Recalling what our lives were like in 1968
He walked up to me at an academic conference wearing an inquisitive expression. I said hello and introduced myself. He did the same.
Then this student said to me: “I’d like to know more about 1968. Can you help me?”
My reply: “How much time ya got?”
For all of us who waded, wandered, worried and worked through that epic year of American history, 1968 remains an obvious watershed.
It was the beginning of the end, and the end of the beginning. It was when unbelievable piled upon unbelievable faster than we could catch our collective breath.
It was a year when every single American institution seemed to be stretching at the seams and threatening to rip apart.
Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy were murdered. The Democratic National Convention in Chicago turned into an epic street brawl.
The war in Vietnam threatened never to end, despite the promises of both political parties. Meanwhile, divorce rates surged, drug use did the same, and participation in organized religion declined.
And while few remarked on it at the time, the country passed a telling benchmark: For the first time in 1968, more of us lived in cities and suburbs than in rural areas and farms.
Like so many of the best, this student knew all about the headlines of yesteryear. He wanted to probe more deeply.
“In 1968,” he asked, “was everyone a hippie or an antiwar protester?”
Not at all, I said. Much of the country kept reaching for conventional and grasping it.
Short haircuts and regular baths were still very much in vogue. Men wore ties and jackets. Skirt lengths were modest. Homeowners mowed their lawns. Comedy shows ruled TV.
“Can you explain how it was also a year of revolution?” my student friend asked.
Because that year shook our foundations, I said. It was not just the sheer volume of wrenching events. It was how quickly those events cascaded down upon us. It was as if someone burst open a piñata and pent-up horrors kept spilling out, I said.
The student asked what was the worst of it. I answered, as I so often do, with big-picture politics.
It was a presidential election year, and TV had taken over as the dominant medium in the country, I said. Urban destruction after Dr. King’s murder, and coverage of the aftermath, produced enormous fear — of cities, of mobs, of possible repeat riots. That led to Richard Nixon’s campaign against crime — a major reason he was elected president that year.
“But you just said life was still normal in many ways,” the student pointed out.
Indeed so, I replied. Baseball season opened right on cue the same week that Dr. King was murdered. Church bells still rang when couples married. Families still attended graduations and shouted out raucously when their relative’s name was called.
But Vietnam hovered over everything, I said.
Thousands of American soldiers had died there, and were dying still. The possibility of a wider conflict loomed — maybe even nuclear. Meanwhile, Vietnam seemed like quicksand. How to end things? No one knew for sure.
The student asked about the draft. “Aha!” replied this former draftee. “That was the X factor for everyone who was male.”
If you were able-bodied in 1968, you were very likely to be called up. That gave you four choices: to enlist, to continue your higher education so you could be deferred, to claim conscientious objector status, or to emigrate to another country. Each choice was fraught.
“How did it actually play out day-to-day?” the student wanted to know.
“Depended on the individual,” I said. But there was no question that more than a few families were bitterly divided by a young son’s choice. Or that marriages and careers were delayed. Or that ill will built between those who served and those who didn’t.
I draw two main lessons about 1968, I told my new friend. One, there was a lot of pent-up turmoil in the country that war and violence exacerbated. Two, our institutions bent but didn’t break.
The student had a final question: Should he be sorry that we wasn’t alive in 1968 to experience everything we oldsters lived through?
I replied that 1968 was the worst year of my life — shocking, enervating, deeply discouraging. But what’s that they say? The best lessons arrive via adversity.
The student thanked me. I told him that the thanks should proceed in the opposite direction.
“See my hair color?” I said. “Guys my age have already learned a lot from 1968. People your age need to do the same. I’m grateful to you for starting that journey.”
Bob Levey is a national award-winning columnist.
