By the summer of 1968, heart-stopping events seemed to emerge with every morning sunrise across Lake Michigan.
In April, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, setting off riots and fires that seemed they might consume the city.
Robert Kennedy was assassinated June 5 in Los Angeles, and the nation was thrown into another upheaval.
The televised images of the Vietnam War had begun to sour the public support for the conflict and the veterans who were fighting in what seemed a losing battle.
On these hot days, it all hung like the smell of the stockyards near the International Amphitheater, at 42nd and Halsted, where the Democratic National Convention was being held.
The convention brought with it streams of young people appearing on the streets and in the parks. They wore tie-dyed T-shirts, long hair, and sandals. Their tattoos were colorful mixtures of a different culture, the emerging “counter culture.”
The city was negotiating with the gathering numbers of Yippies, by now full-fledged “anti-war demonstrators,” who were seeking a permit to sleep in Lincoln Park. It had become their unofficial campground anyway.
Most of us regarded them as more interesting than militant, having created their youth culture with aromas of incense and mystical music from guitars and sitars. The music drifted on the air like smoke on a breeze, dreamlike, with the participants offering tea and brownies baked with marijuana.
But Mayor Richard J. Daley took them quite seriously, appearing as a gruff-looking grandfather afraid these exotic creatures would soil his city and more importantly, he believed their threats to place LSD in the city’s water supply and nominate a pig for president. One act in their guerrilla theater headlined a skit in which they referred to themselves as “Groucho Marxists.”
Despite the “theatrics,” there were also foreshadowings of a more serious intention. When I arrived in Lincoln Park, there were lessons underway on how they might use karate to defend themselves from any attacks by police. Some were jumping up and down in conga line fashion, shouting “death to the pigs.”
On Aug. 24, the city informed the Yippies that they would not get a permit to be in the park after the 11 p.m. curfew. It was clear to me this would certainly lead to a confrontation with the police.
Sunday night, and the ‘Festival of Life’
And it came on Sunday, Aug. 25 in Lincoln Park. The Yippies had begun their “Festival of Life” with about 2,000 people listening to a rock band, MC5.
By Mayor Daley’s order, the police would clear out anyone in the park after the curfew. His reasoning was to break up the encampment and avoid the threatened march to the International Amphitheater 40 blocks south the day before the delegates’ arrival.
I could see the long line of officers stretching on a rise above the common green where the Yippies were camping. Their silhouettes, backlit by street lamps, had the look of Native Americans on a ridge line before they came riding down on settlers in a John Ford movie.
At 11 p.m. a bullhorn announced the city’s intentions and warned that anyone still in the park would be arrested.
Then step by step the entire police line, probably 200 yards long, started in a silent march moving toward the crowd in the park. Slow and relentless they came, clubs in hand, silently walking down the rise. It was the first contact between protesters and police. There was no outburst in the darkened campground. The music stopped.
There were catcalls of “pigs,” but it did not produce the pent-up emotion among police that we would see a few days later, on Wednesday. There was no clash. The ominous presence of police seemed to have its effect. The crowd dispersed.
Lincoln Park on that Sunday night was not the night of either a police riot or violence against protesters, save for a few encounters.
The media was a different story. I saw a cop chase a reporter down an alleyway and pop his head with a baton, sending blood down his face. It was recorded by Time magazine.
Some went after cameras when the photographers turned their way. We realized they had taken off their name badges to avoid being specially identified after the fact. The white shirted commanders knew there were orders not to attack any members of the news media and tried to pull their men off but they were hard to control.
The lack of discipline and training was evident. And it was only Sunday night. To be there, night after night, was instructive. It was as if there were two cops in one. The cop beneath the police uniform was in control, baton at the ready around the waist, blue helmet on, waiting and watching, careful to keep his line. But the cop on the outside was not in control, he was driven by emotion and fear. He heard the chants and saw the missiles lofted toward him, the bottles and rocks and felt the urge to charge.
Wednesday: Shouts of ‘Let’s go to the Hilton!’
The network, CBS News, had taken over the local WBBM-TV airwaves, which knocked me off my regular anchoring duties so I was free to roam the streets, an unbelievable gift to be part of history.
That history started Wednesday afternoon at the Grant Park Bandshell. About 15,000 protesters had assembled. Black Panther Bobby Seale from Oakland, Calif. spoke from the stage and it appeared to be a peaceful gathering until a young protester climbed a flagpole and pulled down the American flag. I was just arriving when I saw police already in the crowd, knocking over wooden benches to get to the protesters. Most of the crowd was dispersed minutes, but not without some suffering injuries. One of the organizers, Rennie Davis, was beaten bloody.
Police tried to keep the stragglers away from Columbus Drive next to the bandshell. They had no permit to march. But they were allowed to walk on the sidewalks. I was with them as shouts of “Let’s go to the Hilton” — where a number of delegations were staying — echoed.
The Balbo bridge over the South Shore railroad line was barricaded with a National Guard unit. Concertina wire was strung across it and the soldiers had their rifles at the ready while sealing off the street. The next access across the tracks was on Jackson Boulevard on the south side of the Art Institute. The flow was picking up and there was a relaxed feel as we boldly crossed onto Michigan Avenue. It was like two rivers of people coming together with tourists and delegates also on the street. I joined them on the sidewalk past the front of the Congress Hotel, the Chicago Club and Roosevelt University and the Hilton Hotel where a number of delegations were staying the night.
Like coffee pouring into a cup, the crowd filled the intersection to the brim, which stopped traffic and gave the protesters reason to lay claim to the area inside the four compass points of the corners. The crowd was now big enough to start an impromptu rally right there. Speakers gave it the appearance of an ad hoc gathering. Or was it planned this way all along?
There was no live television coverage, a strange anomaly for a political convention. Mayor Daley had restricted the large television trucks from parking on the street. But the networks did the next best thing. They set up studio-sized cameras on the overhanging hotel entrances and were recording the activity below on two-inch videotape machines, the largest at the time. It was at least five years before the miniaturization of electronic news gathering was introduced.
Time got away from me in the volcanic milieu. I could feel the lava rising beneath my feet. It wasn’t hard to predict. I knew the thousands of demonstrators didn’t have a permit to be in the intersection. They wanted to keep marching south on Michigan Avenue but they had no permit for that either.
A line of police stretched across Michigan Avenue at the corner of Balbo. They stood stoically with their batons ready. Their helmets began to glow in the streetlights as the sun set. Their blue shirts seemed strangely unprotected without the bulletproof vests that would come years later. It added to the likelihood that the police were prone to move into the crowd and clear it if bottles were thrown.
Looking for a vantage point
I was alone without a camera crew so I looked for a vantage point. A car was illegally parked under the traffic light at the corner — it couldn’t get any closer to the action if I had parked it myself. So, in the spirit of the moment, I climbed on top of it. Several others followed — a still cameraman for Time, the owner of the car and a few more. We were all crowded on top when the roof depressed inward, leaving a big dent. The owner, whom I knew from the streets, looked at me with a half smile and a shrug. Looking at the dent, he said, “What the hell, it’s history.”
It was a remarkable position. The police line extended from straight under me next to the driver’s side across the street, shoulder to shoulder to the far curb. The cops were facing north toward the crowd. Commander James Rochford was in charge, walking the line, talking to the demonstrators.
The trees were full of late summer foliage. Some protesters were hanging there, others had climbed up street lamps. The crowd was sitting as they had been for an hour and a half during which time the dark sky crept up on us. The intersection was now fully lit by street lamps.
There was one incident which a lot of reporting missed, but since I had such a good view I could see clearly. Hosea Williams of the Southern Christian Leadership Council leaned down from the seat bench on a wagon pulled by two mules, leading the Poor People’s March to the International Amphitheater. They did have a permit and Commander Rochford waved them through.
In the chaos at the time I had a bad feeling. The crowd behind the wagon was pushing hard as it slid through the police line. The crowd thought they were being permitted to march south to the Amphitheater. But the police line closed after the wagon squeezed through. That upset the demonstrators.
A tremor felt and heard ‘round the world
There was pushing and shoving against the police line, and from my vantage point looking down from the car top at the point of pressure — protesters against cops — it appeared to me that the anti-war demonstrators were trying to force themselves through the line, to break it. If the police line would have broken, and it could have with 10,000 demonstrators pressuring against the single line, they would have had a clear path to the Amphitheater or there would have been a bloodier confrontation further down Michigan Avenue when the police reinforcements put up another line.
What happened next has been seared into the history of Chicago. It was a tremor felt and heard round the world.
It was interpreted as a split between law and order and anarchy and it polarized the nation — to be debated for half a century on whether it helped or hurt the protest against the Vietnam War.
When the pushing was on the edge of a breakthrough, Rochford gave the order to “clear the intersection.”
Television may not have carried it live but the mounted cameras in the hotel had a full view. They videotaped the phalanx of police charging the crowd, swinging batons, calling for squadrols and fighting with their fists. For fifteen minutes, in muted color, the blue helmets waded into people, their batons held over their heads for more leverage. Some officers were hit. Later reports told of bags of feces thrown at the cops. Rocks and bottles were thrown, their liquid flashing like crystals as they were lofted in the other worldly, bluish sodium-vapor lamps, until the police squadrols were full and the intersection was clear.
I was riveted on the line in front of me, watching the mules go through and the protesters try to follow. I decided that was ground zero, starting with a push by demonstrators and reaction by police. But months later I learned a valuable lesson in perspective. Truth depends on your physical point of view, where you’re standing, the light, the realization that you are witness to a small part of a much larger event.
A platoon of Chicago police, ready for business
A friend of mine, Sam Iker of Time Magazine told me three months later that he was watching from the second floor in the Hilton, looking down on the intersection from a north window near the corner. He saw what I couldn’t see. He said a platoon of Chicago police reinforcements estimated at 200, looking ready for business, came marching aggressively up Balbo toward the intersection. The crowd gathered in the street recoiled from the police reinforcements. That movement pushed the entire protest throng into the police line on Michigan. What appeared to be protesters attempting to break through Rochford’s line caused him to give the order to clear.
One might argue that it made no difference because the result was the same. But the appearance became the reality — the appearance of what appeared to be an unprovoked attack by Chicago police excessively assaulting unarmed kids.
For the anti-war movement it was perfect. What appeared to be a spontaneous political rally was stormed by police and eventually broadcast to the nation raw. Even Walter Cronkite was shocked as he watched the tape roll in its unedited form at his booth at the convention. He saw it for the first time along with the nation and expressed his rising emotion at the chaos, jumping to the conclusion the police were out of control.
It was not apparent that even Mayor Daley knew that thirty seconds on television of his police force wading into protesters, swinging their clubs, would create an indelible wound on the city’s reputation that lasted for years.
Bill Kurtis is a longtime television journalist and producer. He was a former news anchor for Chicago’s WBBM-TV where he covered the unrest on the streets of Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention.