A look back at the 1968 Democratic Convention

On August 28, 1968, the Vietnam War came home to the United States. Tens of thousands of anti-war demonstrators descended on the Democratic National Convention. At that point in time the Vietnam War had become known as President Johnson's war, and the fact that Johnson was a Democrat drew the anti-war protestors to the convention in Chicago.

Inside the convention an argument raged over whether the Democrat Party should adopt an anti-war position. The political fight caused disruptions within the convention, but the anti-war faction lost out when Johnson's Vice President Hubert Humphrey became the Democrat Presidential candidate.

While this fight went on in the convention hall, demonstrators outside were marching, closing streets and gathering in parks and other locations. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley took a hard line position against the protestors and unleashed the Chicago police, with nightsticks in hand, on the crowds. Some demonstrators were severely beaten by police who had lost control, but despite calling it a "police riot" all police were not guilty of the excessive violence. The protestors were driven from various locations while police also prevented protestors from reaching the convention. Separate from the events outside, the anger grew in the convention as there were overt attempts to silence critics of the war.

In 1968, live television broadcasts of the political conventions was fairly new to the American public. The excesses both inside the convention and outside in the streets were being watched by approximately 50 million and caused a division within the public. The anti-war protestors were viewed as heroes by their supporters while a shrinking majority of Americans still supported the war. The anger and hateful rhetoric between the two factions would continue even as the war ended in 1975.

It must be noted that while all of the protestors were anti-war, they came from different groups who ranged from pacifists to anarchists. They were not a massive organized mob as some have portrayed them. Recent published articles and books about the 1960s often play down the violence that erupted between war supporters and protestors. The Vietnam War generated anger and division within the American public, and it was not a time of peace and flower power that some portray it.

Jack Dragoni attended Boston College and served in the U.S. Army in Berlin and Vietnam. He lives in Chaffee, Missouri.