1968….THE YEAR THE WORLD WOBBLED!
by
DR ANDREW AZZOPARDI
Department of Youth and Community Studies
Faculty of Education,
University of Malta
We have just squeezed ourselves into 2009 with so many of those challenges raining on us that
will keep us busy all year long. Reeling from a shaky 2008 it hit me strong that last year was the
40th anniversary from 1968. Now, that was a year to remember, at times with a smile, now and
then with a smirk and occasionally with a sniffle. The impact of that year’s event trickled over till
this day. Coming from the Department of Youth and Community Studies I am particularly intrigued
that in all or most of the colossal events happening in that year one could see young people
involved up to the neck. It’s mind-blowing that young people who risked their careers and at times
their lives did this with so much selflessness. It was the year young people beliefs and convictions
were dyed-in-the-wool.
Allow me to list out some of these jumbo events:
As far as music is concerned, the Beetles topped the charts with Hey Jude and later on that year
announced the creation of Apple Records. By the end of the year they were reeling on their double
White Album release. A new come-legendary publication came into circulation; The Rolling Stone
Magazine, a periodical focusing on music, politics and popular culture. This year also saw the
return of the legendary Elvis Presley.
If we had to speak politics, 1968 is ‘the one’! ‘68 was the year people died for what they stood by,
namely the up-coming political stalwarts and youngsters Martin Luther King (39 years) and RFK
(43 years). Both were shot dead by extremist. This was also a year exceptionally brawny when it
came to social unrest characterised by young people navigated various social movements across
the World, notably the western hemisphere. Some major events: The Prague Spring or rather the
alteration and attempted reversal of suppression and lack of voice is represented by the events
that characterised the old Cekosovlovkja. Then we witnessed the French May revolutions which
unified the left-wing oriented young people and workers who join forces to resist the De Gaulle
regime.
Summer Olympic host, Mexico City had its share of events. Sports, politics and young people
came together in Mexico. These were strong remonstrations that re-positioned the whole political
dialectic. Just 10 days before the commencement of this high profile event, young people
protested against the Government, erected barricades and in the ensuing protests hundreds were
killed in what was to be reminisced as the Tlatelolco massacre – a blood bath at La Plaza de las
Tres. Young people protested against the sanctioning of public meetings, free expression and
demonstrations. The conceited government decisions that saw torture and illegitinmate
imprisonment the order of the day, were objected to.
The Church was unsurprisingly an oddball in those times as well. Pope Paul VI writes his
encyclical Humanae Vitae encyclical condemning amongst other birth control, an enmcyclincal that
seems to have gone down the wrong way even amongst the Catholic stalwarts.
War has been around since human beings hit the Planet. The Vietnam Conflict was high on the
agenda. Soldiers as young as 17 years old were going to war. It was a massacre. The My Lai
Massacre whereby American troops killed scores of civilians and the infamous photo of Eddie
Adams that eventually won him the 1969 Pultzer Prize started changing the American public
opinion on this war – calling an immediate stop to it.
Afrocentrism and black civil rights were also high on the agenda. Students at Howard University in
Washington, D.C., signal a new era of militant student activism. Students stage rallies, protests
and a five-day sit-in, laying siege to the administration building demanding a more Afrocentric
curriculum.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. The World owes a lot to the young ones of ’68…will they be
articulating the same thing in 40 years time?