1968
Revisiting the year that gave rise to modern America
1968 and the Making of Modern America
One of the most momentous years in U.S. history began a half-century ago today. Join us in exploring it for the next 12 months, starting with these newspaper clippings to whet your appetite.
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Reuters The Last Words of Robert F. Kennedy
In the months before he was assassinated, the Democratic presidential candidate insisted that Americans confront their country’s shortcomings—and live up to its potential.
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Harris / AP Learning from 1968's Leading Anti-Immigration Alarmist
Enoch Powell gave his xenophobic “Rivers of Blood” speech 50 years ago—but the lessons of its reception still apply today.
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MONTUSE / Dick Iacovello / Penguin Press Behind the Masterpiece: Van Morrison's Astral Weeks at 50
The album was conceived in the milieu of Timothy Leary, recorded with session musicians fresh off commercial-jingle gigs, and only gradually recognized as something like magic.
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Claro Cortes / Reuters The Unlearned Lesson of My Lai
A half-century after a brutal massacre in Vietnam, the United States still struggles to hold itself accountable for atrocities.
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Embassy Pictures The Graduate 50 Years After Its Oscar Win
Revisiting a film embraced by the 1968 generation
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Mike Blake / Reuters 'Sex Invades the Schoolhouse'
Fifty years ago, panicked parents helped spread sex-ed programs to schools across the country, even as panicked critics mobilized to stop them.
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AFP / Getty Peggy Fleming and the 1968 Winter Olympics
Fifty years ago in Grenoble, France, American figure skating’s modern era was born.
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Department of the Navy The Battle of Khe Sanh and Its Retellings
What one Vietnam War battle, celebrated by the press and the military as a turning point towards an inevitable American victory, says about certainty and authoritativeness.
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U.S. Army Center for Military History When the Army Planned for a Fight in U.S. Cities
In 1968, one retired colonel warned that urban insurrections could produce “scenes of destruction approaching those of Stalingrad.”
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Mike Segar/ Reuters Doubting MLK During a Strike in Memphis
A retired Presbyterian pastor looks back on 1968, when he participated in the civil-rights struggle but hadn’t yet embraced the principles of nonviolence.
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Bettmann / Getty 50 Years Ago in Photos: A Look Back at 1968
A half-century ago, much of the world appeared to be in a state of crisis, with protests around the world, the Vietnam War, and the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Senator Robert Kennedy. But there was some progress to be found as well.
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Bettmann / Getty This Week 50 Years Ago: An Eclectic News Digest
Riots on the Sunset Strip, firefighters in asbestos suits, economic change in apartheid South Africa, a standoff with a territorial woodchopper, and more
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Carlo Allegri / Reuters How Ella Mae Wray Seized the Opportunities of 1968
For a young black woman trying to raise three children amid a personal tragedy, the politics of that year were intensely personal.
