Chicago 1968

The 1968 Democratic Convention, best known for police brutality against demonstrators, has been relegated to a dark place in American historical memory. Battleground Chicago ventures beyond the stereotypical image of rioting protestors and violent cops to reevaluate exactly how—and why—the police attacked antiwar activists at the convention. Working from interviews with eighty former Chicago police officers who were on the scene, Frank Kusch uncovers the other side of the story of ’68, deepening our understanding of a turbulent decade. “Frank Kusch’s compelling account of the clash between Mayor Richard Daley’s men in blue and anti-war rebels reveals why the 1960s was such a painful era for many Americans. . . . to his great credit, [Kusch] allows ‘the pigs’ to speak up for themselves.”—Michael Kazin “Kusch’s history of white Chicago policemen and the 1968 Democratic National Convention is a solid addition to a growing literature on the cultural sensibility and political perspective of the conservative white working class in the last third of the twentieth century.”—David Farber, Journal of American History

Entertaining and scrupulously researched, Chicago '68 reconstructs the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago—an epochal moment in American cultural and political history. By drawing on a wide range of sources, Farber tells and retells the story of the protests in three different voices, from the perspectives of the major protagonists—the Yippies, the National Mobilization to End the War, and Mayor Richard J. Daley and his police. He brilliantly recreates all the excitement and drama, the violently charged action and language of this period of crisis, giving life to the whole set of cultural experiences we call "the sixties." "Chicago '68 was a watershed summer. Chicago '68 is a watershed book. Farber succeeds in presenting a sensitive, fairminded composite portrait that is at once a model of fine narrative history and an example of how one can walk the intellectual tightrope between 'reporting one's findings' and offering judgements about them."—Peter I. Rose, Contemporary Sociology

Chicago 1968 represents, perhaps as no other moment in American history, the flashpoint of cultural resistance to a militarized world out of control. In the summer of 1968, still reeling from the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy only months earlier, thousands of young people descended on the National Democratic Convention to show their opposition to the Vietnam War and their desire for a Peace platform. The showdown between "the longhairs" and "the pigs" would become one of the most violent and starkly emblematic confrontations ever broadcast on nightly news in the United States. "The whole world was watching," CBS reporter Dan Rather uttered on the floor of the convention center in Chicago, and he was correct: The 1968 Democratic Convention was the first nationally televised political convention. Police and National Guard troops, clashing with protesters, herded tens of thousands of demonstrators into exit-less corridors, and as the mayhem ensued, police indiscriminately cracked heads. Witnessing it all were some of the most attuned minds of the day, including Norman Mailer, Allen Ginsberg, Studs Terkel, and the "hard hitting investigative team" Esquire had assembled, which included Terry Southern, William Burroughs, and Jean Genet. Shortly after bumping into Southern at the bar of the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles, photographer Michael Cooper decided to tag along, gaining official accreditation as photographer.Editors Nile Southern and Adam Cooper, having dreamt for many years about a print collaboration featuring their fathers' collective work-none more poignant than their accounts of the protests at the National Democratic Convention-here present Chicago 1968: The Whole World is Watching, a kaleidoscopic, on-the-ground account, told primarily through the words of Terry Southern and the photographs of Michael Cooper, a fitting tribute to two great artists of the 20th century.

While other writers contemplated the events of the 1968 Chicago riots from the safety of their hotel rooms, John Schultz was in the city streets, being threatened by police, choking on tear gas, and listening to all the rage, fear, and confusion around him. The result, No One Was Killed, is his account of the contradictions and chaos of convention week, the adrenalin, the sense of drama and history, and how the mainstream press was getting it all wrong. "A more valuable factual record of events than the city’s white paper, the Walker Report, and Theodore B. White’s Making of a President combined."—Book Week "As a reporter making distinctions between Yippie, hippie, New Leftist, McCarthyite, police, and National Guard, Schultz is perceptive; he excels in describing such diverse personalities as Julian Bond and Eugene McCarthy."—Library Journal "High on my short list of true, lasting, inspired evocations of those whacked-out days when the country was fighting a phantasmagorical war (with real corpses), and police under orders were beating up demonstrators who looked at them funny."—Todd Gitlin, from the foreword

During May 1968, students and workers in France united in the biggest strike and the largest mass movement in French history. Protesting capitalism, American imperialism, and Gaullism, 9 million people from all walks of life, from shipbuilders to department store clerks, stopped working. The nation was paralyzed—no sector of the workplace was untouched. Yet, just thirty years later, the mainstream image of May '68 in France has become that of a mellow youth revolt, a cultural transformation stripped of its violence and profound sociopolitical implications. Kristin Ross shows how the current official memory of May '68 came to serve a political agenda antithetical to the movement's aspirations. She examines the roles played by sociologists, repentant ex-student leaders, and the mainstream media in giving what was a political event a predominantly cultural and ethical meaning. Recovering the political language of May '68 through the tracts, pamphlets, and documentary film footage of the era, Ross reveals how the original movement, concerned above all with the question of equality, gained a new and counterfeit history, one that erased police violence and the deaths of participants, removed workers from the picture, and eliminated all traces of anti-Americanism, anti-imperialism, and the influences of Algeria and Vietnam. May '68 and Its Afterlives is especially timely given the rise of a new mass political movement opposing global capitalism, from labor strikes and anti-McDonald's protests in France to the demonstrations against the World Trade Organization in Seattle.

In August 1968, Democrats gather at their National Convention in Chicago to debate a platform for a deeply divided party. Factions are split over issues such as civil rights, infrastructure, and the war on poverty—not to mention the war in Vietnam. Meanwhile, crowds of protesters descend upon the city. Impassioned antiwar demonstrators plan sit-ins and marches, while the absurdist Yippies, determined to make a mockery of the convention, intend to nominate a pig for president. Journalists flood the area to cover the stories of the delegates and protesters. Over the course of this game, players will develop a better understanding of the complexities of the social and cultural tumult that has come to be known as "the Sixties."

This book is an examination of the image of Chicago in American popular culture between the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 and Chicago's 1968 Democratic National Convention.

"In A Nation on Fire, journalist Clay Risen relies on dozens of interviews and reams of newly declassified documents to offer a sweeping day-by-day, city-by-city account of the riots, from the looting and burning in Washington to explosions of violence in Chicago, Baltimore, Kansas City, and 117 other cities, large and small. Taking readers inside the Oval Office, the Pentagon, and city halls across the country, he introduces them to key players at every level - from the first army soldier to enter Washington to the crack team of Johnson aides who managed the crisis from inside the White House to the civil rights leaders who helped avert violence in Memphis, where King was shot."--BOOK JACKET.