ABSTRACT
On the evening of 28 August 1968, the “Battle of Michigan Avenue” raged in the street outside the Conrad Hilton Hotel in Chicago. On the broad avenue separating Grant Park from the hotel, chaos reigned as thousands of anti-war demonstrators confronted National Guard and Chicago Police determined to keep demonstrators away from delegates to the Democratic National Convention. The bright lights of television camera crews illuminated the tear gas in the air. Convention delegates watched from their hotel rooms above as tanks advanced below. The security forces charged the crowd, beating protesters, reporters, and bystanders. Eighty-nine million Americans watching the convention on television witnessed the violence, and heard Connecticut Senator Abraham Ribicoff famously condemn the “Gestapo tactics in the streets of Chicago” in his convention speech (Lukas 1968b:1). “Horrified and repelled” by what they had seen (Yellin 1968:n.p.), more than 500 people immediately wrote to President Lyndon Baines Johnson, describing their disgust at the police brutality, deploring the militarization of the police, and pleading for their president to “stop the war in Chicago please” (Crespi et al. 1968:n.p.).
