The 1968 Democratic National Convention of the U.S. Democratic Party was held at the International Amphitheatre in Chicago, Illinois, from August 26 to August 29, 1968. Because President Lyndon B. Johnson had announced he would not seek reelection, the purpose of the convention was to select a new presidential nominee to run as the Democratic Party’s candidate for the office. The keynote speaker was Senator Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii).
Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey and Senator Edmund S. Muskie of Maine, were nominated for President and Vice President, respectively.
The convention was held during a year of violence, political turbulence, and civil unrest, particularly riots in more than 100 cities following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4. The convention also followed the assassination of Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York, who had been murdered on June 5. Both Kennedy and Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota had been running against the eventual Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Hubert Humphrey.
Chicago's mayor, Richard J. Daley, intended to showcase his and the city's achievements to national Democrats and the news media. Instead, the proceedings became notorious for the large number of demonstrators and the use of force by the Chicago police during what was supposed to be, in the words of the Yippie activist organizers, “A Festival of Life.” Rioting took place between demonstrators and the Chicago Police Department, who were assisted by the Illinois National Guard. The disturbances were well publicized by the mass media, with some journalists and reporters being caught up in the violence. Network newsmen Mike Wallace and Dan Rather were both roughed up by the Chicago police while inside the halls of the Democratic Convention.
Read more about 1968 Democratic National Convention: Richard J. Daley and The Convention, Dan Rather Incident, Protests and Police Response, The Chicago Seven
Famous quotes containing the words democratic, national and/or convention:
“In his comprehensive delight in all experience Dickens resembles Walt Whitman, but he was innocent of that nebulous transcendentalism that blurred Whitman’s universe into vast misty panoramas and left him, for all his huge democratic vistas, unable to tell a story or paint a single concrete human being.”
—Edgar Johnson (1912–1990)
“The word which gives the key to the national vice is waste. And people who are wasteful are not wise, neither can they remain young and vigorous. In order to transmute energy to higher and more subtle levels one must first conserve it.”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)
“No good poetry is ever written in a manner twenty years old, for to write in such a manner shows conclusively that the writer thinks from books, convention and cliché, not from real life.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)