DNC: 1968 and 2020 Conventions

It’s the first day of the DNC and it’s an unprecedented one — with events being all virtual because of the pandemic. There was another unprecedented Democratic Convention in Chicago in August of 1968. LBJ had announced that he would not be seeking re-election that year, and Democratic delegates gathered at the city’s International Amphitheater to select his potential successor. It was a year marked by protests across the country over the war in Vietnam, and protests in dozens of cities after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy. Those tensions came to a head at the 1968 convention.

The 21st reached out to three people who were alive during the 1968 convention to recall the events that took place a draw parallels to the current 2020 conventions. 

Guests:

Augustus “Gus” Wood, PhD, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, School of Labor and Employment Relations UIUC

Abe Peck, Professor Emeritus, Journalism, Northwestern, Chicago Seed underground newspaper from 1968-1971 and author, “Uncovering the Sixties: the Life and Times of the Underground Press, a participatory history of dissident media,” and Yippie permit negotiator 

Mary Kay Schleiter, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside and student at Loyola in 1968

Prepared for web by Zainab Qureshi

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