The thousands of Democrats who are in the city of Chicago this week for the party’s national convention are hoping that nothing that is happening now or happened decades ago will taint their big event.
As they prepare to formally nominate current Vice President Kamala Harris to be the next President, there are plans for large protests by groups who oppose the U.S. support of Isael’s war in Gaza and the large number of citizen casualties.
56 years ago, in August of 1968, the Democratic National Convention was in Chicago and will always be remembered as the convention where outside on the streets of Chicago thousands of protesters against a different war, the Vietnam War, clashed with cops after Mayor Richard J. Daley ordered police to crack down. And the violence was all captured live on television.
The violence at the convention that summer followed the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr and Senator Robert Kennedy in the spring.
Hubert Humphrey was the Democrats’ presidential nominee in that tumultuous year of 1968 and the Republican nominee, Richard Nixon, went on to a decisive victory in November.
And now, decades later, politically, the country is again sharply divided much like it was back then as the days continue to countdown to Election Day here in 2024.
(Photo Getty Images)