486 ChaPter^9
war, economically, without too much success but I think in due course the
chickens will come home to roost.”
African Americans, generally supportive of Johnson, also began to turn on
him as Martin Luther King and other Civil Rights leaders increasingly spoke
out against a war in which Blacks, though only about 12 percent of the
population, were accounting for over a quarter of the casualties. Then, on top
of Tet, King was killed in April, and the war and urban rebellion converged.
Some younger activists gave up on the system and dropped out of society or
joined militant groups. Some hoped to reform the political structure from
within and worked on the other candidates’ campaigns, only to see Bobby
Kennedy also assassinated and Eugene McCarthy lose the nomination. By
mid-1968, the country was terribly divided over Vietnam and the war was
about to come home. In August, at the Democratic convention, tens of thou-
sands of demonstrators fought street battles with local police forces. Chicago’s
mayor, Richard Daley, along with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had
planted provocateurs in the crowd to incite the protestors. Then, Chicago
police and 5000 army troops, wielding tear gas, mace, and nightsticks, went
on a rampage, injuring hundreds, while all the attacks were being shown on
television.
All hell then broke loose as several thousand demonstrators marched on
the convention headquarters at the Hilton Hotel. As officers charged into the
crowd, some yelling “Kill, Kill,” young people chanted “the whole world is
watching.” Inside the convention, Connecticut Senator Abraham Ribicoff was
attacking the “gestapo tactics” of the police in the streets, while some observ-
ers claim that Daley said “sit down you fucking Jew” to him. As ugly as events
in Chicago were, it would not be the low point of the movement. After Nixon
took office, there were several huge demonstrations against the war, but they
remained peaceful. In May 1970, however, the war came home, with blood-
shed on a college campus. At Kent State University, a working-class school in
Ohio, students had been protesting the war and some protestors set the
ROTC [Reserve Officers’ Training Corps] building on fire. The Ohio
Governor, James Rhodes, comparing the protestors to Nazis, sent out the
National Guard. On May 4th, the Guard opened fire, killing 4 young people
and wounding 11 others. Across the country, college campuses erupted in
protest and thousands simply closed down for the semester. Just a decade
earlier, the 1960s had begun with such hope and optimism, and now the most