Democratic National Convention Essay

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The Democratic National Convention of 1968

The events in Chicago of 1968 refined the country 's political and cultural institution not only that it shaped our current political and cultural life. The understanding of Chicago in 1968 will allow people to understand a violent era in the American history, as well as having a better understanding how Americans are politically. Chicago, Illinois held a democratic national convention from August 26 to August 29, 1968, which brought an uprising that impacted Chicago during and after the convention.

The Convention

The Democratic national convention of 1968 took place at the International Amphitheater in Chicago, Illinois. As they did every four years, in 1968 delegates of the Democratic Party …show more content…

and Robert Kennedy, and the failure of the Democratic Party to apply its civil rights policy had an effect both inside and outside of the International Amphitheatre, where the convention delegates gathered.” Robert F. Kennedy was sure to win before his assassination. At the convention, Democrats were to settle on Hubert H. Humphrey. Humphrey, Minnesota senator and Johnson’s vice president, and entered the race in late April. “Humphrey entered 1968 trying both to maintain loyalty to President Lyndon Johnson and to work within the Johnson administration toward a negotiated peace in Vietnam.” Tension first came to be when Humphrey received a first ballot nomination at the Democratic convention despite having entered no primaries. Humphrey selected Sen. Edmund S. Muskie of Maine as his running mate. Himself, along with many others thought that he would take Johnson’s position as the Representative of the Democratic Establishment. After Kennedy’s death a senator from Minnesota, Eugene McCarthy and Humphrey went head to head, but Humphrey’s plan was too overpowering for McCarthy. McCarthy was focused on a swift end to the Vietnam war. Inside the Amphitheatre, tension was also brewing. Antiwar delegates supporting Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern opposed the controlling Humphrey faction, not just over the nomination, but virtually in every aspect of the convention the ascend of tensions came from two types of thinkers. The left wing thinkers were against continuing war in Vietnam and were raged at the government’s failure to address racial and social problems