1968 a violent year worldwide
About the same time Democrats were gathering at Chicago's International Amphitheatre in late August 1968, Soviet tanks were rolling through Czechoslovakia to end the brief easing of Communist authority known as the Prague Spring.
The localized and international violence was emblematic of a year that saw global tensions with the Vietnam War and domestic tragedies including the assassinations of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in April and Robert Kennedy in June, explained historian Ann Durkin Keating.
"1968 was really a contentious and already violent year in Chicago," with widespread arson and looting on the West Side after King's death, said Keating, a professor at North Central College in Naperville and co-author of "The Encyclopedia of Chicago."
"There were many problems across the United States and worldwide with violence and student uprisings from Paris to Mexico City. What happened in Chicago in 1968 was part of a worldwide phenomenon."
The photos and film footage of people being beaten and tear-gassed by Mayor Richard J. Daley's forces haunted Chicago for decades.
The city hosted the nation's Democrats again in 1996 during Bill Clinton's second presidential campaign, which "exorcised the ghost of 1968 to some degree," Keating said.
Yet now with Chicago vying to stage the 2016 summer Olympics, "one of the really critical things to think about in terms of this Olympics bid is that Richard J. Daley wanted the 1968 convention to showcase Chicago," Keating said.
"Richard M. Daley wants the Olympics to showcase Chicago. There's always this element of 'be careful what you wish for.'"