By 1968 the country was in turmoil over both the Vietnam War
and civil disorder, expressed in urban riots that reflected
African-American anger. On March 31, 1968, the president
renounced any intention of seeking another term. Just a week
later, Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed in Memphis,
Tennessee. John Kennedy's younger brother, Robert, made an
emotional anti-war campaign for the Democratic nomination, only
to be assassinated in June.
At the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois,
protesters fought street battles with police. A divided
Democratic Party nominated Vice President Hubert Humphrey, once
the hero of the liberals but now seen as a Johnson loyalist.
White opposition to the civil rights measures of the 1960s
galvanized the third-party candidacy of Alabama Governor George
Wallace, a Democrat who captured his home state, Mississippi,
and Arkansas, Louisiana, and Georgia, states typically carried
in that era by the Democratic nominee. Republican Richard Nixon,
who ran on a plan to extricate the United States from the war
and to increase "law and order" at home, scored a narrow
victory.
|
