Nixon was just evil.
postscript: Almost redundant to say 1968 absolutely affected the rest of my life. My parents just didn't talk about politics much in the home. I do. I'm a Democrat, period. I'm a feminist. I'm pro-choice. I believe in Affirmative Action. I've worked, picketed, served for all these things. All of this grew out of my activities in 1968.
... you can see the birthmark.
Some of this might stretch into 1969.
1) I was a crosswalk guard for awhile in elementary school. The farthest of our crosswalks was located next to a cemetery, and we held our crosswalk flag upright whenever a cemetary procession of cars came by. I remember some of them had US flags (attached to motorcycle escort or cars) and we were told they were Vietnam veterans. This happened often.
2) I lived in the projects and our school was poor and subject to the whims of tax levys. However, due to Johnson's Great Society (and maybe a bit of Kennedy's "Ask not..." we had amazing teachers who were highly motivated to be there to help educate us to overcome this hard start. One, for example, thought our Social Studies/History texts were inadequate. Back then, it was rare for a woman or person of color to be included. So she made photo copies at the University of Washington (UW) and taught us about a much wider range of people and movements: MLK, Harriet Tubman, Chief Sealth, George Washington Carver and on and on. She taught us about the civil rights movement and about the protests that were occurring in 1968 that were happening in the UW area where she lived. And she told us the parts that were'nt on the news, like the clouds of tear gas on the streets there that affected everyone in the neighborhood. I have too many instances of reaching out in marvelous ways from the teachers at that school to recount, for which I am forever grateful.
I missed that series and, I wish that they would do a replay afterwards. I'm sure I've forgotten a lot of things that I found interesting and scary during that period. In fact, the 60's were an interesting and scary period to me. I grew from a young teenager during the early part of the decade to a new wife and mother at the end of it.
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/us/the-sixties
I wish that DU had a 'heads-up' on TV programs that people would find interesting or entertaining. (unless I've just missed that segment of this site).
