1968: A Year that
Changed America
1968 Reflection Peace to You by Greg Fangel
www.the1968exhibit.org/reflections/peace-you
In 1968, I was a 17 year old high school student at Cretin High School in St. Paul, a military
and religious-based all male high school. The graduation ceremony that year was somewhat
of a somber event, as many of the high school graduates knew that they would be going
to Vietnam, drafted by the Selective Service Department of the US Government. The Tet
Offensive had everyone afraid.
Television stations and newspapers showed graphic images of our dead and wounded—
something that you would never see today in the American media. These images stirred
strong emotions of anger and sadness, causing me to want to escape from the possibility
of being drafted. My best friend Mike was drafted in 1969 and sent to Vietnam. He was
never the same when he returned. Sitting in a fox hole, smoking marijuana, and having
bullets blazing over his head changed him forever.
War protests were everywhere. I silently rebelled my parents’ directive to enroll in this
school by graduating as a buck private. Social change was occurring everywhere; society
was in turmoil. Martin Luther King was assassinated followed by Robert F. Kennedy in
1968. Women’s liberation and black power were heavily promoted by their respective
groups. Stay-at-home moms and white-only restrooms were being targeted for change. For
me, I was challenging my faith and the requirements dictated by the Catholic Church. I quit
going to church that year.
Traditional values, taught to me by my parents, stayed with me, but I was conflicted. What
should I do? I wanted so hard to follow society, but traditional values pulled me back the
other way. I wanted to grow my hair long, have free-flowing sex, and protest with the others.
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1968: A Year that
Changed America
1968 Reflection Images That Shaped Me by Wendy George
www.the1968exhibit.org/reflections/images-shaped-me
The events of 1968 have forever shaped my individuality. I realize now how much my
perception of the world was influenced by TV, Life and Tiger Beat magazines and 630 AM
on the radio. The nightly news with Walter Cronkite or David Brinkley was the truth and in
many ways the single source for my formative brain. They bombarded me the images of
soldiers dying in Viet Nam. I wondered if families would see the face of their loved one as
the camera panned the bodies as they lay injured or dead. I remember thinking that wasn’t
right.
Images of police and the National Guard beating college students and black protesters with
their batons. It was so brutal and I wasn’t quite sure why they had to hit them so hard when
they had their hands up. I saw the actions but didn’t really understand the motivations.
I can also recall the image of Robert Kennedy lying on the floor with his eyes open, a pool
of blood surrounding his head after he was shot. That image is tied to a memory of my
girlfriends sleeping over on a June night, planning to stay awake all night. As we laughed
and talked in our sleeping bags down in the basement, the music was interrupted with a
news bulletin that Bobby had been shot.
There was a light hearted normal thirteen year old in me too. I put eye make-up on to
look like Twiggy, parted my long hair down the middle, wore white lipstick even if it wasn’t
flattering, I played the guitar and was sad to see the Monkees TV show end! I really, really
wanted to go to California and live on the beach.
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1968: A Year that
Changed America
1968 Reflection To 1968 by Pam
http://the1968exhibit.org/reflections/1968-0
I was eight years old in July 1968. Growing up in the small town of La Crosse Wisconsin, my
memories of that time are happy. Life for me was simple and consisted of playing outside
until dark with no worries. We did not lock our doors at night and parents did not have
to worry whether or not there was some creep lurking around the neighborhood ready to
abduct one of their children. As a family we watched TV on our color RCA, shows such as
Laugh In, Gun Smoke, The Ed Sullivan Show and many others. It was a time that if the TV
needed repair, the man from Jack Robinson’s appliance store would come to our house and
fix it. Growing up with an older brother and sister, I listened to the rock and roll music of
the 60s, and to this day, continue to enjoy the music of the 60’s. I love seeing Herb Alpert’s
Tijuana Brass on the web site as I have the Whipped Cream CD and listen to the CD all of
the time.
I remember the Vietnam War being on the nightly news, but I did not know what it was
all about. I remember praying at night that the war would end. In one of our classes, we
discussed the draft, and the lottery system, so I asked my brother if he remembers his
number and he said,” Yes it was 25.” My brother was drafted, finished boot camp, and
then while on leave decided he was not going back. He never mentions the reason he
went AWOL. He eventually turned himself in to the authorities, served his time and was
discharged as an “undesirable” by the Army. I am not proud of what my brother did, but
truthfully, I am glad he did not have to fight in Vietnam. My heart goes out to all of the men
and women who served and to the families who lost loved ones to the war in Vietnam.
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1968: A Year that
Changed America
1968 Reflection Making Sense of Anti-war and Other Protests by Bonita Janda
http://the1968exhibit.org/reflections/making-sense-anti-war-and-other-protests
My experience of 1968 is encapsulated in a moment in August when I walked into the
Plymouth Congregational Church basement in downtown Minneapolis. The room had been
transformed into The Green Door, a youth coffee house open to all young people who cared
to enter. In the hallway leading to the entrance was a small black and white TV tuned to
the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Many stopped to watch droves of police in
riot gear outside the convention center beating back youthful protesters. Our own Hubert
Humphrey was inside vying for his place on the presidential ballot.
My own engagement with anti-war protest had happened a year earlier when my same
church had sponsored a small delegation (four teens and one youth minister) to
Washington, D.C., to March on the Pentagon. My parents — good Republicans — supported
the war and doubted anti-war activism. Despite this skepticism, they allowed my travel to
the event, understanding that I would be learning — at teach-ins and sit-ins — rather than
actually marching.
The events were eye-opening. We visited the offices of both our senators: Eugene McCarthy,
who we thanked for his support of the anti-war movement, and Walter Mondale, who we
encouraged to reconsider his pro-war stance. We learned non-violent methods: we carried
our signs, but hid the hammer that nailed the poster board to the stick; if billy clubs came
out, we would assume the fetal position, and so on. I was scared and exhilarated. My
memories are all images and impressions. I wonder if I uttered a word from the time we left
Minneapolis until we returned.
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1968: A Year that
Changed America
1968 Reflection Assassinations and Unrest by Ellie
http://people.mnhs.org/ugcs/index.cfm?sysid=6&action1=dsp_content&action2=dsp_single&contid=660&CFI
D=3341354&CFTOKEN=52664347
My most vivid memories of 1968 involve the assassinations of Dr. King and Senator
Kennedy and the unrest that followed. I was fourteen years old. I remember I was sitting in
my bedroom doing my homework and listening to the (AM only) radio. A bulletin interrupted
the manic disk jockey to say that Dr. Martin Luther King had been shot. I ran out into the
living room to tell my parents, and my mother shook her head. “If that were true, there
would have been a bulletin on television.” As she said it, the bulletin came on TV.
At first the city was very quiet. People drove with their lights on to show their mourning
for Dr. King. The newscasters were subdued. Then all hell broke loose. My brother was a
Maryland State Trooper at the time, and I remember a strict embargo on the telephone, so
that if something happened to him, we would get the call immediately. He was stationed at
the corner of Howard and Franklin Streets.
Then things settled down. Until June. I sprang out of bed on the sixth, and ran into the
living room. My father and brother were watching TV with sober expressions. “Who won the
election?” I asked. My brother replied, “It doesn’t matter.” Another wave of tragedy swept
over the country. It would seem we became one of those countries where transfer of power
was no longer peaceful.
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1968: A Year that
Changed America
1968 Reflection Returning from the Air Force by Les Bakke
http://people.mnhs.org/ugcs/index.cfm?sysid=6&action1=dsp_content&action2=dsp_single&contid=659
In 1968, I returned from my tour at the Missawa Air Force base in northern Japan. In July
1968, I was honorably discharged and returned to Moorhead State College in Moorhead,
MN. I wore a tie to campus the first day of class thinking that was the proper attire for a
college student in 1968. Needless to say, I never wore it again during my four year college
career. During college, I did find time to discuss the Vietnam War with folks who agreed and
those who did not. I became active in a variety of campus activities.
I started 1968 in Japan, listening to F4 fighters prepare for war in Vietnam and ended
1968 on a college campus where I learned why we serve in the military. Military service
is to defend the US way of life and most importantly to defend the US Constitution. We
served to protect our freedom of speech. Serious discussion of all topics is the right and
the responsibility of all US citizens. Freedom of speech is a right for all of us; hippies, war
protesters, flag wavers, right wing nuts, left wing nuts, believers, non-believers and those
with whom we absolutely disagree. If one person loses his/her right of free speech, we all
lose.
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1968: A Year that
Changed America
1968 Reflection Hard Times and Cereal by Julie Engen
http://people.mnhs.org/ugcs/index.cfm?sysid=6&action1=dsp_content&action2=dsp_single&contid=634
I was 19 years old in 1968, married with my husband in Vietnam. We were married one
week after my graduation from high school in ‘67 and he was sent overseas a month later. I
was also having our first baby in April of 1968. I remember being in the hospital and hearing
that Martin Luther King Jr. had been killed. At the time I had no idea who he was (being a
teenager that really never listened to the news) but it was on every channel so I knew he
was someone important. I also never even considered that my husband wasn’t coming
home from the war. I was so young and so unaware of the world around me, instead being
focused on the new baby. I think that really was a blessing looking back.
It was easier to get by on one income back then, but we were pretty broke. Our only income
was his army wage. We couldn’t get housing on base so we ended up in a really awful
double bungalow in Colorado Springs for $90 a month rent. It was mice infested and
actually had mushrooms growing out of the floor in the bathroom. There were so many
people looking for housing that you had to take whatever you could get. We thought we
were so grown up but thinking back, it’s amazing we made it. I was expecting another baby
and I was in another state with a lot of Vietnam returnees doing an awful lot of drugs and
drinking. There was no counseling or re-adjustment period for them. They were just thrown
back into society and expected to function normally. They were all kids.
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1968: A Year that
Changed America
1968 Reflection An Unlucky Birthday by Tim Koster
http://people.mnhs.org/ugcs/index.cfm?sysid=6&action1=dsp_content&action2=dsp_single&contid=613
In 1968 I had just graduated from high school and went to night school at Boston University. My best friend Tony
had just returned from a tour of duty in Vietnam. Tony would tell me about fighting in Vietnam. He told me about
the fear of being point man on patrol — where every bullet and booby-trap seemed to be meant for him and him
alone; about the failure time and again of his M-16 rifle when it got wet or overheated, and how he always had to
keep it out of sand or dirt for fear it would get jammed; and he told me about the insanity of riding a helicopter
to a brutal deadly fight for a piece of land, winning the battle, counting the bodies, and taking the helicopter ride
back to base —giving the land back. I heard about how hard it was to kill a man for the first time and then how
easy it became over time. And I learned about the pain that comes from watching a friend, a brother, bleed to
death next to you. After my conversations with Tony I was strongly against the war in Vietnam. It just seemed
crazy to assume that one side or the other would finally think that enough of their young men had been killed and
would give up. Neither side was going to blink.
In late November I got a letter from my draft board in New Jersey. They determined that I hadn’t earned enough
college credits after high school and took away my student deferment. That made me I-A (eligible for the draft).
The first draft lottery was coming up. If my birth date was a high number I’d be safe. December 1, 1969 came
and Congressman Alexander Pirnie (R-NY) of the House Armed Services Committee came on TV and my friends
all gathered with me to watch him pick the capsule with the birth date that would become “Number One” in that
first draft lottery of the Vietnam War. When he announced it, everyone roared. It was my birthday.
I was stunned. I was already opposed to U.S. involvement in the War, and I knew that I didn’t want to be part of it.
I called the Boston Globe immediately and asked if they would be interested in talking to the “Number One’ draft
pick. I told them that I would refuse induction, that I was opposed to violence and war. Within a week I received
my draft notice. I had no time left. I went to the American Friends Service Committee office. They told me that I
could apply for a Conscientious Objector (C.O.) deferment and it would stop the draft process. Technically if you
were opposed to war on moral or religious grounds you could apply. Realistically, though, the deferments were
only being awarded to those with proven religious objections. As a Catholic, I had little chance.
I didn’t know that the Supreme Court would help decide my fate. During the Vietnam War they had heard two
cases that incrementally expanded the definition of religions that were sufficiently pacifist for their members to
be considered for a C.O. deferment. The requirement of a C.O. deferment is two years of alternative service—
work that the draft board considered of “national importance.” I moved to Minnesota and did my two years of
alternative service at St. Joseph’s hospital in St. Paul.
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1968: A Year that
Changed America
1968 Reflection Witness to 1968 by Marcia Johnson
http://people.mnhs.org/ugcs/index.cfm?sysid=6&action1=dsp_content&action2=dsp_single&contid=589
As a high school senior in 1968, I have vivid memories of a tumultuous year. Our family’s first television
arrived in 1967, so we were able to watch historic news coverage at home rather than going to our
neighbors’ house like we did to see the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show and the coverage of President
John Kennedy’s funeral.
On the last day of March while watching President Lyndon Johnson’s speech on Vietnam, I remember
looking at my parents at the end, after he announced that he would not seek another term as President.
We were all shocked by the announcement.
In April and June, we watched the historic television coverage following the assassinations of Martin Luther
King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy. We attended two weddings on the day of the coverage of the Kennedy funeral
train’s trip to Washington, and I wondered how anyone could be married on such a sad day. Between the
afternoon and evening weddings while my dad did his farm chores, my sisters and I were “glued” to the
small black and white television to see the progress that the train had made.
The summer political conventions in Chicago and Miami provided more opportunities to watch history, some
of it violent. With Minnesotan Hubert Humphrey selected as the Democratic candidate in Chicago, we were
especially interested to follow that one, but his nomination was overshadowed by the events outside of the
convention.
When I took my first airplane flight ever in August for a 4-H trip to Washington, DC., I had the opportunity
to actually see the historic sites that I had only seen on television earlier that year. Our bus driver took us
through the areas of the city that had suffered damage following the April King death. At Arlington National
Cemetery, we saw the simple wooden cross marking the June burial place of Senator Robert Kennedy.
A memorable ending to a historic year was witnessed on the small black and white television screen before
attending Christmas Eve services at our church. The Apollo 8 astronauts, Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and
Bill Anders, read the Creation story from Genesis on their orbital lunar mission. I had followed the space
program through LIFE Magazine since the original seven Mercury astronauts were selected, and in the new
year of 1969, would be able to watch the first moon landing. With so many tragedies in 1968, I appreciated
a hopeful ending to the year during the Christmas season.
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1968: A Year that
Changed America
1968 Reflection It Was Mostly a Very Good Time by Joanne Fox
http://the1968exhibit.org/reflections/it-was-mostly-very-good-time
I was 16 years old, attending a large public high school in San Francisco. I walked to school
in clothes acceptable to my mother and changed into a shorter skirt at a friend’s house or
when I arrived at school. Minis weren’t allowed and we couldn’t wear jeans. My hair was
long, straight and parted in the middle, like everyone else’s. Bell bottom pants, bright prints,
color combos like yellow and light blue or olive green and brown, paisleys. Yardley lipsticks
were the thing to have. As with most teens, my friends were the most important part of
my life. Politics were scary – I had older cousins in the Navy and Marines. There were
assassinations, race riots (even in my groovy city). Combine all of that with rock concerts
at Fillmore West, Winterland and Golden Gate Park. My parents were afraid to let me out of
the house!
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1968: A Year that
Changed America
1968 Reflection The World Opens by Mary Larson
http://the1968exhibit.org/reflections/world-opens
In 1968, my thoughts were more on graduating from high school than the war in Vietnam.
Girls still had to wear skirts to school and the hems had to touch the floor when we
kneeled. Boys were not supposed to have hair long enough to touch their shirt collars.
Jeans were banned (and this was at a Minneapolis public school!). Questioning these rules
and testing the boundaries were the extent of our rebellion against the older generation
I was starting at St. Cloud State that fall, so my mother and I spent the summer getting
ready. We bought clothes that suited a college co-ed: plaid wool skirts, sweaters, some
nice slacks. The war, civil rights and equality for women were still far away. I was aware of
the war protests, but wasn’t even sure it was right to question our government. I was more
certain that everyone deserved equal rights. I had been fortunate enough to have a black
teacher in high school that raised our awareness of the injustices minorities faced. My
father, too, had instilled in me a desire to see equality for all races - even if he didn’t want
his wife to have a job or see boys with long hair. The old rules were beginning to rankle,
especially the restrictions put on the women students. After one quarter I transferred to the
University of Minnesota. (I admit I was homesick, but I also found that St. Cloud was not a
very exciting place.)
The University was a different world. Before long, I was wearing short skirts and leather
vests. The Armory fences were torn down. Students took over the administration building. I
got my first whiff of tear gas. And even though I was never brave enough to join a protest, I
was secretly proud of my generation. As the years went by, I became more and more liberal,
questioning the standards and declared my beliefs.
I had no idea 1968 would turn out to become a pivotal year for me and our society. In
fact, it wasn’t until a TV special focused on that historical time some 40 years later that I
realized how significant that year was. I’m very proud of being part of the class of ‘68 and
my children grew up knowing that anyone can make changes in the world.
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1968: A Year that
Changed America
1968 Reflection Women Still Wore Dresses by Bev Ewing
http://people.mnhs.org/ugcs/index.cfm?sysid=6&action1=dsp_content&action2=dsp_single&contid=476&CFI
D=21681&CFTOKEN=30694792
I graduated from a Twin Cities suburban high school in 1968. I was going to carpool to the
University of Minnesota the following fall. We girls (we were not called women yet) still wore
skirts or dresses to high school. I remember a conversation I had with my carpool friends in
1968 that we would maybe start wearing jeans to the University, but maybe one day a week
or so we would wear a dress or skirt. The reality of it was that I bought a pair of jeans that
summer and never wore a skirt for the next four years.
1968 was such a year of change; you could feel it and live it. My four years at the
University, though ordinary in many ways, were also full of new ideas and rapid change.
During my University years I remember the tear gassing of student protesters; the fires
on Selby/Dale Avenues in St. Paul and racial equality marches on campus; the poet John
Barryman jumping off the pedestrian bridge; tanks running down Hennepin Avenue after the
students took over parts of the University; many anti-war protests and the red armbands
many students wore; I took the first Women’s Studies class ever offered and heard the term
Women’s Lib; I remember the first Earth Day; and I was very thankful for the government
student loan and work program that allowed me to earn enough money to put myself
through college.
Looking back, I can’t believe we still had a dress code in High School in 1968 and girls
were required to take Home Economics and boys were required to take Shop and the only
sports teams were for guys. As I’ve told my children, they have the 1968 graduates to thank
for the many changes and opportunities they’ve had in their lives. We fought some social
battles to ensure a more equal life for our children and I guess all in all I’m proud of the
contributions made by the class of ‘68.
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1968: A Year that
Changed America
1968 Reflection Culture Shock by Flower Child
http://people.mnhs.org/ugcs/index.cfm?sysid=6&action1=dsp_content&action2=dsp_single&contid=471
I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t want to go to college, I was so bored with school. Not that
I wasn’t smart, and not that I didn’t have a lot of potential, but no one told me that I did. That’s
right, I needed someone to tell me because I had no clue. And as a woman, I was not expected to
do much more than get married and have a family. Just coming out of the most boring schoolwork
in the world, Catholic school for 12 years.
I thought I wanted to be a fashion model, or be a fashion coordinator or buyer for a store, so I
went ahead and enrolled at North Texas State U. in Denton Texas and majored in fashion design.
But during the summer, I interviewed with several airlines to be a stewardess. Braniff seemed so
cool. I waited and waited after the interviews, and heard nothing, so I went off to college. After I
arrived, I was accepted with Delta Airlines, but it was too late, I was already in Denton. Thank God
I didn’t take it.
The biggest shock upon arriving to campus was all the men with long hair. I had never seen men
with really long hair. It was very idyllic and romantic. Denton was a jazz school, and it was 1968.
All the campus protests and riots had already happened, but the drugs were everywhere.
I studied fashion design and art, because art was another love. But I wasn’t taken seriously. The
classes were as boring, even more boring than high school. I knew I had made another terrible
mistake. Viet Nam was so frightening, so many men my age dying, I just couldn’t believe it.
Finding serious romance on campus was impossible. I just wanted to go home.
Well, I got my wish. Catholics don’t use birth control, but I should have. One college career
down the drain, and a baby on the way. I was still trying to be a “good girl” believe it or not, so
I wouldn’t get married for the wrong reasons. I gave my son up for adoption through Catholic
Charities.
After all these tumultuous years of struggle, here I am. As a woman, I have made my own way,
my own career. It hasn’t been easy being a part of the changing times for women. But the times
since 1968 have been wonderful as well. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. I’ve always had
a positive outlook, and a creative mind, and a survivor instinct.
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1968: A Year that
Changed America
1968 Reflection My 1968—An Alternative Scenario by Dan Beck
http://people.mnhs.org/ugcs/index.cfm?sysid=6&action1=dsp_content&action2=dsp_single&contid=469&CFI
D=6402667&CFTOKEN=28434213
I was eight years old in 1968, and only dimly aware of the cultural phenomena that would,
in retrospect, come to define that year. Sure, a relatively small number of Americans were
“tuning in, turning on, and dropping out”, but not in my neighborhood. The folks in the small
Wisconsin town where I grew up were the “Silent Majority” - working-class Americans who
embraced the values and ethics of their parents and grandparents. Most had been lifelong Democrats because the Republican Party was for “cake-eaters.” But by 1968 they had
become deeply disillusioned with the counter-cultural upheaval that they were seeing almost
nightly on the six o’clock news. And the fact that many Democrats, epitomized by Eugene
McCarthy, seemed all too eager to play to the hippies, yippies, Panthers, and other assorted
radicals left them feeling betrayed. In 1968 they would vote, overwhelmingly, for Richard
Nixon.
And the teenagers that my friends and I looked up to and couldn’t wait to become were
high school guys who had after-school jobs in the trades and had already earned enough to
purchase brand new GTOs, Barracudas, and Mustang Fastbacks. They wouldn’t have been
caught dead in a VW bus. And their taste in music? They had no use for the Grateful Dead
and the Jefferson Airplane. They were all about Paul Revere and the Raiders and the Grass
Roots. About as hippy-dippy as they ever got was Tommy James and the Shondells “Crystal
Blue Persuasion.”
In 1968 the chattering classes were fretting about America “coming apart at the seams.”
But the folks in my neighborhood knew better. They continued to live as generations before
them had - getting up and going to work in the morning, supporting their families, league
bowling on Friday night, playing euchre on Saturday night, and generally holding their
community together.
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1968: A Year that
Changed America
1968 Reflection From Child to Man in one Year by Dan Gjelten
http://people.mnhs.org/ugcs/index.cfm?sysid=6&action1=dsp_content&action2=dsp_single&contid=449
I think 1968 was the end of innocence for me - not a unique or original thought, obviously—but
at 17 (June of 1968), I started to realize that I was about to register for the draft and leave home
and all of a sudden I took the larger world more seriously. It was when the nice little family world I
lived in started to feel too small.
I clearly remember the dinner table conversations that began around then related to the war
in Vietnam. I have an older brother who started breaking down some barriers (so I could drive
through them) and between the two of us, I think, we eventually changed our father; I don’t think
he voted Republican after 1968, but he was a Goldwater/Nixon Republican before that.
I was, of course, still in high school, but I spent my summers out in North Dakota working at a
camp, so I was somewhat removed from the world of top forty music and driving up and down
main street and typical high school activities. By the time I registered for the draft as a CO in
June of 1969, I’d left the comfort of family pretty much entirely and was out in the real world. In a
good way, I mean.
1968 shocked me. As a child, the larger world seems far away, abstract, uninteresting. Or less
interesting than that girl over there. That changed for me around April of 1968, and June, and
July. It was the shift from seeing the larger world as something that just concerned grown ups to
a place that I was about to move into. I think that when 1968 began, I was a child and when it
ended I was a young adult.
Strangely, I don’t remember much about my senior year in high school — from the fall of 68 to
the spring of 69. But after that things are very clear for me. College, draft counseling, marching,
writing, and all the music and romance and sadness that was associated with the time.
I think that I was moving ahead already, and perhaps not paying as much attention to high
school as I should have been. But those two years- 1968 and 1969 were fundamental to the
development of my character and personality. I think I was very serious until about 1975, then I
started laughing again.
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hat is the tone of your reflection?
• What background information can you gather about the individual who wrote this? Is their age
given? Is there any other background information available?
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• What is your sense of 1968 from this reflection? Why?
1968: A Year that
Changed America
1968 Reflection Television and An 8 Year Old by Beth Richards
http://people.mnhs.org/ugcs/index.cfm?sysid=6&action1=dsp_content&action2=dsp_single&contid=439
I do not think 1968 was a better time. I do not think it was safer time. I consider it a time of
disappointment and sadly, the stage was set for the death pall which would mark many of my young years.
By 1968, in the short eight years of my life, I had watched President John F Kennedy’s funeral on television,
and had my “Bewitched” program interrupted with the news that Martin Luther King had been shot. Robert
Kennedy was also killed that somber spring. My teacher’s husband died the same day. I had attended the
funeral of my six-month old cousin. News of eruptions on college campuses, pandemonium at the National
Conventions and images of Viet Nam flashed daily into my family’s living room on our new color television.
As an eight year old, I hadn’t any idea what Hubert Humphrey was talking about, but it didn’t matter. My
young life was indelibly stamped with death at every turn. The televisions had made it personal.
Authority was being questioned and it was fashionable to rudely speak to parents, teachers, and politicians.
It was the first time I heard the word “divorce.”
From outward appearances, I rode bike, made chalk houses in the parking lot, played kickball and splashed
in the pool. My baby teeth were falling out and the gaps in my mouth prevented me from eating corn.
But inside that eight year old girl, the questions that could not be asked were churning: Is the world safe?
Why do adults act without love? Does death leave its mark everywhere and on everyone? How does one
engage the world with dignity and respect, while raising questions about corruption, war, violence?
Were these questions birthed in 1968? I am not sure, but I know that the effects of images and events in
the life of this eight year old forced and required of me more than what was required of my own mother. I
had to grow up sooner. I learned mistrust earlier. And I learned that the American dream was not merely
handed down, one generation to the next. Each has to struggle and own the dream.
I no longer watch television. My husband and I did not order a converter box or buy a new plasma HD
set. Yet I am more engaged in the public arena than I have ever been. I want to answer some of those
questions that eight year old formed while watching our new color television in 1968.
•W
hat is the tone of your reflection?
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Is there any other background information available?
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1968: A Year that
Changed America
1968 Reflection Anti-War Demonstrations by Linda Brown
http://people.mnhs.org/ugcs/index.cfm?sysid=6&action1=dsp_content&action2=dsp_single&contid=441
1968 is a year that is significant for me for several reasons, not only because of all the
historical events that happened that year but also because of the events that happened
in my life. First and foremost it is the year my son was born. One event that stands out
and I’ve never forgotten, is an anti-war demonstration I attended in Poughkeepsie, As a
Minnesotan, I was not used to the hostility that New Yorkers were known for showing.
When we got to the demonstration it was clear that everyone was not there to welcome us.
Besides all the police there was a group of “Minute Men” armed with clubs that had rocks
tied to the ends of them. They lined the streets on both sides of the road. I had been to
many demonstrations before, but I was never as scared as I was at that one. At one point
I asked one of the cops “aren’t you glad you’re protecting us instead of them.” His reply,
“let’s put it this way, I’m with them”. I didn’t feel very safe after that. The reality of that
statement was the scariest thing of all. I wonder what would happened if the situation had
gotten out of hand.
•W
hat is the tone of your reflection?
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1968: A Year that
Changed America
1968 Reflection Freshman Shock by Miguel
http://people.mnhs.org/ugcs/index.cfm?sysid=6&action1=dsp_content&action2=dsp_single&contid=442
Freshman in college, University of Wisconsin, Madison. I was coming out of my freshman
“Greek & Roman Literature” class. As I emerged from lecture, a huge line of police in riot
gear stormed an adjacent building, beating students, shooting off tear gas, and making a
police state of the campus. I knew the police did not like the students of this university,
and I was appalled by the unleashed and uncontrolled brutal force. This is America, land
of freedom, land where its citizens are allowed to speak their minds, land of respect for all
races, creeds, and colors. In a very small way, for a short moment, I experienced what it
was like to be an underclass American. A new road was forged for me. I was handed a new
set of eyes. I was no longer an innocent bystander of the American experience.
That experience led me to explore many new paths - including hippie alternate life style
and radical activist. I studied, questioned, and took a stand against a then popular war. I
questioned our government, just as the founding fathers of this great nation did. I came to
believe in the tenants of the Declaration of Independence, that it is the right of the citizens
of any nation to change their government if they deem that to be necessary. I’ve become a
better citizen of this country and this globe, knowing that America is a great nation, but at
the same time, knowing to question this government and society.
•W
hat is the tone of your reflection?
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1968: A Year that
Changed America
1968 Reflection A New Way of Thinking by Joyce Denn
http://people.mnhs.org/ugcs/index.cfm?sysid=6&action1=dsp_content&action2=dsp_single&contid=445
In 1968 I was 17 years old, a freshman at Smith College, a very liberal Liberal Arts College
in Massachusetts. I had grown up in a family full of contradictions — my parents had been
firm supporters of FDR and the New Deal, yet they “understood” why “communists” had
been blacklisted during the McCarthy era. They voted for Democrats and supported unions,
but, they claimed they supported equal rights for African Americans (then called Negroes)
“as long as they knew their place”; they firmly believed that African Americans were
intellectually inferior to whites and should not aspire to positions of power in government,
the arts, academia or business.
As far as women’s rights were concerned, my parents gave me conflicting advice; on the
one hand, they told me they expected me to be either a neurosurgeon or a nuclear physicist
when I grew up (I am a nurse), but, on the other hand, they explained that women could
never do the kinds of jobs men did because, no matter how well women did things, men
would always do things better, that even a not-so-bright man was smarter and more capable
than a brilliant woman and that women should defer to their husbands.
In 1968, the campus was a hotbed of antiwar demonstrations, civil rights demonstrations
and feminism. I would listen to classmates and to professors, whom I idolized, then
visit my parents and have my newly forming ideas shot down. It was, all in all, a rather
uncomfortable year, but, it was also a glorious, formative year, which launched me toward
liberal activism. I think it is accurate to say I grew up that year, learned to reject much of
what my parents had taught me, at least with regard to the Vietnam War and civil rights.
•W
hat is the tone of your reflection?
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age given? Is there any other background information available?
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1968: A Year that
Changed America
1968 Reflection It Was a Good Year by Edward Blau
http://people.mnhs.org/ugcs/index.cfm?sysid=6&action1=dsp_content&action2=dsp_single&contid=446
In 1968 I was in my second year of a Pediatric Renal fellowship at the University Pediatric
Department. My son was born in July of that year that year and I held him on my lap while
watching on TV the thug Chicago cops beating my friends demonstrating against the war in
Vietnam.
The war seemed to me to be a dreadful mistake. My wife and I demonstrated. I did
physicals for young men whose doctors refused to attest to the abnormalities that would
exempt them from the draft.
I joined The New Democratic Coalition and organized my legislative caucus in St Paul for
McCarthy. We won.
My father was county chair for the Democrat party in KY that year. We had many “vigorous”
debates. My MN Scandinavian wife was scandalized thinking surely no one in my family
would ever talk to us again. KY customs vs. MN nice. Of course they spoke to us again.
In 1969 I organized the only anti war demonstration that was held in St Paul. In retrospect
we thought that we could change the country.
•W
hat is the tone of your reflection?
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age given? Is there any other background information available?
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• What is your sense of 1968 from this reflection? Why?
1968: A Year that
Changed America
1968 Reflection Ruined by Riots by Cathy
http://people.mnhs.org/ugcs/index.cfm?sysid=6&action1=dsp_content&action2=dsp_single&contid=447
May of 1968 marked graduation from 8th grade for me. On the younger side of a relatively
large family, I’d waited my turn for the fun events that accompanied this milestone that I’d
heard about from older siblings.
Our class was to spend the day at an amusement park in Washington, DC, riding a riverboat
of sorts to get there. We lived in the VA suburbs, so a trip to the city wasn’t the exciting
part. it was going as a class to a place I’d never been transported by a means I ‘d never
taken.
Then came the race riots in Washington. We only saw them on TV, but they were real
enough to cause the school to cancel our once-in-a-lifetime event for safety’s sake. We
went somewhere else — where, I don’t even remember now, by way of a bus. I never
have taken that boat nor visited that park. Times were shaky, but no adult in my life ever
displayed panic— just wise caution. I can only imagine how my “greatest generation”
parents were dying inside, seeing the country, the Nation’s Capital they loved so much and
gave so sacrificially to preserve, in such chaos. How I thank God for their steadiness and
perseverance in what is true and right, and not become like those who’d lost control in the
anger of the moment.
•W
hat is the tone of your reflection?
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age given? Is there any other background information available?
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• What is your sense of 1968 from this reflection? Why?
1968: A Year that
Changed America
1968 Reflection Hip to be Square by Kathy Marquis
http://people.mnhs.org/ugcs/index.cfm?sysid=6&action1=dsp_content&action2=dsp_single&contid=375
In July of 1968, I was a thirteen year old who had just moved to what it turned out was one of the hot
spots of countercultural activity in the Sixties. My parents rented a homey two story place near the
campus of the University of Michigan. I spent the summer listening to Joni Mitchell on my little portable
record player, learning to play the guitar, and taking the bus back to see my friends in East Lansing.
In August, my father and I spent hours in our basement family room glued to the TV, watching the
debacle of the Democratic Convention play out. Earlier that year I’d had the amazing good fortune
to see Dustin Hoffman reading Yevtushenko’s poetry in support of Eugene McCarthy’s candidacy for
President. My parents were huge supporters of his, but my need to be just a little different dictated
that I was a Bobby Kennedy supporter. Kennedy died on my mom’s birthday that year. The first Kennedy
assassination, and that of Martin Luther King, had been huge shocks, but Bobby’s death really hit home
for me, probably because it was the first time I’d felt involved in a political campaign in any way.
The violence and insanity in Chicago in August made it seem that the world was ripping apart at the
seams. Not in my own home, luckily for me, but out in the wider world. I was always a little outside that
tribe, wishing I belonged, but it still captures the feeling of that year.
At the same time, I was a junior high school student, trying to fit in, reading Seventeen magazine
and trying to imagine how I could look so flawless and cool. My best friend and I made matching tent
dresses and wore frosted lipstick, and spent hours listening to the Beatles’ music. Though what I
remember about 1968 is violence and politics, my reality had a lot more to do with conformity and
being a teenager. In fact, the first half of 1968 I spent being the pariah of my class — why, I’ll never
know—and the second half being everlastingly grateful that in my new town no one seemed to hate me
and I could blend in.
1968 was a year of huge transition for me because I moved from square East Lansing to hip Ann
Arbor. It was the beginning of my awareness of a wider political world and how individuals could shape
it. And, it was the year when I realized how freeing it could be to not stand out at all. Lessons just as
contradictory as the times!
•W
hat is the tone of your reflection?
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Is there any other background information available?
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• What is your sense of 1968 from this reflection? Why?
1968: A Year that
Changed America
1968 Reflection Understanding the Change by Ilene
http://people.mnhs.org/ugcs/index.cfm?sysid=6&action1=dsp_content&action2=dsp_single&contid=370
I grew up in St. Louis Park and went to college from Sept of 1964 to June of 1968 at the
University of Denver in Denver, Colorado. It is a small school — then about 8,000 students,
located in the heart of Denver. I lived in a co-ed dorm — unheard of at the time, but co-ed
actually meant two towers, 1 for men, 1 for women, with common eating and recreational
facilities on the main floor. In 1964 dinner in the dining room was quite a formal affair....
Men had to wear jackets and ties every night, women had to wear nylons, heels and skirts.
Wednesday and Sunday were especially formal, suits and ties for men, likewise for women.
As Vietnam geared up, we had demonstrations on campus, bra burnings, and much dissent.
The very fiber of the university was significantly changed as well. To understand how much,
by 1968 the only dress code requirement to get into the dining room was SHOES.
As my university life was drawing to a close, my family came to Denver to see me graduate.
Dean Rusk was scheduled to be our graduation speaker… then on Tuesday night came the
call as news spread quickly around the campus. Bobby Kennedy had been shot. At first we
refused to believe it — with John’s death only a few years prior… and Martin Luther King’s
just the month before. Dean Rusk did not come to Denver, graduation was quite a subdued
affair, and we wondered what the future would hold not only for ourselves, but for our country.
•W
hat is the tone of your reflection?
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age given? Is there any other background information available?
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• What is your sense of 1968 from this reflection? Why?
1968: A Year that
Changed America
1968 Reflection Prom Aftermath by Suzie Harriman
http://people.mnhs.org/ugcs/index.cfm?sysid=6&action1=dsp_content&action2=dsp_single&contid=340&CFI
D=3571476&CFTOKEN=53838359
My date for our high school senior prom was simply a good friend, a smart, nicelooking, quiet guy named Jim who, as I look back, was a nerd, even though that word
wasn’t commonly used until the 1970s. I thought we’d have a good time with our fellow
classmates in our small (126 ppl) graduating class. We were both eager to get on with life
beyond high school and neither of us was into drinking or sex (at least with each other). We
were supposed to attend a well-chaperoned post-prom-party that I was eager to be part of,
being one of the biggest social butterflies in our class.
But Jim had other ideas. Instead of going to the party, after the prom he drove us to
Hermann Park in downtown Houston. After driving around awhile we ended up at the huge
Mecom Fountain in front of the posh Warwick Hotel. In a rare speechless moment I’m
wondering what the hell he has in mind and getting more and more nervous by the minute
that we would be AWOL from the party. He finally parked, got out of the car, opened my door,
and then led me by the hand to the fountain. Turns out he just wanted to sit on the edge
of the fountain and talk about Robert Kennedy, who had recently been assassinated. Weird
guy. Jim, not Kennedy.
We did, at my insistence, finally make it to the post-prom party, arriving very late to a lot of
raised chaperones’ eyebrows. Our classmates, though, knew better.
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hat is the tone of your reflection?
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age given? Is there any other background information available?
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• What is your sense of 1968 from this reflection? Why?
1968: A Year that
Changed America
1968 Reflection Graduated from Richfield—Now What by Lynn Henkel
http://people.mnhs.org/ugcs/index.cfm?sysid=6&action1=dsp_content&action2=dsp_single&contid=369
This was the year of my graduation from Richfield Sr. High. Finally, no more shorthand classes with Miss
Dittes! I was glad to be done with high school as I was never part of the popular kids, so high school
was a pretty miserable time in my life. I was pretty much a “good girl” who didn’t smoke marijuana, do
any other sort of drugs and sure didn’t want to get pregnant out of wedlock!
I remember the last quarter of the year, I was responsible for creating something to put up on one of
the large bulletin boards located in one of the hallways at the high school. What I chose for a lead
line was, “Vietnam -- Yes or No?” I found many pictures that were taken over there and chose the
ones I thought that would cause those viewing the board, to think about the war in Nam and what was
taking place in another part of the world that none of us in Richfield, MN had any concept of. I tried to
present both sides of the coin, but I guess the powers that ran the high school didn’t like me posing
the question of whether or not we (America) belonged over in Vietnam at all. The topic was up on the
bulletin board about a week and then all of a sudden, it was taken down and a memorandum was sent
out to the entire school body, that political statements were not to be expressed on those bulletin
boards. So much for my first amendment rights to free speech. That has stuck in my mind all of these
41 years and I know it really irked me then and it still irks me today to think I couldn’t express and
opinion or at least cause people to think about something as serious and horrific as the War in Vietnam
and how it affected ALL of us. I knew full well that upon graduating, many of the guys in the Class of
‘68 would be headed for Vietnam to serve in the armed forces. Some would never come home and the
ones that did, many would be emotionally scarred for life. My girlfriend and I didn’t go to the all night
class party either, we just did our own thing that night. Am sort of sorry we didn’t go to the party, but
guess that’s a closed door now. All I could think of was, “now what — where do I go from here? That
thought scared the living daylights out of me.
That year was a year of death and sadness for sure. More closer to home, one of my classmates of
RHS had his life cut real short by a motorcycle accident in April. That really put a damper on graduation.
Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy being assassinated was another shock to all Americans that
something like what happened to John Kennedy, could happen to anyone. Then there was Kent State
also—the world was no longer the safe place I remember growing up in during the 1950’s. That utopia
was gone forever — never to return and the “age of innocence” had evaporated.
•W
hat is the tone of your reflection?
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• What is your sense of 1968 from this reflection? Why?
1968: A Year that
Changed America
1968 Reflection A Crossroads by Barb
http://people.mnhs.org/ugcs/index.cfm?sysid=6&action1=dsp_content&action2=dsp_single&contid=368
In June of 1968 I was a 21 year old woman graduating from college with a math degree;
that choice of a degree says it all. I wanted to break out of the traditional female
stereotype, yet I was firmly rooted in it.
I campaigned with passion for Gene McCarthy and wept when Bobby Kennedy was
assassinated. I watched TV accounts of Dr Martin Luther King’s assassination with horror.
That summer brought the frightening images of the Democratic Convention in Chicago.
I joined peaceful protests against the Viet Nam war. My dad and I argued politics — he
supported Humphrey & was somewhat embarrassed by the McCarthy and peace bumper
stickers on my car.
•W
hat is the tone of your reflection?
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age given? Is there any other background information available?
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• What is your sense of 1968 from this reflection? Why?
1968: A Year that
Changed America
1968 Reflection The Day After Bobby Died by Dave
http://people.mnhs.org/ugcs/index.cfm?sysid=6&action1=dsp_content&action2=dsp_single&contid=364
I was in 9th grade in a very homogenous white suburb of Minneapolis in 1968. I had a
paper route which I delivered on foot to a very middle class, white, working neighborhood in
Richfield. I will never forget that day; when I went into the corner gas station after my paper
route to see if the store manager wanted to buy my extra paper as he usually did, He burst
out with the following tirade. “I suppose this fellow who killed Bobby was the same kind of
low-life, good-for-nothing-hippie as the guy who shot King. You bet I want to buy your paper; I
want to see what’s happening in this country and try to figure out what I can do to fix things.”
I told him the fellow was caught and that he was of foreign descent and did not appear to
be a hippie. He went on to say to a guy who just happened to come in to buy cigarettes,
“They ought to string him up by his You-know-whats! and that would teach him a lesson.”
The guy that just came in the door of the station asked me what I thought was the way to
handle it. I could only answer as a 14-year-old and told them both that it seemed further
violence would only make things worse.
Today, all these years later, I would still give the same response as I did in 1968.
•W
hat is the tone of your reflection?
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age given? Is there any other background information available?
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• What is your sense of 1968 from this reflection? Why?
1968: A Year that
Changed America
1968 Reflection Gonna Get Out of Here by Susan
http://people.mnhs.org/ugcs/index.cfm?sysid=6&action1=dsp_content&action2=dsp_single&contid=366
I did not go to the Chicago Democratic convention, as did some of my classmates.
Remembering dimly the McCarthy hearings and the time of retroactively blaming people for
liberality of spirit, I did not march in demonstrations or sign my name on petitions, or send
telegrams (yes, they still had telegrams) to my senators and congressmen.
I was living the hope of the song many high school classes chose in those days as their
class song, the one with the refrain, “We’ve Gotta Get Out of this Place, If It’s the Last Thing
We Ever Do.” And for me, perhaps it was the last thing I ever did. The thing I had lived my
whole life for was to go to college and leave home.
The year for me was also the beginning of consciousness of African-Americans, of AfricanAmerican literature and culture and history, and of the very real existence of many who
were at that time excluded from suburbia. The suburb I lived in was proud of its “civil
disobedience” of the fair housing act in the realtors’ refusal to show homes to AfricanAmericans. The first African-Americans who moved in were upwardly mobile professionals
who got their homes by a mortgage assignment or transfer from Japanese-Americans who
remembered the fear and bigotry and lack of welcome many received even in supposedly
planned and progressive suburbs in the years following WWII. One of the couples involved in
this counter-action to the realtors’ so-called civil disobedience (aka breaking the law) were
the parents of one of my elementary and middle school classmates. I was proud of them
and glad of their comment-by-action on others’ intolerance.
•W
hat is the tone of your reflection?
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age given? Is there any other background information available?
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• What is your sense of 1968 from this reflection? Why?
1968: A Year that
Changed America
1968 Reflection Going to High School by Lloyd Woodard
http://people.mnhs.org/ugcs/index.cfm?sysid=6&action1=dsp_content&action2=dsp_single&contid=359
It’s scary enough going to high school. The stories you hear about freshman initiation and
such. But going past riot police, having your locker searched, being watched by security
cameras. Knowing that you’re white and sometimes that is a problem in finding a restroom.
I grew up in Maywood and didn’t understand all the fuss. My only enemies the Commies. I
knew my nuclear disaster drills, I said my pledge of allegiance in school. I knew of friends
of my cousin that were serving in Nam, I even heard of how terrible it was. I had friends that
were black and it was ok. OK until I got to high school. Suddenly, I was white and they were
black, we lost our name, our friendship got tangled up in Bobby Seale, Black Panthers, SDS,
the Democratic Convention, curfew, things that hadn’t come between us in a softball game,
now came between us in the halls of high school. Where I could walk at night suddenly
changed. The car had to be locked at night. What was happening to me?
Eighth grade had been wonderful and now high school was a war zone. Our passes were
checked sometimes by armed police and it wasn’t uncommon to hear of fights in room 294
the detention study hall.
•W
hat is the tone of your reflection?
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age given? Is there any other background information available?
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• What is your sense of 1968 from this reflection? Why?
1968: A Year that
Changed America
1968 Reflection Tie Dye by Ronald Davis
http://people.mnhs.org/ugcs/index.cfm?sysid=6&action1=dsp_content&action2=dsp_single&contid=358
I was 11 years old and the oldest of 5 children. My father died in August of that year and it
was so strange and confusing dealing with death at that age.
Music was huge, I remember me and my brother stealing 45’s to play on our record player
in our room. Don’t you remember the plastic record players that when you closed the lid the
handles came together so you could carry it. When we could, we would play them on the
family console which was about 8 feet long and three feet high. It also was a radio and it
had a slot for 8 track tapes. They sounded great on that thing. We had babysitter that would
always bring records over. She would let us listen to the extra stuff that she wasn’t playing
on the console on our record player up in our room.
One afternoon we went out and bought a bunch of men’s white T-shirts and some Ritz dye.
Armed with rubber bands and a bathtub we made our own cool shirts. Actually more like
smocks. I remember them things coming down to my knees.
I remember the assassinations of MLK and Bobby but you don’t give that stuff much
attention when you are a kid. I remember the rioting and the turmoil from the T.V. I do
remember running out into the street to shake Hubert Humphrey’s hand in the Payne
avenue parade. I think that was 1969 though. If you tried to run out in the street today to
shake a politicians hand you would probably be tackled by Secret Service.
The turbulent times of 68 were for change for the better in the long run. Civil rights have
come a long way and that’s good. It’s a shame that in those days a dad could support a
family of 5 kids a wife without a college education. Now it takes two parents both working
just to support 2 kids. I work with a gal who lives by herself and she has a fulltime job
and two part time jobs. That’s our problem today. Life was meant to enjoy with family and
friends. Not spend most of your time just trying to keep a roof over you head.
•W
hat is the tone of your reflection?
• What background information can you gather about the individual who wrote this? Is their
age given? Is there any other background information available?
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• What is your sense of 1968 from this reflection? Why?
1968: A Year that
Changed America
1968 Reflection Martin Luther King’s Assassination by Anne Sladky
http://people.mnhs.org/ugcs/index.cfm?sysid=6&action1=dsp_content&action2=dsp_single&contid=357
Our high school choir trip to Chicago was something we had all looked forward to for a long time—
we were going to get a chance to sing in Orchestra Hall! Somewhere along the bus route through
Wisconsin, our choir director came onto the bus and said that because Martin Luther King had been
shot in Memphis our activities were going to be severely limited because of expected unrest.
We were a bunch of white kids from lily-white Moorhead, and for most of us, our experience of race
was what we saw on television or read in the paper. Most of us had never had a conversation with a
black person, and although we understood the significance of the loss of this man, none of us really
understood what it meant. My clearest personal memory of that day was the joy of stepping off the bus
in Chicago onto green grass — there had still been a little snow on the ground when we’d left home. It
was an amazing sight....
That night, instead of going to a theater and watching a musical, we were not allowed to leave the hotel,
and spent the evening in a mostly darkened top-floor dining room where we could watch the riot fires
burn while a kindly black bartender handed out glasses of Coke and endured what had to have been
painfully ignorant questions from well-meaning but ignorant white teen-agers who had no real clue of
the pain, loss, or rage that was going on around us. Looking back, his grace and patience with our
naiveté at a time when his own heart and mind had to have been wracked with concern for his own
family and community is something I can deeply admire and greatly respect.
The next day we spent less than an hour at Orchestra Hall, although we did get a chance to sing to an
empty hall from that magnificent stage, We were allowed to spend a couple of hours at the Museum of
Natural History, The police said we needed to leave town and our bus was escorted by cop cars with
flashing lights, up the freeway above and through the neighborhoods where the riots were still raging.
At the time, it didn’t really sink in. The 1960’s were a time of assassinations and violence and uproar
that happened in other places that we watched on TV. Even as we looked out the windows of the bus as
we left Chicago, what was happening didn’t seem relevant, At the time I was really oblivious to what I
can see in retrospect was the profound effect the turbulence of those times had on my perspective on
myself and the world around me.
•W
hat is the tone of your reflection?
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Is there any other background information available?
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• What is your sense of 1968 from this reflection? Why?
1968: A Year that
Changed America
1968 Reflection A Child’s Perspective by Kate
http://people.mnhs.org/ugcs/index.cfm?sysid=6&action1=dsp_content&action2=dsp_single&contid=341&CFI
D=139773&CFTOKEN=61724277
I was nine years old in 1968, and my most vivid memories from that year center on family’s
move to a bigger house across town.
Most of the year’s most newsworthy events went over my head — like many families, we
watched the news at supper every night (we were an NBC family, so I didn’t see much of
Cronkite) and the daily blur of fighting and rioting seemed to me just the way things were
and always had been.
I remember feeling very sorry for my mom the day Bobby Kennedy was shot. She was
shocked--she blurted the news to me without, I think, realizing that as a kid I wouldn’t
understand the significance. I remember thinking to myself, “So? Isn’t that just what
happens to politicians? Don’t people get shot all the time?” I look back now and realize
that at that young age I was fairly jaded- — I had heard about JFK and MLK and now RFK,
and their deaths merged with the killing I was seeing every day on TV to shape my view of
the world out there, far away from my home town, as a crazy, violent place that made little
sense to me.
•W
hat is the tone of your reflection?
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age given? Is there any other background information available?
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1968: A Year that
Changed America
1968 Reflection The Reception Home by Michael Traynor
http://people.mnhs.org/ugcs/index.cfm?sysid=6&action1=dsp_content&action2=dsp_single&contid=346
Coming home was really hard. That was probably the worst part. We were all so happy to
come home. When that plane took off in Vietnam, the cheers and the roars inside the plane
was almost deafening, because we were so happy to be getting out of there and going
home. Going back to the world, that’s what we called it. Vietnam was Vietnam, or Vietnam
Republic of. We were going back to the world…. When we got back to the good old USA we
knew we were safe. We found out how unsafe we really were. The protesters, or the people
would spit on us. The people that said whatever we got over there, we deserved it, for being
over there. It was just total lack of respect.
When I got home, my wife (now ex) told me that she didn’t want to hear anything about it.
And I was literally choking trying to talk to somebody but nobody wanted to hear it… it
was not a popular war, it was also not a war that we were winning. We won WW2, WW1, we
always won. Vietnam we did not win, it was not popular. So we weren’t afforded the same
courtesy as any other Vet. Even Korean Veterans had said the same thing. They were told
the same thing. It was a police action not a war.
•W
hat is the tone of your reflection?
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1968: A Year that
Changed America
1968 Reflection A Pivotal Year by Clark
http://people.mnhs.org/ugcs/index.cfm?sysid=6&action1=dsp_content&action2=dsp_single&contid=347
Naive and idealistic, I moved from Illinois to Washington, D.C., in 1965, to complete my education at
American University in political science. By 1967, I was working on the U.S. Senate staff of Charles
Percy and becoming immersed in the political events surrounding the Vietnam War and other issues.
The march on the Pentagon, tear gas and chaos in the streets that followed, provoked a deep
uncertainty about the course our country was on and set the ominous tone for 1968.
In April, 1968, when I heard Dr. King has been assassinated I drove over to the campus of Howard
University to join others in protest. However, when I arrived I knew the anger was running deep, my
presence antagonized others and, as the only white person I could see, felt I should not be there.
Driving back to Northwest D.C., I stopped for the light at 16th Street but there was no traffic. People
were running up and down the street, carrying a multitude of things. I had never seen looting before and
didn’t understand what was happening at first. There were burned-out buildings and abandoned stores.
I was the only car at the intersection and people began to gather on the corner.
A crowd of angry people picked up bricks and debris, then began throwing them at my car. At the next
intersection it was totally different. Traffic was at a standstill as everyone was trying to exit the city.
I thought that it looked like what would happen if it had been announced that a nuclear missile was
headed our way. People were frantic to escape.
Buildings were burning, the windows of the food store were smashed because the electric doors didn’t
work and food had been piled high on either side of the windows. People pushed carts overflowing with
food over the mounds of food and through the windows. I watched people throwing Molotov cocktails
into buildings and a few blocks away someone was shooting randomly from a building.
By the time I got to Capitol Hill there were rolls of barbed wire around the Capitol building. It felt like
a war zone, with the Capitol under siege. No one was in sight as I drove passed the White House and
over to Wisconsin Avenue. As busy as that avenue was normally, I did not pass a single vehicle from its
origin in Georgetown to where I departed from it, near the National Cathedral.
•W
hat is the tone of your reflection?
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1968: A Year that
Changed America
1968 Reflection Clean For Gene by John Ziegenhagen
http://the1968exhibit.org/reflections/clean-gene
1967: Martin Luther King, Jr., was called a traitor for opposing the Vietnam War. Young
men were burning their draft cards. Anti-war demonstrations, increasingly violent, swept the
country. By the end of that year, the American death toll was nearly 300 soldiers per week
by the end of the war more than 3.5 million Vietnamese and Americans would be killed.
America was being torn apart. Then, a little-known senator from Minnesota stepped forward
to challenge President Lyndon Johnson in the 1968 presidential primaries and change
American foreign policy. He did so in opposition to the President’s Democratic Party, the
Minnesota DFL party, and his friend and colleague Vice President Hubert Humphrey.
In the fall of 1967, Senator McCarthy spoke at an anti-war rally at Coffman Union. He was
smart, honest, funny, irreverent, and challenging--all characteristics that endeared him to the
students there and compelled us to examine our own views and our values. In 1968, I left
the University of Minnesota to join thousands of other young “Clean for Gene” volunteers
to work in the primary and caucus states, starting out organizing my parents neighbors
to attend the precinct caucuses, door knocking in Wisconsin, running a county campaign
headquarters in central Indiana, and ending up in California helping to coordinate campaign
events out of the Los Angeles headquarters.
In 2002 I finally met Senator McCarthy in person at a St. Paul reception. He had that same
distinguished demeanor, hand resting on a cane, quietly holding forth on the issues of the
day. I approached to introduce myself. That famous smile spread across his face as I told
him about my involvement in his 1968 campaign, and, with a twinkle in his eye, he said,
‘Well, if I decide to run again — and I might — I’ll know just who to call.”
Senator McCarthy died in 2005. As the New York Times put it, “[Gene McCarthy] was the
singular candidate for the Vietnam War protest who served up politics and poetry, theology,
and baseball in a blend that beguiled the “Clean for Gene” legions who flocked to his
insurgent’s call.” I am proud to have been one of them.
•W
hat is the tone of your reflection?
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age given? Is there any other background information available?
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1968: A Year that
Changed America
1968 Reflection Psychedelic comes to Suburbia by Danny
http://people.mnhs.org/ugcs/index.cfm?sysid=6&action1=dsp_content&action2=dsp_single&contid=339
I was 9 years old in 1968, living in a very sheltered suburb of Boston, Massachusetts. Even
still, 1960’s counterculture was making inroads into the lives of myself and my peers. I was
already a big fan of the Beatles, had been since the invasion of ‘64, and by 1968 our grade
school had relaxed the rules enough to allow me to wear jeans, turtlenecks and a modish
page-boy haircut. I thought I was pretty hip, but events were challenging my sense of things.
A friend, whose hair was precociously long and was the first to wear bellbottoms, was
kicked out of cub scouts for bringing a glass jar of herbal tea to the den meeting -- the
den mother thought it was pot. I dropped out soon after. When the Beatles grew beards, it
was a matter of grave concern among us, it seemed utterly out of step with the harmless
matching mop top brand we had been weaned on. But then my uncle grew a bushy beard
and started wearing a button that read, “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the
problem.”
The music got weird too and the schoolyard recess debate was whether the Monkees were
the better band now, but us Beatle loyalists pushed back hard. “Hey Jude” was the radio
hit, but did you hear that “Revolution” song? That didn’t sound like the Beatles at all.
We burned incense and sickly sweet candles and talked innocently about “freaking out”
staring at the swirls, waiting for something to happen. Very cool lifestyle if you’re 9 years
old. We watched Laugh In and the Hollywood Squares.
•W
hat is the tone of your reflection?
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age given? Is there any other background information available?
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1968: A Year that
Changed America
1968 Reflection Memories of 1968 by Denise Peterson
http://people.mnhs.org/ugcs/index.cfm?sysid=6&action1=dsp_content&action2=dsp_single&contid=470
The year 1968 was the year I graduated from Columbia Heights High School. I actually
didn’t want my school years to come to an end like most of my friends. I enjoyed school,
well not so much school, but I enjoyed seeing all my friends everyday & the social activities
relating to school.
I landed my first job at Coca Cola Midwest on Third Ave. I worked in Accounts Receivable.
There were four of us in that department, Katherine, Joan, Rita & myself. I had my own
desk, an electric typewriter & a 10 key adding machine. Life was good. During my time at
Coke, I saved enough money to buy my first car, a 1962 Chevy Nova. It was a great car & I
drove it until I could afford a new one. In 1969 I bought a new Chevrolet Camaro from Ken
Ray Chevrolet. It was LeMans Blue with blue interior.
All of us from 1968 remember the Viet Nam War, even if we were not there. We either lost
a loved one or knew of someone who was not coming home. And some of the ones who did
come home were not the same as when they left. My best friend, Joyce lost her fiance. The
day the news came is a day I will never forget.
The rioting throughout the nation during 1968 was in the news every night, but one
experience I had with my sister, Diane, was horrifying. It was before 1968, I’m not sure what
year. We wanted to go to the Torchlight Aquatennial Parade in downtown Minneapolis & with
all the riots going on, our Mother did not want us to go. We begged her to let us go & she
finally said yes. We took a city bus downtown & after the parade we were coming home on
the bus & a riot broke out. All the windows were smashed & the bus driver told us to get
under our seats. Our bus was rocking back & forth & glass was everywhere. The bus driver
drove out of it & kept driving right down to our residential street & right up to our front door
in Columbia Heights. There was our Mother waiting for us. She had been watching all the
rioting going on in the news & knew her daughters were right in the thick of things. The bus
driver told our Mother he also had two daughters & hoped someone would do the same if
they were in that predicament. Thank you Mister Bus Driver!!!
•W
hat is the tone of your reflection?
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1968: A Year that
Changed America
1968 Reflection I Was There… Sort Of by Virginia Martin
http://people.mnhs.org/ugcs/index.cfm?sysid=6&action1=dsp_content&action2=dsp_single&contid=412
In 1968, I worked for the Chicago Police Department (as a noncombatant). I had worked there for several years,
joining it after the reform superintendent O.W. Wilson had come in and I naively believed the department had
been reformed. Before the 1968 Democratic National Convention, there was heightened anticipation and anxiety
around the police department. I was editor of the department’s official publication, and my assistant and I went
down one day to look at the convention center. That was as close as either of us got to the convention.
Not long before the convention I became fearful. I had begun to get a foretaste of the increased hostility of cops
to protesters, in April when the police beat up peace marchers. In the earlier riot, when Wilson was still in charge,
police had been restrained and acted commendably.
But during those weeks before, the convention, the Yippies and the Chicago 8 were sending out taunting
messages, such as they were going to put LSD in the water system (which wasn’t possible). Some of the
protesters held their own presidential nominating convention with their candidate Pigasu. When I later saw much
later a video on PBS, I realized how funny some of the antics were. But the cops and the mayor didn’t think
so. They expected violence and they got it. All they seemed to know how to do was meet the challenges and
protesters with violence, although most of them were peaceful followers of the peace candidate, Gene McCarthy,
from Minnesota. None of the protesters were really armed, except for an occasional brick or stone picked up off
the ground. Certainly no armaments.
The first day of the convention, my husband and I went downtown to see what was going on. I ran into a police
photographer who told me, Go home. It’s going to get bad.
The rest of the convention I watched on TV like everyone else. I was appalled and horrified by what I saw,
especially because I knew some of these guys. I was even more disillusioned when, after it was all over, a friend
of mine, a sergeant who had been sent to California to get an M.A. and was clearly bound for advancement, told
me that he was right behind the lieutenant whose picture was snapped as he shot mace at the photographer. I
knew the lieutenant, too.
I was sick of Chicago and sick of the police department, and I started making plans to come back to Minnesota,
which we did early the next year.
Every time I see films or commentaries of this event, I cry.
•W
hat is the tone of your reflection?
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1968: A Year that
Changed America
1968 Reflection A Year of Extremes by Brian Carlson
www.the1968exhibit.org/reflections/year-extremes
I graduated from Grand Rapids, Minnesota high school in 1968. I had just finished a year
of highs… good grades and a senior drum solo in the jazz band. I never went to my school
prom because we didn’t have the money. That last year was lots of fun and I exploded with
leadership roles in school, 4H, Sunday school teaching, etc. I also got my first full time job
working for the school district as a painter at 75 cents an hour…!!! I put $1500 in the bank
that summer… lots of overtime and great friends to work with… and still make contact
with several of those I worked with. My supervisor, Bob Staebler, became a life-long friend
and mentor in many of the things I chose to venture into. He passed away this year and is
sorrowfully missed.
1968 was also confusing… the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr,
and the fears about the Viet Nam war lottery and how it would soon affect me. I was raised
on a farm and Minnesota Power and Light began a large expansion in which 20 farms were
condemned and ours was one. We had to auction off our materials, find a new life in Grand
Rapids, lose our family heritage on the land we owned for 50 years at that time, and we had
to find jobs with skills we didn’t need on the farm. My parents were solid in their marriage
and of great support in trying to find us work and direction for the future. But the world
outside our humble home was not one I wanted to venture into freely… I seriously believed
it would be my last time away from home no matter what I did.
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hat is the tone of your reflection?
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1968: A Year that
Changed America
1968 Reflection The Summer of Hate by Larry Durstin
www.the1968exhibit.org/reflections/summer-hate
It was 1968 and absolutely nothing would be going according to plan.
Overlooked, are the millions of tiny, personal insurrections between friends and family
members that ultimately left so many of us shell-shocked and adrift as America itself
appeared to be coming apart at the seams.
In January the North Vietnamese launched the TET offensive, a shocking, co-coordinated
attack on American troops that stunned the nation, shaking it once and for all out of its
complacency as to how smoothly the war was going and planting the first devastating
seed of doubt as to our military invincibility. The next month, fueled by the ground swell
of concern over TET and running on a peace platform, Eugene McCarthy finished a strong
second to incumbent Lyndon Johnson in the New Hampshire Primary, setting the stage
a few weeks later for another, more charismatic anti-war candidate, Bobby Kennedy to
challenge LBJ.
On the last day of March, Johnson — by this time literally a prisoner inside the White House,
unable to go anywhere because of the omnipresence of virulent demonstrators - announced
to the nation he would not run for president. Five days later Martin Luther King Jr. was
assassinated in Memphis and the black sections of many major American cities erupted in
flames. At the end of April students at Columbia took over the dean’s office and shut down
the university as an ever-growing youth culture gathered momentum in its sweet psychedelic
challenge to the status quo. And just one week before I came home Bobby Kennedy was
assassinated and the nation watched — frozen — as the train carrying his body slowly
traversed America, now a land with dried blood on its tracks
I lost my best friend Marty in 1968. All of these seismic events had occurred since
the last time I had seen Marty at a New Year’s Eve party at our favorite hangout, the
neighborhood bar/bowling alley. So we hadn’t even talked about any of them. In fact we
hadn’t really talked about anything political since our hero and fellow Catholic JFK had been
assassinated. It was just sports and music and girls.
But in the summer of ’68, there was no getting away from the events of the day. People
were getting mighty restless at what they were seeing on the TV. And though neither Marty
or I had to worry about being drafted (he had bad eyes and I had a teaching deferment)
we found ourselves on opposite sides of the issue. In fact I was the only one in the place
defending the anti-war element and I was taking a similar beating there to the one I was
taking at home while arguing about Vietnam with my parents. The comfortable terrain of my
childhood homestead was starting to fill up, almost overnight, with emotional land mines.
That the night of the Massacre on Michigan Avenue at the Chicago Democratic National
Convention, during which the systematic brutalization of about 12,000 mostly youthful,
white, middle-class demonstrators was carried out -- live and on prime time television -- by
approximately 30,000 Chicago police, army troops, National Guardsmen and federal agents.
Arguably, this was the precise moment when America split in two. The place where we were
hanging out erupted in arguments, the loudest between Marty and I. We were asked to
leave the establishment and he informed me that he didn’t want me in his wedding. I was
more than happy to oblige him.
This was how 1968 impacted me.
•W
hat is the tone of your reflection?
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age given? Is there any other background information available?
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• What is your sense of 1968 from this reflection? Why?