As Chicago begins its yearlong preparation for hosting the 2024 Democratic National Convention, there’s value in remembering the events surrounding its hosting of the same event 55 years ago, in 1968.
For before there was Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington, there was Aug. 28, 1968, in Chicago. Both are dates and events that will forever be markers of infamy, controversy and, ultimately, conversations on the contours of democracy and freedoms.
Both occurred amid a traditional democratic process: one involving the counting of electoral votes and the other involving the nomination of a presidential candidate. Both occurred during a period of great political conflict: a bitterly contested election and a bitterly unpopular war, respectively.
Whether they’re properly referred to as a riot, an insurrection or a lawful protest, both devolved into a bloody confrontation with police that ended in death and widespread injury. Both led to high-profile criminal trials on which the public became fixated. And both dramatically affected the course of the nation and the reputation of the city in which they occurred. Given the current political volatility and marginalization of public institutions, such chaos could very well happen again.
In many ways, Chicago — and the nation — in the summer of 1968 reflected much of the social fragmentation that confronts Chicago and the nation in the summer of 2023. Back then, the city was on tenterhooks, reeling from the devastating April riots following the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. With the anti-war movement and racial strife reaching their apexes, there was tremendous focus on the process to nominate a successor to the increasingly unpopular President Lyndon B. Johnson.
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Elements of the anti-war movement began planning as early as late 1967 for major protests at the convention, and multiple different radical groups were coordinated to participate in the effort. These included the National Mobilization Committee to End the War, the Youth International Party, elements of the Students for a Democratic Society and Women Strike for Peace.
The city, in turn, refused to approve permits for these groups to hold their planned protest in the parks and prepared to protect property, preserve order and confront the demonstrators. Yet, according to James Rochford, then the deputy police superintendent, law enforcement remained uneasy over the prospect of what havoc the demonstrators might wreak.
By the time the convention began Aug. 26, the city resembled an armed camp, with more than 12,000 soldiers and National Guardsmen encamped to protect the convention from disruption. They were supplemented by the 12,000-person Chicago Police Department and more than 1,000 federal agents. The convention site, the seedy old International Amphitheatre at 43rd and Halsted streets, was wrapped in a protective coat of barbed wire in an incongruous conflict with the red, white and blue bunting adorning its gates.
Both sides — the anti-war groups and the city — were prepared for trouble, and trouble they got.
The first clash occurred before the convention, with protests and related skirmishes between police and the demonstrators during a march in the Lincoln Park neighborhood, which was finally turned away at North Avenue and Wells Street. On Aug. 25, there were marches, disturbances and vandalism in front of the Conrad Hilton, the convention hotel.
Tensions accelerated on Aug. 26, when the police challenged a large group of demonstrators who mounted the Gen. John Logan statue in Grant Park at Michigan Avenue and Ninth Street.
But all that was a prelude to Aug. 28 and what became known as the Battle of Michigan Avenue. The anti-war groups were joined by civil rights advocates in a mass march on the Hilton, where presidential nominee Hubert Humphrey was staying. A violent confrontation erupted with police, spiked by chants, taunts, broken windows, tear gas, rock throwing and swinging billy clubs. More than 100 protesters and 119 police officers were injured, and more than 580 demonstrators arrested — all in view of a horrified national television audience.
As former Ald. Edward Burke, then a police officer, sagely observed about the convention violence, “(A) tea kettle has to let off steam someplace, and I think the nation let off that steam here in the heartland in Chicago.”
The aftermath of the convention confrontations led only to additional controversy. Humphrey’s presidential campaign was tarnished by the events. Demonstration leaders — the “Chicago Seven” — were indicted in what led to years of tumultuous court proceedings and, ultimately, acquittal. The reputation of the city was savaged.
The federal commission charged with investigating the causes of the demonstration, chaired by future Gov. Dan Walker, issued its famous report, “Rights in Conflict.” The commission referred to the disturbances as a “police riot” while acknowledging that many of the protesters had traveled to Chicago with the express purpose of inciting violence.
With the recent appointments of the chair of the convention and its executive director, Burke’s observations return to mind. Surely, these leaders are aware that the current “tea kettle” of political divisiveness and criminal prosecution may be coming to a boil by next August. And hopefully, they are aware of the danger to the city (and to the nation) if that tea kettle is allowed to once again let off steam in the heartland.
The “Rights in Conflict” conclusion has an ominous message, 55 years later: “Although the crowds were finally dispelled on the nights of violence in Chicago, the problems they represent have not been. Surely this is not the last time that a violent dissenting group will clash head-on with those whose duty it is to enforce the law. And the next time the whole world will still be watching.”
Michael Peregrine is a Chicago attorney, who viewed the height of the anti-war era from the vantage point of Oak Park High School.
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