Fifty years ago this week, presidential delegates, anti-war protesters, and national journalists converged on Chicago for an event that came to represent the turmoil the country was going through in the late 1960s: the Democratic National Convention.

In the months leading up to the convention, activists — many led by the Youth International Party (or the Yippies) — were planning to use the DNC in Chicago as a platform to protest the war. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party wanted to use the convention to get their political house in order. And at the time, Mayor Richard J. Daley was hoping to showcase Chicago to the nation.

What happened instead were protests, riots, and police violence filling TV screens across the country. Chicago police clashed repeatedly with protesters in Grant Park, Lincoln Park, and along Michigan Avenue, while delegates debated issues and candidates inside the International Amphitheater on the city’s South Side.

Morning Shift revisits the 1968 DNC, diving through the archives, and even speaking with one activist who was on the ground when the chaos ensued.

GUESTS: 

Marilyn Katz, owner of MK Communications, longtime anti-war activist

Mick Dumke, investigative reporter for ProPublica Illinois

LEARN MORE:

1968 Democratic Convention not to blame for the lost male white moderate voter (Chicago Sun-Times, 8/23/18)

Protests and Blaming the Media. Sound Familiar? That Was During the ’68 Democratic National Convention. (ProPublica 8/21/18)

Marilyn Katz on the 1968 Democratic National Convention: It paved the way for the election of Harold Washington and Barack Obama (WGN 8/22/18)