Democratic National Convention besieged by protesters

As the 1968 Democratic National Convention gets underway in Chicago, thousands of anti-war demonstrators take to Chicago’s streets on August 26 to protest the Vietnam War and its support by the top Democratic presidential candidate, Vice President Hubert Humphrey.

During the four-day convention, the most violent in U.S. history, police and National Guardsmen clashed with protesters outside the International Amphitheater, and hundreds of people, including innocent bystanders, were beaten and gassed by the Chicago police. The violence even spilled into the convention hall, as guards roughed up delegates and members of the press, including CBS News correspondent Mike Wallace, who was punched in the face.

Chicago Mayor Richard Daley deployed 12,000 police officers and called in another 15,000 state and federal officers to contain the protesters, but the situation rapidly spiraled out of control. On August 28, a riot known as the “Battle of Michigan Avenue” was caught on television and sparked large-scale change in American society. For the first time, many Americans came out in virulent opposition to the Vietnam War, which they had begun to feel was pointless and wrongheaded. No longer would people give the national government unrestrained power to pursue its Cold War policy of attempting to stop the spread of communism at the expense of the safety of U.S. citizens.

Inside the convention, a faction led by committed anti-war candidate Eugene McCarthy also challenged the long-held assumption that the United States should remain in the war. As the debate intensified, fights broke out on the convention floor, and delegates and reporters were beaten and knocked to the ground. Eventually, the delegates on the side of the status quo, championed by Hubert Humphrey, won out, with Humphrey securing the Democratic nomination on August 29.

The violence ended with the convention, itself, but the events in Chicago at the end of August 1968 had seriously weakened the party, which saw Humphrey lose that November’s general election to Richard Nixon.

Also in the aftermath, a federal commission investigating the convention described one of the confrontations as a “police riot” and blamed Mayor Daley for inciting his police to violence. Nevertheless, eight political radicals—the so-called “Chicago Eight”—were arrested on charges of conspiring to incite the violence. Their trial began in 1969 in Chicago, sparking new waves of protests in the city.