During the Sixties, a new generation grew especially distanced from their parents and government. Many disillusioned youths deliberately went against societal convention. Others were not content merely to withdraw from the Establishment; they wanted to change it. This is evidenced by the many protests the Vietnam War, as well as the increasingly militant civil rights movement. In Chicago, race riots broke out in 1968 on the West Side, sparked by the assassination of Martin Luther King. King’s assassination proved for some that nonviolence was an ineffective course for attaining long-sought civil rights for blacks; many felt they could no longer leave their freedom up to people who planned on attaining it through such a slow and grueling process.