1968 (68 page)

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Authors: Mark Kurlansky

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BOOK: 1968
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The earth in the last week of 1968. Photographed behind the moon by
Apollo 8.

(Courtesy of National Space Science Data Center)

NOTES

CHAPTER 1:
 The Week It Began

3
with serenity.
French translations, unless otherwise indicated, are by the author.

4
“unusually mellow, almost avuncular” The New York Times,
January 1, 1968.

4
“Nguyen who hates the French.”
A. J. Langguth,
Our Vietnam: The War 1954–1975
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), 35.

5
“succeed in provoking a crisis.” Paris Match,
January 6, 1968.

6
“the higher our sales go.” The New York Times,
January 8, 1968.

8
“rescue our wounded officers.”
Ibid., March 2, 1968.

8
the night he was arrested.
Ibid., January 5, 1968.

10
Gore called “undemocratic.”
Ibid.

11
disagreements on tactics and language.
David Dellinger,
From Yale to Jail: The Life Story of a Moral Dissenter
(New York: Pantheon Books, 1993), 194–199.

11
April march on Washington.
Maurice Isserman and Michael Kazin,
America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 170.

13
in the movement when he was twelve. The New York Times,
January 5, 1968.

14
“potential problems around the world.” The New York Times,
January 1, 1968.

14
Hoffman later explained to federal investigators.
Jules Witcover,
The Year the Dream Died: Revisiting 1968 in America
(New York: Warner Books, 1997), 43, quoting from the Report of the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, 1968.

17
“catastrophe upon all the people of the region.” The New York Times,
January 1, 1968.

17
Arabs who were removed from the Old City.
Ibid., January 12, 1968.

18
At least twenty-six such groups were operating before the 1967 war.
Michael B. Oren,
Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 29.

18
the PLO under al-Shuqayri, Paris Match,
January 6, 1968.

18
returned to Lebanon.
Oren,
Six Days of War,
1.

19
an official poet was old-fashioned. The New York Times,
January 2, 1968.

19
“ ‘I’ll be your Baby Tonight.’ ” Time,
February 9, 1968.

19
“apparently felt he should return one.” The New York Times,
January 11, 1968.

20
doctors now making godlike decisions? Life,
April 5, 1968.

20
“I would pick the latter.” Paris Match,
January 20, 1968.

22
blamed the United States for the Vietnam War, Bratislava Pravda,
April 12, 1967, quoted in William Shawcross,
Dubcek
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990), 94.

23
Novotny´ was outmaneuvered again.
Shawcross,
Dubcek,
112.

23
“but also in progressive culture and art.” The New York Times,
January 2, 1968.

23 “Eto vashe delo” Shawcroft,
Dubcek,
111.

24
1,438 enemy soldiers. The New York Times,
January 5, 1968.

CHAPTER 2:
 He Who Argues With a Mosquito Net

25
“who happened to immigrate to Chicago,”
Alexander Dubcek,
Hope Dies Last: The Autobiography of Alexander Dubcek
(New York: Kodansha International, 1993), 1.

26
“only free country in the world is the Soviet Union.”
Shawcross,
Dubcek,
10.

27
Czech stereotypes of Slovaks.
Tomás Garrigue Masaryk,
The Making of a State
(London: Allen & Unwin, 1927), 21.

27
Czecho-Slovak and not Czechoslovakia,
Shawcross,
Dubcek,
12.

28
raw sparrow eggs in the shell.
Dubcek,
Hope Dies Last,
18–19.

28
anything to do with politics.
Zdenek Mlynár,
Nightfrost in Prague: The End of Humane Socialism
(New York: Karz Publishing, 1980), 65.

28
“love at first sight.”
Dubcek,
Hope Dies Last,
35.

29
porcelain for his wife.
Mlynár,
Nightfrost in Prague,
66.

29
“narrow-minded bourgeoisie of Bystrica.”
Shawcross,
Dubcek,
50.

30
“depressing for me.”
Dubcek,
Hope Dies Last,
82.

30
long walks in the forest.
Ibid., 83.

30
“victims of the 1950s repressions.”
Ibid., 82.

31
meeting of the Slovak Central Committee.
Shawcross,
Dubcek,
76.

34
“real conditions in the Soviet Union.”
Mlynár,
Nightfrost in Prague,
2.

34
a habit of listening to others.
Ibid., 122.

CHAPTER 3:
 A Dread Unfurling of the Bushy Eyebrow

39
adopted nonviolent law enforcement.
David J. Garrow,
Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
(New York: William Morrow & Company, 1986), 209.

39
“and stay in the news.”
Gene Roberts, interviewed September 2002.

39
“Your role is to photograph what is happening to us.”
Flip Schulke,
Witness to Our Times: My Life as a Photojournalist
(Chicago: Cricket Books, 2003), xvi. Also witnessed by Gene Roberts, interviewed September 2002.

Sheriff Clark swinging his billy club at a helpless woman.
Garrow,
Bearing the Cross,
381.

40
“the pen is still mightier than the sword.”
Mary King,
Freedom Song: A Personal Story of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement
(New York: William Morrow, 1987), 248.

40
“seems to me somebody foreign to me.”
Garrow,
Bearing the Cross,
289.

40
King statement should be no more than sixty seconds.
David Halberstam,
The Children
(New York: Fawcett Books, 1999), 433.

40
create fundamental changes—a slow, off-camera process.
Mary King,
Freedom Song,
480.

41
“you couldn’t shoot two hours.”
Daniel Schorr, interviewed April 2001.

41
“attention by doing that.”
Ibid.

41
“I’m afraid I did.”
Daniel Schorr,
Staying Tuned: A Life in Journalism
(New York: Pocket Books, 2001), 205.

42
enough time to formulate his response.
Ibid., 157.

42
“a lot of crap! But it was live.”
Daniel Schorr, interviewed April 2001.

42
and playing it that night.
Ibid.

43
“tides of rage must be loose in America?”
Norman Mailer,
Miami and the Siege of Chicago: An Informal History of the Republican and Democratic Conventions of 1968
(New York: World Publishing Company, 1968), 51.

43
potential supporters of the antiwar cause.
Dellinger,
From Yale to Jail
, 260–62.

44
“white people and their attitude.”
Garrow,
Bearing the Cross,
573.

44
“could really sink us next fall.” Time
magazine, January 26, 1968.

44
and economist Milton Friedman. The New York Times,
January 12, 1968.

45
Tet as the next chance for peace.
Ibid., January 2, 1968.

46
“self-determination in Southeast Asia.”
Ibid., January 13, 1968.

47
McCarthy by a margin of 5 to 1.
Ibid., January 15, 1968.

48 Time
magazine version
,
Time
magazine, January 26, 1968.

49
“what people really feel.”
United Press International, January 19, 1968, ran in
The New York Times,
January 20, 1968.

50
IR8 rice story.
Gene Roberts, interviewed September 2002.

51
film could be quickly shipped.
Don Oberdorfer,
Tet!: The Turning Point in the Vietnam War
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 5.

52
killed in an American bombing
, Ibid., 42–44.

52
to win a public relations victory. The New York Times,
February 1, 1968.

52
more than ten million homes.
Oberdorfer,
Tet!,
240.

52
“could be incomplete.” The New York Times,
February 5, 1968.

53
“stupid,” false,” and “unspeakable.”
Ibid., June 20, 1968.

53
“the good offices of the mass media.” Life
magazine, July 7, 1968.

54
brought the young man back to life. The New York Times,
March 12, 1968.

56
“the blind, and the female.”
Ibid., February 17, 1968.

56
weekly casualties, with 543 American soldiers killed. The New York Times,
February 23, 1968.

57
surprise on Christmas Eve 1944.
Oberdorfer,
Tet!,
71.

57
“thousands of people around the country.”
Ibid., 247.

58
heads never trusted a word from the generals.
Conversation with David Halberstam, May 2003.

59
it seemed to Cronkite and Salant
, Walter Cronkite, interviewed June 2002.

60
Viet Cong attack. The New York Times,
February 12, 1968.

60
another forty-five wounded.
Ibid., February 16, 1968.

63
“and for CBS to permit me to do.”
Walter Cronkite, interviewed June 2002.

CHAPTER 4:
 To Breathe in a Polish Ear

66
“a very large, unlimited ego.”
Marian Turski, interviewed July 1992.

67
he was meeting with Gomułka and other leaders.
Dariusz Stola, historian at Istitut Studiów Politycznych, interviewed June 2001.

70
“but there was no other.”
Jacek Kuroń, interviewed June 2001.

70
“noble human beings I have met in my life.”
Jan Nowak, interviewed May 2002.

71
“He was boyish . . .”
Ibid.

72
“anti-Semites call me a Jew,”
Adam Michnik, interviewed June 2001.

75
“nude and full, as it were, face.” The New York Times,
April 30, 1968.

75
from the bathtub in Brook’s production. Paris Match,
June 29, 1968.

76
“Really stirring,”
Michnik, interviewed May 2002.

76
“to attack Mickiewicz.”
Ibid.

76
“We decided to lay flowers”
Ibid.

76
“against students in Poland,”
Ibid.

77
“an extremely dangerous man.”
Ibid.

CHAPTER 5: 
On the Gears of an Odious Machine

82
“where most of the seniors are headed.” The New York Times,
March 19, 1968.

83
“It suddenly occurred to me.”
Cronkite, interviewed June 2002.

84
Seeger had turned into a civil rights song when sit-ins began in 1960.
King,
Freedom Song,
95–96.

84
at the counter until they were served. Register,
North Carolina A&T, February 5, 1960.

85
“Tennessee and involved fifteen cities.” The New York Times,
February 15, 1960.

85
“civil rights organizations completely by surprise,”
King,
Freedom Song,
69.

85
“identification with their courage and conviction deepened.”
Tom Hayden,
Reunion: A Memoir
(New York: Collier, 1988), 32.

87
completely unaware of it.
Tom Hayden, conversation May 2003.

87
“the South was beckoning,”
Hayden,
Reunion,
47.

87
“beating to beating, jail to jail,”
Ibid., 73.

88
in green suitcases to the Naked . . .
Allen Ginsberg, “Kral Majales,”
Planet News: 1961–1967
(San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1968), 89–91.

88
“compelled to enforce federal law.”
Isserman and Kazin,
America Divided,
34.

88
from a bus here Saturday morning. Montgomery Advertiser,
May 21, 1961.

88
Parchman Penitentiary.
King,
Freedom Song,
70.

89
with twenty thousand people arrested.
Todd Gitlin,
The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage
(New York: Bantam Books, 1987), 129.

89
North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia
, King,
Freedom Song,
407.

91
“(I had no idea what that was anyway)?”
Mario Savio, “Thirty Years Later: Reflections on the FSM,” 65. In Robert Chen and Reginald E. Zelnik, eds.,
The Free Speech Movement: Reflections on Berkeley in the 1960s
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).

95
their own California party.
King,
Freedom Song,
490–91.

95
wearing only bathing suits.
Jonah Raskin,
For the Hell of It: The Life and Times of Abbie Hoffman
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 64–65.

96
more than 20 percent white,
King,
Freedom Song,
502.

97
“might feel bad if you didn’t share it.”
Ibid., 406.

97
“bread by some dark skinned sharpie.”
Raskin,
For the Hell of It,
77.

98
“wrapped around induction centers,”
Ibid., 96.

98
“sweep-in” was “a goof.”
Ibid., 102.

99
to say it stood for Youth International Party.
Ibid., 129.

99
SDS was more than half Jewish.
Paul Berman,
A Tale of Two Utopias: The Political Journey of the Generation of 1968
(New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1997), 44.

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