A Tour of Chicago ‘68
Landmarks in a Chaotic Week
The events in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention fueled the imaginations of filmmakers, songwriters, novelists, and poets. Those events launched innumerable research projects by everyone from middle schoolers doing a class project to social scientists sifting data and historians pawing through archives. Chicago ’68 is a kaleidoscopic beacon, a landmark in a chaotic and transitional time in American history, an event that shines a light on multiple aspects of American history and culture.
In this year, as in every presidential election year, the landmark of Chicago ’68 is used to judge the shape of the present against the contours of history. Returning to the place of these events is a way we try to make sense of the past and the present.
The geography of Chicago ’68 is frequently misunderstood. The scenes of street protest did not play out anywhere near the convention hall, though the convention hall had plenty of disorder within its own walls. What we call Chicago ’68 was a series of events taking place over the course of a week at, broadly, three major locations in the city of Chicago — Lincoln Park, the Loop/Grant Park area, and the International Amphitheatre. It was not just one night or at one location, despite what you may have learned in school, or from major motion pictures. Chicago ‘68 began on Friday, August 23, 1968, and continued through the morning hours of Friday, August 30.
Lincoln Park
Chicago’s expansive northside lakeshore park begins less than a mile north of the Loop business district and extends north seven miles along the lake. In 1968 an area in the south end of the park, just north of North Avenue and south of the Lincoln Park Zoo, was selected by the Yippies as their site for the Festival of Life (Google Maps location). Yippie was created in early 1968 expressly for the purpose of staging a countercultural event during the Democratic National Convention. The core of Yippie included Abbie and Anita Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and Nancy Kurshan, Stew Albert and Judy Gumbo, Paul Krassner, Keith Lampe, and Ed Sanders.
The south end of Lincoln Park was a natural site for the Festival of Life because it is just blocks from the Old Town neighborhood, which in 1968 was Chicago’s counterpart to Haight-Ashbury or the East Village, where young people would gather, where music clubs and headshops were located. (Google Maps location) Young people spilled out of Old Town and gathered in the south end of Lincoln Park every summer weekend. Chicago’s underground newspaper, The Seed, which publicized the Festival of Life plans, had its office not far away on LaSalle Street.
The Festival of Life was envisioned as a days-long free music and arts festival that would draw tens of thousands of young people to Lincoln Park. The Festival of Life was supposed to contrast the vibrancy of the youthful counterculture with the “Convention of Death” that the Democrats were putting on. Musicians such as Judy Collins, Jefferson Airplane, Arlo Guthrie, Phil Ochs, The Fugs, and Country Joe and the Fish were possible participants. But music in public spaces requires city permits, insurance, and temporary infrastructure, none of which Yippie was able to secure. So, the Festival of Life was mostly a couple of days of no more than 2,000 young people milling around, getting high, making out, reading leaflets, and listening to self-appointed leaders talk about radical politics.
Mid-afternoon on Sunday, August 25, only one band showed up to play the Festival of Life, the MC5 from Detroit. They set up on the grass, in the neighborhood of the field house that still stands at the south end of the park (Google Maps location). Their amps drew power from a long extension cord plugged into a hotdog stand. They launched into a set, including “Kick Out the Jams.” The MC5 was a high-energy, raucous band who would later be seen as a precursor of punk; not everyone in the crowd watching the performance liked the music.
After half an hour, Abbie Hoffmann tried to move a flatbed truck into the park for a stage. The police, standing nearby, halted the truck. Words were exchanged, Stew Albert was hit over the head and went down bleeding. Arrests were made. The MC5, who had seen their share of trouble in Detroit, quickly packed up their equipment and left. The music festival was over.
But the violence wasn’t. There was an 11pm curfew for the park, though it was rarely enforced. The Yippies had applied for permits to allow people to sleep overnight in the park, but permits were denied. Sunday night, Monday night, Tuesday night, Chicago police massed at the east edge of the park each night to enforce the lack of permits. After 11pm many of the police removed their badges and nameplates, unhooked their nightsticks, and swept through the park, clubbing anyone who moved too slowly. This resulted in people leaving the park and blocking Stockton Drive at the park’s west edge. Which the police would then endeavor to clear with another round of clubbing.
It was not only the Yippies and their followers who were beaten, but journalists and photographers, passersby, and folks who were sitting on their front steps watching the action. Heads were bashed, cameras were smashed, film and notebooks were seized.
Monday night was the night of the barricade. Young people in the park built a barricade anchored at one end by the Garibaldi statue (Google Maps location) and continuing over the pathway east of it, intending to impede the progress of the police wave from the east. A police car came down the pathway and nosed into the barricade, which unleashed a shower of rocks and bottles from angry people in the park. Police massed and moved in to rescue the officers trapped in their car. At 11pm the sweep came through again. Monday night was perhaps the bloodiest of the week, including more journalists and photographers attacked on Monday than on any other night.
Tuesday night was the night of the cross. A few dozen ministers and seminarians brought a tall wooden cross to the park at nightfall, intending to show their solidarity and, perhaps, be a righteous shield against the police. This night the police had teargas dispensers mounted on a sanitation truck and, at curfew, the truck moved ahead of the police column, spewing huge clouds of teargas as it went. The clergy departed the park dragging their cross behind them.
After Tuesday night, the action shifted away from Lincoln Park, away from the celebration of the counterculture that was supposed to be the Festival of Life, and to the Grant Park and Loop areas.
Daley Plaza
It wasn’t called Daley Plaza in 1968; it was the Civic Center Plaza. But the plaza looked about the same; the Picasso sculpture had been dedicated a year earlier, on August 15, 1967. This location is important to Chicago ‘68 for two events.
Four months earlier, on April 27, 1968, an antiwar rally and march began at the old Grant Park bandshell and ended here at Daley Plaza (Google Maps location). The day before the march, the entire plaza had been roped off, on orders of the city administration, for pavement caulking. So there was no space on the plaza. Eight thousand people came marching west to the plaza and when they arrived there was no place for them to go. The crowd piled up on the sidewalks, the police ordered the crowd to disperse, and then the police waded into the crowd with clubs. At the time, this was taken as a clear message that antiwar protestors would be dealt with harshly during the August Democratic Convention.
The plaza was also the site of the first act in the theatrical drama that the Yippies had planned for the convention period (Google Maps location). On Friday, August 23 the Yippie candidate for President, a 150-pound hog, was presented to a gaggle of journalists, while Yippie Jerry Rubin began to read a prepared speech. Rubin got as far as “I, Pigasus, declare that I am a candidate . . .” when the police arrested him, plus six other Yippies. They also took Pigasus into custody. Legend has it that at the main police station, then at 11th and State, a police officer approached the cell where the Yippies were in custody and said, “Boys, I have bad news for you. The pig squealed.” Later, allegedly, the pig was the main attraction at a police officers’ pig roast.
Chicago Police Headquarters & the General Logan Statue
The old Chicago police headquarters (Google Maps location, now demolished) figures into another iconic event — and the opportunity for one of the most iconic photographs of the week. On Monday, August 26, Tom Hayden was arrested and taken to the station at 11th and State. A “Free Hayden!” march was organized later in the day. The march reached the station, but was met by heavily armed police officers.
The march turned east; Rennie Davis, who was manning the bullhorn, intended to direct the march to Grant Park in front of the Conrad Hilton Hotel, on Michigan Avenue. But before the march reached the Hilton, it reached the General John Logan statue in Grant Park, at 9th Street (Google Maps location).
Hundreds of marchers swarmed the empty hill and clustered around the statue. Some climbed the statue, including David Edmundson, a junior college student from Birmingham, Alabama, who was in Chicago as a volunteer for the Eugene McCarthy campaign. Edmundson clambered onto the general’s shoulders and waved the flag of the National Liberation Front and made the peace sign.
Police meanwhile gathered in Grant Park and formed a line to the north, at the base of the hill. The police swept up the hill to clear the statue, clubbed marchers moving away too slowly, and threw tear gas canisters. Edmundson was the last to come down, his arm broken as the police dragged him off the statue.
Grant Park Bandshell
There have been several music performance structures in Chicago’s Grant Park, so first let’s eliminate the wrong locations. The Jay Pritzker Pavilion opened in 2004, so that’s out. The Petrillo Music Shell at the corner of Jackson and Columbus Drive opened in 1978, ten years too late. Prior to that, the Grant Park Bandshell stood at the south end of Grant Park, almost as far south as 11th Street, with the bowl of the shell facing directly south. (Lake Shore Drive was re-configured in the 1980s, slicing some park land away from what was the audience area of the bandshell.) The Grant Park Bandshell was the site of the only protest event during the week of the convention for which the city had granted a permit, a rally on Wednesday, August 28, 1968.
The site of the old Grant Park Bandshell (Google Maps location) is readily visible in the south end of Hutchinson Field, from an area which is called Arvey Field (named after Jacob Arvey, a legendary machine politician who tutored Richard J. Daley in the ways of politics). The concrete apron that was in front of the stage is visible and the alignment of some of the concrete pathways remains. In 1968, a flagpole — which played a central role in the rally at the bandshell — stood about a hundred feet southwest of the stage.
The rally at the bandshell was organized by the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (called “MOBE” by its sympathizers and “MOB” by its detractors). MOBE was an umbrella organization that drew representatives from antiwar groups across the country. MOBE’s function was to organize national marches or other protests against the war in Vietnam. David Dellinger was the national chair of MOBE; after MOBE decided to hold protests in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention, he hired Rennie Davis and Tom Hayden as primary organizers: to devise a strategy, plan the protests, obtain permits and facilities, and bring people to Chicago.
MOBE held some smaller scale events on Monday and Tuesday; the rally on Wednesday was supposed to be their big event, followed by a march from the rally site to the International Amphitheatre, more than five miles away, where the convention would be picking its presidential candidate. But the city had granted no permit for a march.
The rally was scheduled to begin at 2pm. It started late, with about 10,000 people gathered at the bandshell. There were lots of speakers. Phil Ochs sang. Jerry Rubin introduced Pigasus — yes, he had procured another pig — to the crowd. Then news came that the Democratic convention delegates had voted down a plan to withdraw American troops from Vietnam. Angus MacKenzie, a fifteen year old, shimmied up the flagpole and tried to lower it to half-staff. A wedge of police — from the 600 that surrounded the rally — waded into the crowd to arrest MacKenzie. This angered the crowd and bottles, stones, and debris were thrown at the police. More police waded into the fray and numerous protestors were hit with batons or pushed to the ground. MOBE organizer Rennie Davis was beaten unconscious and was taken to a hospital.
At the close of the rally more than half the crowd lined up on Columbus Drive (Google Maps location) to march five miles to the International Amphitheatre, intent on delivering their antiwar message to the very doors of the convention. The city had refused to issue a permit for the march and an hour of negotiation failed to resolve the impasse in the marchers’ favor. The march line broke up and many found their way across the park to Michigan Avenue in front of the Hilton.
The Hilton Hotel
In 1968, it was called the Conrad Hilton. (Google Maps location, 720 South Michigan Avenue) Many convention delegates stayed in the hotel and suites of rooms served as the headquarters for the presidential campaigns of Vice-president Hubert Humphrey and Senator Eugene McCarthy. It was clear to the press, the police, and the protestors themselves that the Hilton would be a focus of Chicago ’68. The television networks intended to set up live cameras inside the hotel, outside the entrance on Michigan Avenue, and across the street in Grant Park. Journalists expected anti-war protestors to gather in Grant Park across from the hotel.
A lengthy strike by the electrical workers union, however, prevented the installation of the necessary infrastructure to support live TV cameras anywhere in Chicago except at the International Amphitheatre. All the activity around the Hilton would be shot using film or video, which introduced at least an hour’s delay in the broadcast of the footage. The networks had fixed video cameras on a canopy at the corner of Balbo and Michigan, the only spot in the Loop area where the Chicago police allowed stationary video cameras.
The line of march had broken up in Grant Park and protestors gathered in front of the Hilton, blocking the intersection of Balbo and Michigan. Many sat down in the street. An hour later, the order came to clear the streets. Lines of police officers came from the west on Balbo (Google Maps location) and swept into the crowd grabbing people, swinging batons, cracking heads, and dragging the arrested to squadrols.
A line of police moved into a crowd of people standing in front of a plate glass window of the Haymarket Lounge, then a Hilton bar and restaurant at the corner of Balbo and Michigan. The crowd was pressed against the glass and the window shattered, spilling people inside the restaurant.
Some of this action was captured at the scene by NBC and CBS videotape units and segments were shown to the TV audience, interrupting the nominating speeches for presidential candidates. The scenes in front of the Hilton — the Battle of Michigan Avenue — was seen by about 75 million viewers across the country, or close to half of the US population.
Several more attempts were made to march to the Amphitheatre on Thursday, August 29. None of these marches got more than a mile from the Hilton and the participants returned to Grant Park (Google Maps location), where speeches and music continued throughout the day and into the night. The final violence of the week took place inside the Hilton early Friday morning when the police raided rooms on the 15th Floor, which was where McCarthy delegates were staying. People were clubbed in their rooms because, police said, objects had been thrown from the 15th floor windows onto police lines on the street below.
The International Amphitheatre
The 1968 Democratic Convention took place five miles (as the crow flies) from the Hilton, at the International Amphitheatre at 42nd and Halsted (Google Maps location, 4220 South Halsted Street, demolished 1999). The Amphitheatre was built in 1934 in the meatpacking district of Chicago, adjacent to the Union Stock Yard. Four national political conventions had been held in the Amphitheatre prior to 1968. In 1952, the Amphitheatre was the site of both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions, and it also hosted the 1956 Democratic convention and the 1960 Republican convention. But the size of conventions had grown over the years, along with the numbers of journalists that covered them; the facility was really too small for the 1968 convention. The convention would have been held in the larger and much newer McCormick Place, on the shore of Lake Michigan, but that building burned in January 1967.
On August 26 through August 29, 1968, the floor of the convention was crowded with delegates, reporters, ushers, and security. Regardless of what went on five miles away, the convention was contentious from the start. An all-white delegation from Mississippi was thrown out of the convention in favor of a delegation that more nearly represented the racial makeup of the state. Most of the white delegates from Georgia walked out when the Convention ruled that they would need to split their votes with a Georgia black delegation.
On Wednesday afternoon, August 28, 1968, the delegates debated at length and finally voted on a proposal for a negotiated peace in Vietnam. It was defeated, after which the peace delegates began to sing “We Shall Overcome.” In response, and on Mayor Daley’s cue, the convention’s brass band began to play a medley of upbeat numbers: “I’m Looking Over a Four Leaf Clover,” “If You Know Susie,” and even, incongruously, the party’s unofficial theme song, “Happy Days Are Here Again.” The antiwar faction switched to the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
Later Wednesday night, as the nominating speeches were being made from the podium, and covered live by the three television networks, videos of the clash at Balbo and Michigan interrupted the live broadcast. The coverage of the street violence was seen on television monitors in the Amphitheatre. Delegates began to criticize the Chicago police; Senator Abe Ribicoff, nominating George McGovern for president, brought his speech to a close by denouncing the “Gestapo tactics on the streets of Chicago.”
On Thursday August 28, 1968, a memorial film to RFK was shown to the delegates. At the end of the film, delegates stood, clapped, chanted, and held up antiwar signs, bringing the convention to a halt for nineteen minutes.
While the nights inside the convention hall lacked most of the physical violence that raged in the parks and on the streets of Chicago, the convention did not lack for contentious drama. The Democratic party emerged from the 1968 convention fractured in multiple dimensions. Southern Democrats deserted the party and voted for George Wallace, a southern Democrat running as an independent. The antiwar Democrats split with the pro-war Democrats, and many in the antiwar faction did not give any meaningful support to the nominee, Hubert Humphrey.
In the decades since 1968, our historical memory of the events of the convention itself has faded in favor of the scenes of protest at Balbo and Michigan, augmented by a few choice clips of discord in the convention hall. Chicago ’68 is often reduced, more exactly, to just those moments for which there exists dramatic video. In reality, there were many temporal and geographical landmarks spread across Chicago and throughout the entire week of the convention.
Much of the credit for keeping the convention protests at the forefront of memory must go to Mayor Richard J. Daley, who was anxious to absolve the city and the police department from blame for the August riots. Daley pressed the US Attorney, Thomas Foran, to empanel a grand jury to consider criminal charges related to the disturbances. Eventually, the Chicago Eight were indicted. Daley wanted vindication. Instead, he got a five-month-long trial that made the defendants celebrities and ensured that the events of August 1968 were enshrined in history.
Much more about the 1968 Democratic National Convention is at chicago68.com, which includes a chronology of these events.
