[stanley]

A little history... 40 years ago, 1968. An opportunity for a little perspective...

the more things change, the more they seem the same....

It is hard to get all worked up over this years' political campaign, I have seen it and heard it all before... names were different, but the lies were pretty much the same... I was just too inexperienced then to recognize them for the same lies politicians have been telling since the beginning of time...

America was involved in it's longest, most divisive war to date... Ultimately, between 1959 and 1975 nearly 59,000 American servicemen died in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. We got the enemy body counts (and our own killed in action numbers) every night on the evening news. Those items will be highlighted in blue....Before we ever went to Iraq, I was SCREAMING at the top of my lungs that it just looked like another Vietnam to me....

It was of course an election year, those items will be highlighted in green.... My first actual political involvement came when I went door to door in my hometown trying to get the vote out for Eugene McCarthy. (He doesnt even get mentioned here)

There were bitter, violent race riots occurring in most of the major US cities... After the assassination of Martin Luther King, the country exploded. Those items will be highlighted in purple..... In 1967 and 1968 Literally THOUSANDS of buildings burned during MAJOR urban rioting in the big cities..... Hundreds of people were killed.

Of course, we cant forget the middle east.... things were not much different then, than they are now, everybody there was at full alert, expecting war at any moment.... Some interesting names might be seen.... highlighted in red

1967 and 1968 were marked by an ENORMOUS rise in public demonstrations against the war in Vietnam, with literally Millions marching on Washington DC. There were also HUGE civil rights marches, with thousands and thousand of marchers in MOST of the major cities of the US. Riot control gear for police agencies actually was in short supply, they couldnt make it fast enough for the cities to supply their cops....

So when I am told that we are near a revolution now, I just have to laugh... I have SEEN what "close" to a revolution looks like....


January

* January 17 - Lyndon B. Johnson calls for the non-conversion of US Dollar.
* January 19 - At a White House conference on crime, singer and actress Eartha Kitt denounces the Vietnam War directly to President Lyndon Johnson.
* January 21 - A U.S. B-52 Stratofortress crashes in Greenland, discharging 4 nuclear bombs.
* January 23 - North Korea seizes the USS Pueblo, claiming the ship violated its territorial waters while spying
* January 30 - Vietnam War: The Tet Offensive begins, as Viet Cong forces launch a series of surprise attacks across South Vietnam.
* January 31 - Viet Cong soldiers attack the United States Embassy in Saigon.

February


* February 1 - Vietnam War: A Viet Cong officer is executed by Nguyen Ngoc Loan, a South Vietnamese National Police Chief. The event is photographed by Eddie Adams. The photo makes headlines around the world, eventually winning the 1969 Pulitzer Prize, and sways U.S. public opinion against the war.
* February 8 - American civil rights movement: A civil rights protest staged at a white-only bowling alley in Orangeburg, South Carolina is broken-up by highway patrolmen, leading to the deaths of 3 college students.
* February 11 - Border clashes take place between Israel and Jordan.
* February 13 - Civil rights disturbances occur at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
* February 24 - Vietnam War: The Tet Offensive is halted - South Vietnam recaptures Hué.

March

* March 7 - Vietnam War: The First Battle of Saigon begins.
* March 12 - U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson edges out antiwar candidate Eugene J. McCarthy in the New Hampshire Democratic primary, a vote which highlights the deep divisions in the country, as well as the party, over Vietnam.
* March 16 - Vietnam War: My Lai massacre - American troops kill scores of civilians.
* March 16 - U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy (D-NY) enters the race for the Democratic Party presidential nomination.
* March 17 - A demonstration in London's Grosvenor Square against U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War leads to violence - 91 police injured, 200 demonstrators arrested.
* March 18 - Gold standard: The Congress of the United States repeals the requirement for a gold reserve to back U.S. currency.
* March 19 - March 23 Afrocentrism, Black power: Students at Howard University in Washington, D.C., signal a new era of militant student activism on college campuses in the U.S. Students stage rallies, protests and a five-day sit-in, laying seige to the administration building and shutting down the institution in protest over the university's ROTC program and demanding a more Afrocentric curriculum.
* March 21 - Vietnam War: In ongoing campus unrest, Howard University students protesting the Vietnam War, ROTC on campus and the draft, confront Gen. Lewis Hershey, then head of the U.S. Selective Service System and as he attempts to make an address, shout him down with "America is the Black man's battleground!"
* March 31 - U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson announces he will not seek re-election.

April


* April - Carl Brashear, the first African American United States Navy diver, becomes the first amputee certified to make diving missions, after a long battle which started with the accident which amputated his leg in 1966.
* April 4 - Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Riots erupt in major American cities for several days afterward.
* April 6 - A shootout between Black Panthers and Oakland police results in several arrests and deaths, including 16-year-old Panther Bobby Hutton.
* April 11 - U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968.
* April 23-April 30 - Vietnam War: Student protesters at Columbia University in New York City take over administration buildings and shut down the university.

May


* May 17 - The Catonsville Nine enter the Selective Service offices in Catonsville, Maryland, take dozens of selective service draft records, and burn them with napalm as a protest against the Vietnam War.

June

* June 5 - U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy is shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California by Sirhan Sirhan. Kennedy dies from his injuries the next day.
* June 8 - James Earl Ray is arrested for the murder of Martin Luther King Jr.

July

* July 1 - The Central Intelligence Agency's Phoenix Program is officially established.
* July 17 - Saddam Hussein becomes Vice Chairman of the Revolutionary Council in Iraq after a coup d'état.
* July 23-July 28 - African-American militants led by Fred (Ahmed) Evans engage in a fierce gunfight with police in the Glenville Shootout of Cleveland, Ohio.
* July 26 - Vietnam War: South Vietnamese opposition leader Truong Dinh Dzu is sentenced to 5 years hard labor, for advocating the formation of a coalition government as a way to move toward an end to the war.

August


* August 5-August 8 - The Republican National Convention in Miami Beach, Florida nominates Richard Nixon for U.S. President and Spiro Agnew for Vice President.
* August 21 - The Medal of Honor is posthumously awarded to James Anderson, Jr. — he is the first black U.S. Marine to be awarded the Medal of Honor.
* August 24 - France explodes its first hydrogen bomb, thus becoming the world's fifth nuclear power.
* August 22-August 30 - Police clash with antiwar protesters in Chicago, Illinois outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention, which nominates Hubert Humphrey for U.S. President, and Edmund Muskie for Vice President.

October

* October 8 - Vietnam War: Operation Sealords - United States and South Vietnamese forces launch a new operation in the Mekong Delta.
* October 11 - Apollo program: NASA launches Apollo 7, the first manned Apollo mission (Wally Schirra, Donn Eisele, Walter Cunningham). Mission goals include the first live television broadcast from orbit and testing the lunar module docking maneuver.
* October 14 - Vietnam War: The United States Department of Defense announces that the United States Army and United States Marines will send about 24,000 troops back to Vietnam for involuntary second tours.
* October 16 - In Mexico City, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, 2 African-Americans competing in the Olympic 200-meter run, raise their arms in a black power salute after winning the gold and bronze medals for 1st and 3rd place.
* October 20 - Aristotle Onassis and Jacqueline Kennedy marry on the Greek island of Skorpios
* October 31 - Vietnam War: Citing progress in the Paris peace talks, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson announces to the nation that he has ordered a complete cessation of "all air, naval, and artillery bombardment of North Vietnam" effective November 1.


November


* November 5 - U.S. presidential election, 1968: Republican challenger Richard M. Nixon defeats Vice President Hubert Humphrey and American Independent Party candidate George C. Wallace.
* November 11 - Vietnam War: Operation Commando Hunt is initiated to interdict men and supplies on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, through Laos into South Vietnam. By the end of the operation, 3 million tons of bombs are dropped on Laos, slowing but not seriously disrupting trail operations.
* November 14 - Yale University announces it is going co-educational
* November 17 – The Heidi game: NBC cuts off the final 1:05 of an Oakland Raiders-New York Jets football game to broadcast the pre-scheduled Heidi. Fans are unable to see Oakland (which had been trailing 32-29) score two late touchdowns to win 43-32; as a result, thousands of outraged football fans flood the NBC switchboards to protest.
* November 22 - The White Album is released by The Beatles
* November 26 - Vietnam War: United States Air Force First Lieutenant and Bell UH-1F helicopter pilot James P. Fleming rescues an Army Special Forces unit pinned down by Viet Cong fire, earning a Medal of Honor for his bravery.

December

* December 24 - Apollo Program: U.S. spacecraft Apollo 8 enters orbit around the Moon. Astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and William A. Anders become the first humans to see the far side of the Moon and planet Earth as a whole. The crew also reads from Genesis.

[The Urban Spaceman]

Great post. Thanks for the memories.
Spacey
(medicated since 1966)

[HappaGuy]

Originally Posted by stanley

A little history... 40 years ago, 1968. An opportunity for a little perspective...

the more things change, the more they seem the same....

* November 22 - The White Album is released by The Beatles
[COLOR=Blue]
December

* December 24 - Apollo Program: U.S. spacecraft Apollo 8 enters orbit around the Moon. Astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and William A. Anders become the first humans to see the far side of the Moon and planet Earth as a whole. The crew also reads from Genesis.

Two good memories culled from very bad times.

I was too young to understand.

A valuable post Stanley. Thank you.

My but it seems that We the People have settled down a bit, and accepted the yoke of the military-industrial prison complex as the acceptable price of all these nice shopping malls, cheap gas, sports and TV.

Seems we're just not as inclined to kick up a fuss as once we were. Our sense of moral outrage has declined, a tidal wave settled back into the sea.

I wonder what the literacy rate in 1967 was, and how it compares to that of today?

Sixty-seven, say 'bye to heaven.

That was the year they killed MLK;
a year they took our leaders away.
They marched hope off in flag-draped coffins,
so that we live in thrall today.

Now murder a million in Our name.
We the People have nothing to say.

Sixty-seven: "It's hell or heaven."
2008: "The water's great!"

But ho, and ho, and nay I say!
We need merely to WAKE UP and SHOW UP
to have Our way.

-HG

[BrattonBasher]

I was born in 1960, and I remember alot of this. Back then many more people were politically active or at least in tune with what is going on. I remember the election in 68 when Nixon barely edged Humphrey. My parents made sure I knew what was happening, so I try to get my kids to pay attention, and it is a losing battle with all the media available. Great post Stanley, as usual!

[Justonevoice]

WOW Stanley thanks for reminding us how old we are lol. I remember all of this because as a kid I was very curious about the World and the goings on.