The Republicans held their 1968 national convention from August 5–8 in Miami, Florida. Richard Nixon quickly emerged as the frontrunner for the nomination, ahead of Nelson Rockefeller and Ronald Reagan. This success was not accidental: since he lost his bid for the governorship of California in 1968, Nixon had been collecting political credits by branding himself as a candidate who could appeal to mainstream voters and by tirelessly working for other Republican candidates. In 1964, for example, he vigorously supported Barry Goldwater’s presidential bid and thus built good relationships with the new conservative movement in the Republican Party.

Although Goldwater lost the 1964 election, his vigorous rejection of New Deal state and social legislation, along with his support of states’ rights and opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, proved popular in the Deep South, which had resisted federal efforts at racial integration. Taking a lesson from Goldwater’s experience, Nixon also employed a southern strategy in 1968. Denouncing segregation and the denial of the vote to African Americans, he nevertheless maintained that southern states be allowed to pursue racial equality at their own pace and criticized legally enforced integration. Nixon thus garnered the support of South Carolina’s senior senator and avid segregationist Strom Thurmond, which helped him win the Republican nomination on the first ballot.

The Silent Majority

The Republican nominee’s campaign was defined by shrewd maintenance of his public appearances and a pledge to restore peace and prosperity to what he called “the silent center; the millions of people in the middle of the political spectrum.” This campaign for the “silent majority” was carefully calibrated to attract suburban Americans by linking liberals with violence and protest and rioting. Many embraced Nixon’s message; a September 1968 poll found that 80 percent of Americans believed public order had “broken down.” Many of these disaffected voters were northern, blue-collar workers who believed that their voices were seldom heard amidst the disruptive social changes roiling the country.

To many in this “silent majority,” the counterculture seemed like a home-grown threat to their way of life. Anti-war protests challenged their sense of patriotism and civic duty, whereas the recreational use of new drugs threatened their cherished principles of self-discipline, and urban riots invoked the specter of a racial reckoning. Government action on behalf of the marginalized raised the question of whether the White middle class would lose its privileged place in American politics.

As Lyndon Johnson’s approach to the war in Vietnam grew more unpopular, Nixon promised a secret plan to end the war honorably and bring home the troops. He also promised to reform the Supreme Court, which he contended had gone too far in “coddling criminals” in an era where violent crime was on the rise. Under Chief Justice Earl Warren, the court had used the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to protect the rights of the accused, such as requiring that someone’s constitutional rights be read to them when placed under arrest.

Nixon had found the political capital that would ensure his victory in the suburbs, which by now could produce more votes than either urban or rural areas. He championed “middle America,” which was fed up with social convulsions, and called upon the country to come together. His running mate, Maryland governor Spiro T. Agnew, blasted the Democratic ticket as “soft on crime,” and even summoned Baltimore’s Black leaders to a meeting, only to publicly hold them responsible for recent urban unrest in the city. Nixon and Agnew’s message thus appealed to northern middle-class and blue-collar White Americans as well as southern White Americans who had fled to the suburbs in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education that mandated integrated schools.

Figure 1. On the 1968 campaign trail, Richard Nixon flashes his famous “V for Victory” gesture (a). Nixon’s strategy was to appeal to working- and middle-class suburbanites. This image of him in the White House bowling alley seems calculated to appeal to his core constituency (b).

A Violent Primary Season

By contrast, in early 1968, Lyndon Johnson’s support had withered in the four years since his landslide victory. When Eugene McCarthy, the Democratic senator from Minnesota, announced that he would challenge Johnson in the primaries in an explicitly antiwar campaign, Johnson was overwhelmingly favored by Democratic voters. But then the Tet Offensive in Vietnam exploded on American television screens on January 31, playing out on the nightly news for weeks. On February 27, Walter Cronkite, a highly respected television journalist, offered his assessment that the war in Vietnam was unwinnable. Throughout the early primary state of New Hampshire, hundreds of young antiwar activists volunteered to go “Clean for Gene,” cut their hair, and campaign on behalf of the antiwar senator. Johnson still won the primary, but only narrowly—an embarrassing result for an incumbent president.

Divided Democrats

Figure 2. In his brother’s (John F. Kennedy’s) administration, Robert (Bobby) Kennedy had served as attorney general and had spoken out about racial equality.

McCarthy’s popularity encouraged Robert (Bobby, to friends and admirers) Kennedy to also enter the race. Realizing that his war policies could unleash a divisive fight within his own party for the nomination, Johnson announced that he would not stand for re-election as president. Nevertheless, his party cleaved apart. One faction consisted of the traditional party leaders who appealed to unionized, blue-collar constituents and “White ethnics” (Americans with recent European immigrant backgrounds). This group fell in behind Johnson’s vice president, Hubert H. Humphrey, who became the favorite for the nomination once Johnson withdrew.

The second group consisted of those idealistic young activists who had slogged through the snows of New Hampshire to give McCarthy a boost and saw themselves as the future of the Democratic Party. The third group, composed of Catholics, African Americans, and other minorities, and some of the young, antiwar element, galvanized around Robert Kennedy.

Finally, there were the southern Democrats, the Dixiecrats, who opposed the advances made by the civil rights movement. Some found themselves attracted to the Republican candidate Richard Nixon. Many others, however, supported the third-party candidacy of segregationist George C. Wallace, the former governor of Alabama.

Democratic Primaries

Kennedy and McCarthy fiercely contested the fifteen remaining Democratic primaries of the 1968 season. After a series of McCarthy victories, Kennedy’s only hope was that a strong enough showing in the California primary on June 4 might swing uncommitted delegates his way. He did manage to beat McCarthy, winning 46 percent of the vote to McCarthy’s 42 percent, but tragedy struck on the eve of victory. As he attempted to exit the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after his victory speech, Kennedy was shot; he died twenty-six hours later. His killer, Sirhan B. Sirhan, a Jordanian immigrant, had allegedly targeted him for advocating military support for Israel in its conflict with neighboring Arab states.

The Chicago Seven

Going into the nominating convention in Chicago in 1968, the tension between the Democrats’ factions came to a head. Some party factions hoped to make their voices heard; others wished to disrupt the convention altogether. Among them were antiwar protestors, hippies, and Yippies—members of the leftist, anarchistic Youth International Party organized by Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman—who called for the establishment of a new nation consisting of cooperative institutions to replace those currently in existence. To demonstrate their contempt for “the establishment” and the proceedings inside the hall, the Yippies nominated a pig named Pigasus for president.

A chaotic scene developed inside the convention hall and outside at Grant Park, where the protesters camped. Chicago’s mayor, Richard J. Daley, was anxious to demonstrate that he could maintain law and order, especially because several days of destructive rioting had followed the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. earlier that year. He thus let loose a force of twelve thousand police officers, six thousand members of the Illinois National Guard, and six thousand U.S. Army soldiers. Television cameras caught what later became known as a “police riot.” Armed officers made their way into crowds of law-abiding protesters, clubbing anyone they encountered and setting off tear gas canisters. The protesters fought back. The riot had strong elements of class conflict as well, as blue-collar policemen roughed up college-educated protestors, each group holding the other in contempt. Inside the convention hall, a Democratic senator from Connecticut condemned what he called “gestapo tactics in the streets of Chicago” as Mayor Daley jeered him from the convention floor.

Ironically, Hubert Humphrey received the nomination and gave an acceptance speech in which he spoke in support of “law and order.” When the convention ended, Rubin, Hoffman, and five other protesters (called the “Chicago Seven”) were placed on trial for inciting a riot. A 2020 film, The Trial of the Chicago 7, was based on the trial. Though Humphrey easily beat out McCarthy and McGovern for the nomination, his campaign never really recovered from the drama at the convention, which set Nixon up for an easy victory in the fall.

Figure 3. Despite facing charges following events at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Abbie Hoffman continued to protest the war on campuses across the country, as here (a) at the University of Oklahoma. Jerry Rubin (b) visited the campus of the University of Buffalo in March 1970, just one month after his conviction in the Chicago Seven trial. (credit a: modification of work by Richard O. Barry)