THE DNC CHICAGO 1968: REMEMBERING 50 YEARS AGO
I was eight years old and school didn't start up until after Labor Day. Television had limited choices.
No cable in my house just what the antenna brought in. Three big networks and their stations along with the "educational" channel soon to be known as "public television".
The networks devoted pretty much their full attention to the political conventions with gavel to gavel on NBC and CBS with ABC running some entertainment, then the convention.
I watched from my living room not aroused by issues and protests. Television to me was watching Adam West and Burt Ward ("Batman" and "Robin") fighting with the bad guys as the "Pow", "Zap", and "Zowie" were flashed on the screen.
The fighting inside and outside the convention provided some entertainment from my perspective.
The adults were fed up with protests and having to see them on television all the time. The racial violence was bad enough, now these "long-haired hippies" with their anti-war issue. The adults were growing weary of the media.
For Mayor Richard J. Daley, the Mayor of Chicago, the Democrat Boss, the Rahm Emmanuel of his time, the issue of violence was threatening his ability to rule Chicago. The deaths, injuries and property damage inflicted by five years of sporadic but serious outbreaks of racial violence was wearing the patience of the mostly white working class voters thin.
In 1966 the Democrats in Illinois lost a Senate seat to Republican Charles Percy as the whites in Chicago deserted the machine. They wanted police to get tough with protesters.
Daley had to control the convention inside against liberal anti-war elements supporting Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern and others who were there like Georgia Governor Lester Maddox, stalking for the third party candidacy of Alabama Governor George Wallace.
The machine had to bring off the nomination of Vice President Hubert Humphrey as the Democrat nominee for president.
And as you can see in the video links, they did it, but at a great cost to the Democratic Party that it was unable to recover from by November 1968 as Richard Nixon came through the three way split with George Wallace to defeat Humphrey.
Protesters on the streets, dissenters inside the convention hall and the media reporting it all were roughed up.
Links below.....
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