Forty years have passed since 1968, a year which tested and transformed America in countless ways.
Many historians see 1968 as one of most volatile years in the nation's history. College campuses exploded in protest over the Vietnam War, Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated within two months of one another, and President Lyndon B. Johnson elected to not run for a second term. In August, antiwar demonstrators violently clashed with Chicago police during the Democratic National Convention. And in November, Richard M. Nixon was elected President.
To many Americans, it appeared that the country was spiraling out of control, and it all began almost as soon as the new year dawned.
January 31: The Tet Offensive
By the end of 1967, despite still-growing opposition to the war, the Johnson Administration was able to portray at least the illusion of progress in Vietnam. General William Westmoreland, commander of U.S. troops in South Vietnam, began to speak of a "light at the end of the tunnel." But on January 31, during the Vietnamese Lunar New Year celebration of Tet, North Vietnamese and Vietcong troops launched a massive surprise attack throughout South Vietnam.
On television, scenes of intense urban fighting brought the war home to Americans in a way they had not previously seen. And although American and South Vietnamese forces were able to eventually turn back the enemy and inflict huge casualties, Tet marked a major turning point in Americans’ perceptions of the war and how it was being fought. From this point forward, the majority of Americans would have trouble believing that the war was being won.
March 31: LBJ Pulls out of Presidential Race
After the debacle of Tet, President Johnson suffered further embarrassment in the New Hampshire Presidential Primary on March 12 when antiwar candidate Senator Eugene McCarthy came within seven points of defeating the sitting president. Four days later, Senator Robert F. Kennedy entered the contest for the Democratic nomination. Polls showed LBJ trailing both McCarthy and Kennedy in upcoming primaries.
Faced with the embarrassment of being denied his own party’s nomination, Johnson decided against running for re-election. He stunned the nation on the evening of March 31, when at the conclusion of a televised address on Vietnam, he announced: “I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President.”
April 4: Martin Luther King, Jr. Assassinated
Less than a week after Johnson’s announcement, civil rights icon Martin Luther King, Jr. was gunned down in Memphis. King was there to support a strike by the city's black sanitation workers, and after his eerily prescient "I've been to the mountaintop" speech the night before, he was shot by a sniper on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel. He died an hour later.
Two months later, James Earl Ray was captured and eventually convicted of King's murder, although many to this day remain convinced of a conspiracy in the assassination.
In the aftermath of the killing, riots broke out in over 100 American cities, laying the groundwork for even more mayhem throughout the rest of the year.
Sources
- http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/publications/speeches/I've_been_to_the_mountaintop.pdf
- http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/speeches.hom/680331.asp
