Chicago '68

1967

August 15: At a convention of the National Student Association, Allard K. Lowenstein and Curtis Gans formally launch the Dump Johnson movement—an effort to oppose the renomination of Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson.

August 31: Five-day convention of the National Conference for a New Politics opens in Chicago. 3,000 delegates from some 200 left, community, and civil rights groups convene to discuss an electoral strategy for 1968. Some want a third-party slate with Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., running for President and peace activist Dr. Benjamin Spock for Vice-president. But the conference breaks up in rancor and division. Leftists who want to be active in a presidential race have nowhere to turn but the Democratic Party.

September 23: Allard Lowenstein meets with New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy. Kennedy declines to run as the candidate of the anti-Johnson movement. (In his search for a candidate, Lowenstein will ask California Congressman Don Edwards, Idaho Senator Frank Church, Canadian-born economist John Kenneth Galbraith, General James M. Gavin, and South Dakota Senator George S. McGovern; no one accepts the role.)

October 8: The Democratic Party announces that the 1968 Democratic National Convention will be held in Chicago.

October 20: Lowenstein meets with Minnesota Senator Eugene J. McCarthy. McCarthy agrees to be the movement’s candidate.

October 21-22: A demonstration at the Pentagon organized by the National Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam (MOBE) draws 100,000. Afterwards, MOBE begins to talk about antiwar protests during the 1968 Democratic National Convention, where President Johnson is expected to be nominated for a second term.

November 18: Governor George Romney of Michigan declares his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination. “A Republican president,” he says, “can work for a just peace in Vietnam unshackled by the mistakes of the past.”

November 30: Senator Eugene McCarthy officially enters the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, running on an antiwar platform.

December 31: Activists partying at Abbie Hoffman’s New York loft resolve to hold a Festival of Life during the Democrats’ “Convention of Death.” Paul Krassner christens the group “Yippies.”

1968

January 2: Dick Gregory, a black comedian who has become active in the civil rights movement, announces that he will organize protests and marches in Chicago before and during the Democratic National Convention to force the City to enact a stronger fair housing ordinance and take other steps to address civil rights issues in Chicago.

January 5: Dr. Benjamin Spock and four others are indicted on federal charges of conspiring to counsel draft evasion.

January 21: North Vietnamese troops surround the Khe Sanh combat base and begin a seventy-seven day siege of the 6,000 U.S. Marines stationed there.

January 23: North Korea seizes the U.S.S. Pueblo, a Navy intelligence ship which the North Koreans claim had violated their territorial waters. One U.S. sailor is killed and 82 are taken prisoner.

January 30: The Tet offensive begins in South Vietnam; Vietcong and North Vietnamese troops strike at targets across South Vietnam, reaching even the grounds of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. Often cited as a turning point in public support for the war. American troops will peak at 542,000 during 1968.

February 1: Richard Nixon enters the race for the Republican nomination for President. Nixon says that the war in Vietnam should be prosecuted “more effectively.”

February 8: Alabama Governor George Wallace enters the presidential race as an Independent.

Also on this date, three black students are killed and twenty-seven are wounded at South Carolina State University in Orangeburg, South Carolina, when state troopers fire on demonstrators demanding the integration of the local bowling alley. The incident is known as the Orangeburg Massacre.

February 27: CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite concludes a special report on Vietnam and the Tet offensive with an editorial, in which he says: “It seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate.” President Johnson is said to have responded: “That’s it. If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America.”

February 28: Romney withdraws from the Republican race.

March 12: Voters in the New Hampshire primary give President Johnson only a narrow victory over antiwar candidate Senator Eugene McCarthy.

March 16: Senator Robert Kennedy reverses his earlier decision and announces his candidacy for the Democratic nomination, criticizing Johnson for his handling of the war.

Also on this date, in South Vietnam, Charlie Company (11th Brigade, Americal Division) enters the village of My Lai and kills over 300 apparently unarmed civilians. The American public will not hear about the My Lai atrocities until November 1969.

March 22-23: A MOBE conference in Lake Villa, Illinois brings together MOBE, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and Yippie activists to plan the Convention demonstrations.

March 31: Lyndon Johnson withdraws from the Democratic primary race. Read the New York Times story.

April 4: Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. Riots break out in more than a hundred cities. On the west side of Chicago, nine blacks are killed and twenty blocks are burned.

April 11: President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968. While primarily addressing open housing, the Act also includes a new federal anti-riot law, making it a crime to cross state lines with the intent to incite a riot.

April 15: Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley publicly criticizes Superintendent of Police James Conlisk’s cautious handling of the riots that followed King’s assassination. He said he was giving the police specific instructions “to shoot to kill any arsonist and to shoot to maim or cripple anyone looting.”

On the same day, Dick Gregory, citing “inflammatory” conditions in Chicago, says he will not lead any demonstrations during the August Convention.

April 23: At Columbia University in New York, students opposed to the university’s defense contracts and their plans for a new gymnasium to be built on Harlem park land occupy several campus buildings. They are routed by city police a week later: 150 injuries, 700 arrests.

April 27: An antiwar march in Chicago draws 8,000 people. When the march ends, Chicago police order the crowd to disperse, then wade in with clubs. The unofficial Sparling report criticizes the police and the Daley administration.

Also on this date, Vice-president Hubert H. Humphrey announces his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination.

April 30: Nelson Rockefeller, Governor of New York, enters the race for the Republican presidential nomination.

May 6-30: Student demonstrations in France lead to a general strike throughout the country. Ten million workers strike, 10,000 battle police in Paris.

May 10: Peace talks open in Paris with Averell Harriman representing the U.S. and Xan Thuy representing North Vietnam. Talks soon deadlock over the North Vietnamese demand for an end to all U.S. bombing of North Vietnam. More than 2,000 American soldiers die in combat in May, the highest monthly loss of the war.

May 13: In Washington D.C., Resurrection City rises, a demonstration by the Poor People’s Campaign.

May 14: J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI, sends a memorandum to all FBI field offices initiating a counter-intelligence program (COINTELPRO) to disrupt new left groups.

June 5: Senator Robert Kennedy is assassinated in Los Angeles moments after declaring victory in the California Democratic presidential primary.

June 14: Dr. Benjamin Spock and four others are convicted of conspiring to counsel draft evasion.

June 23: A group of Connecticut McCarthy supporters, disgruntled at being under-represented in their state’s delegation to the upcoming convention, meet to create a Commission on the Selection of Presidential Nominees. This commission will submit proposals to the convention’s Rules Committee calling for an end to the practice of winner-takes-all in state delegations. [The 1968 convention agreed to study the issue. The resulting committee, the Commission on Party Structure and Delegate Selection—which would be chaired by Senator George McGovern—made recommendations that were adopted by the Democratic National Committee in 1971 and effectively placed control of the Democratic presidential nomination process beyond the reach of the traditional party regulars.]

June 29: 1,200 disaffected Democrats meet in Chicago as the Coalition for an Open Convention, an effort largely organized by Allard Lowenstein. The group concludes that time is too short to mount a fourth-party bid for the presidency. They pass a resolution opposing Humphrey. The group’s course of action in the event that Humphrey does not get the nomination is unclear; Lowenstein says: “If we get to that bridge, I’ll jump off it.”

July 15: The Yippies apply for permits to camp in Lincoln Park (about two miles north of the Chicago Loop) and to rally at Soldier Field (on the lakefront south of the Loop).

July 29: MOBE applies for permits to march to and rally at the International Amphitheatre (site of the Democratic Convention and about five miles southwest of the Loop) and to march to and rally in Grant Park (just east of the Loop). All permits are denied, except one allowing the use of the Grant Park bandshell for a rally.

August 5: On the day that the Republican National Convention opens in Miami Beach, Florida, Ronald Reagan declares he is a candidate for the Republican nomination.

August 8: Richard M. Nixon wins the Republican party’s nomination for President. The first foreign policy objective of his administration, he says in his acceptance speech, will be “to bring an honorable end to the war in Vietnam.” At the same time, not far away in the black neighborhoods of Miami, riots result in four deaths and hundreds of arrests.

August 10: Senator George S. McGovern announces his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination.

August 21: Soviet tanks and troops roll into Czechoslovakia to crush the Prague Spring reform movement.

Convention Week

August 22, Thursday: Dean Johnson, a seventeen-year-old Sioux Indian from South Dakota, is shot dead by Chicago police on Wells Street. Police say he pulled a gun. A memorial march is held later in the day.

August 23, Friday: At the Civic Center plaza (located in the Loop and now known as the Daley Center) the Yippies nominate their presidential contender—Pigasus the pig. Seven Yippies and the pig are arrested.

Almost 6,000 National Guardsman are mobilized and practice riot-control drills. Special police platoons do the same.

At Fort Hood, Texas a hundred soldiers—told they will be flown to Chicago for riot-control duty—hold an all-night demonstration. On Saturday morning forty-three soldiers, all of them African American, are arrested.

August 24, Saturday: MOBE’s marshal training sessions continue in Lincoln Park. Karate, snake dancing, and crowd protection techniques are practiced. Women Strike for Peace holds a women-only picket at the Hilton Hotel, where many delegates are staying. At the 11 PM curfew, poet Allan Ginsberg, chanting, and musician Ed Sanders lead people out of the park.

August 25, Sunday: MOBE’s “Meet the Delegates” march gathers 800 protesters in Grant Park across from the Hilton Hotel. The Festival of Life, in Lincoln Park, opens with music. 5,000 hear the MC-5 and local bands play. Police refuse to allow a flatbed truck to be brought in as a stage. A fracas breaks out in which several are arrested and others are clubbed. Police reinforcements arrive.

At the 11 PM curfew, most of the crowd, now numbering around 2,000, leave the park ahead of a police sweep and congregate between Stockton Drive and Clark Street. The police line then moves into the crowd, pushing it into the street. Many are clubbed, reporters and photographers included. The crowd disperses into the Old Town area, where the battles continue.

August 26, Monday: In the early morning, Tom Hayden is among those arrested. 1,000 protesters march towards police headquarters at 11th and State. Dozens of officers surround the building. The march turns north to Grant Park, swarming the General Logan statue. Police react by clearing the hill and the statue.

At the International Amphitheatre, Mayor Daley formally opens the 1968 Democratic National Convention. [The convention would have been held in McCormick Place on the Chicago lakefront, but it was destroyed by fire in January 1967.] In his welcoming address, Daley says: “As long as I am mayor of this city, there’s going to be law and order in Chicago.”

As the curfew approaches, some in Lincoln Park build a barricade against the police line to the east. About 1,000 remain in the park after 11 PM. A police car noses into the barricade and is pelted by rocks. Police move in with tear gas. Like Sunday night, street violence ensues. But it is worse. Some area residents are pulled off their porches and clubbed. More reporters are attacked this night than at any other time during the week.

August 27, Tuesday: At 1 PM 200 members of the American Friends Service Committee and other pacifist groups leave a near-northside church to march to the Amphitheatre. Joined by others along their route, the marchers eventually number about 1,000. The police stop the march at 39th and Halstead, about half-a-mile north of the Amphitheatre. The marchers set up a picket line and remain in place until 10 AM the next morning. They are then ordered to disperse and 30 resisters are arrested. This is the only march of Convention Week that gets anywhere near the Amphitheatre—it also gets virtually no publicity.

About 7 PM Black Panther Party Chairman Bobby Seale speaks in Lincoln Park. He urges people to defend themselves by any means necessary if attacked by the police.

An “Unbirthday Party for LBJ” convenes at the Chicago Coliseum. Performers and speakers include Ed Sanders, Abbie Hoffman, David Dellinger, Terry Southern, Jean Genet, William Burroughs, Dick Gregory, Allen Ginsberg, Phil Ochs, and Rennie Davis. 2,000 later march from the Coliseum to Grant Park.

In Lincoln Park, 200 clergy and lay church people, toting a 12-foot cross, join 2,000 protestors to remain in the park past curfew. Again, tear gas and club-swinging police clear the park. Many head south to the Loop and Grant Park.

At Grant Park, in front of the Hilton, where the television cameras are, 4,000 demonstrators rally to speeches by Julian Bond, Davis, and Hayden. Mary Traverse and Peter Yarrow sing. The rally is peaceful. At 3 AM the National Guard relieve the police. The crowd is allowed to stay in Grant Park all night.

August 28, Wednesday: 10-15,000 gather at the old Grant Park bandshell for the MOBE’s antiwar rally. Dellinger, Gregory, Ginsberg, Norman Mailer, Jerry Rubin, Carl Oglesby, Hayden, and many others speak. 600 police surround the rally on all sides. National Guardsmen are posted on the roof of the nearby Field Museum.

In the Convention at the Amphitheatre, the peace plank proposed for the Democratic party platform is voted down.

At the bandshell rally, news of the defeat of the peace plank is heard on radios. A young man begins to lower the American flag flying near the bandshell. Police push through the crowd to arrest him. Then a group, including at least one undercover police officer, completes the flag lowering and raises a red or blood-splattered shirt. Police move in again. A line of MOBE marshals is formed between the police and the crowd. Police charge the marshal line. Rennie Davis is beaten unconscious.

At rally’s end Dellinger announces a march to the Amphitheatre, while Hayden urges the crowd to move in small groups to the Loop. 6,000 join the march line, but, since it has no permit and the police refuse to allow it to use the sidewalks, the march does not move. After an hour of negotiation, the march line begins to break up. Protestors try to cross over to Michigan Avenue, but the Balbo and Congress bridges have been sealed off by National Guardsmen armed with .30 caliber machine guns and grenade launchers. The crowd moves north and finds that the Jackson Street bridge is unguarded. Thousands surge onto Michigan Avenue. Coincidentally, the mule train of Ralph Abernathy’s Poor People’s Campaign, which has a permit to go to the Amphitheatre, is passing south on Michigan. The crowd joins it. At Michigan and Balbo the crowd is halted again. Only the mule train is allowed to continue.

Deputy Police Superintendent James Rochford orders the police to clear the streets. Demonstrators and bystanders are clubbed, beaten, Maced, and arrested. Some fight back and the attack escalates. The melee last about seventeen minutes and is filmed by the TV crews positioned at the Hilton. While this was probably not the most violent episode of Convention Week—the Lincoln Park and Old Town brawls were more vicious—it drew the most attention from the mass media.

Inside the Amphitheatre, presidential nominations are underway. Senator Abraham Ribicoff, in his speech nominating George McGovern, denounces the “Gestapo tactics on the streets of Chicago.” Mayor Daley’s shouted reaction was on-camera, but off-mike. Lip-readers later decoded a vulgar rage. Hubert H. Humphrey wins the party’s nomination on the first ballot.

500 antiwar delegates march from the Amphitheatre to the Hilton; many join the 4,000 protestors in Grant Park. Again, protestors are allowed to stay in the park all night.

August 29, Thursday: Senator Eugene McCarthy addresses about 5,000 gathered in Grant Park. Several attempts are made to march to the Amphitheatre. A group of delegates try to lead a march but are turned back with tear gas. Dick Gregory invites all the demonstrators to his house, which happens to be in the direction of the Amphitheatre. This too is turned back, at 18th Street.

Near midnight, the 1968 Democratic National Convention is adjourned.

August 30, Friday: About 5 AM police raid a McCarthy campaign hospitality suite on the 15th floor of the Hilton Hotel, because objects are being thrown from the windows. A relatively small incident escalates as more rooms of McCarthy campaign workers are entered and several people are hit with nighsticks.

The arrest count for Convention Week disturbances stands at 668. An undetermined number of demonstrators sustained injuries, with hospitals reporting that they treated 111 demonstrators. The on-the-street medical teams from the Medical Committee for Human Rights estimated that their medics treated over 1,000 demonstrators at the scene. The police department reported that 192 officers were injured, with 49 officers seeking hospital treatment.

During Convention Week, 308 Americans were killed and 1,144 more were injured in the war in Vietnam.

September 9: In a press conference, Mayor Daley makes a now-famous slip of the tongue: “The policeman isn’t there to create disorder, the policeman is there to preserve disorder.”

October 1: The House Committee on Un-American Activities convenes hearings to plumb the extent of Communist subversion in the Convention Week protests. Testifying over the course of the hearings are: Lt. Joseph Healy and Sgt. Joseph Grubisic, both of the Intelligence Division of the Chicago Police Department (the Red Squad); Robert Pierson, a Chicago police officer who went undercover and was Jerry Rubin’s bodyguard; Robert Greenblatt, national coordinator of MOBE; Dr. Quentin Young of the Medical Committee for Human Rights; and soon-to-be-indicted Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, and David Dellinger. (The hearings recessed on October 3rd and were concluded December 2 through 5.)

November 5: Nixon is elected, defeating Humphrey by 500,000 votes. George Wallace receives about 13% of the vote nationwide and wins five Southern states.

December 1: Public release of Rights in Conflict, commonly called the Walker Report. The National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, charged with studying and reporting on urban riots, formed a Chicago Study Team headed by Daniel Walker, to investigate the Convention Week disturbances. They reviewed over 20,000 pages of statements from 3,437 eyewitnesses and participants, 180 hours of film, and over 12,000 still photographs. The Walker Report attached the label “police riot” to the events of Chicago ‘68. Read an excerpt—the summary to Rights in Conflict.

1969

February 26: Thirteen individuals, including five who were convention delegates from New York, go on trial in Cook County Circuit Court on disorderly conduct charges related to the delegate-led attempt to march to the International Amphitheatre on Thursday, August 29. The trial takes 26 days—a record for disorderly conduct charges—and all the defendants are found guilty on April 14.

March 20: Rennie Davis, David Dellinger, John Froines, Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Bobby Seale, and Lee Weiner are indicted on Federal charges of conspiring to cross state lines “with the intent to incite, organize, promote, encourage, participate in, and carry out a riot.” Six defendants—Dellinger, Hayden, Davis, Hoffman, Rubin and Seale—are also individually charged with crossing state lines with the intent to incite a riot. Each of the two charges carried a five-year sentence; each defendant thus faces a ten-year prison term. The indictment charges that Froines and Weiner, in addition to the conspiracy charge, “did teach and demonstrate to other persons the use, application and making of an incendiary device.”

The same Federal grand jury that returned these criminal indictments also charged eight Chicago policemen with civil rights violations for assaulting demonstrators and news reporters. None of the policemen were convicted. (Forty-one officers of the Chicago Police Department were disciplined after internal investigations, and two resigned, for infractions like removing their badges and nameplates while on duty during Convention Week.)

June 8: Gradual withdrawal of U.S. forces from Vietnam begins as Nixon announces that 25,000 troops will be withdrawn.

June 18-22: SDS holds it national convention in Chicago. The organization splits into at least two factions—the Progressive Labor Party and the Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM).

August 15-17: The Woodstock music festival—the Festival of Life a year late—convenes and communes in upstate New York.

September 24: The Chicago 8 conspiracy trial begins in the courtroom of Judge Julius Hoffman.

October 8-11: The Weatherman faction of SDS—which split off from RYM—holds its National Actions—the Days of Rage—in Chicago. As if seeking revenge for Convention Week, pipe-wielding Weathermen race through the streets, attacking police, windows, and cars.

October 15: An estimated 2 million people across the country participate in the first Moratorium against the war.

November 5: The Chicago 8 becomes the Chicago 7, when a mistrial is declared in the case of Bobby Seale and a new, separate trial is ordered. After repeatedly asserting his right to an attorney of his own choosing or to defend himself, Seale had been bound and gagged in the courtroom. He is sentenced to four years for contempt of court. (The sentence is later reversed.) Seale is never convicted of any Convention Week charges.

November 15: A MOBE-organized march draws 500,000 people to Washington, D.C.; 150,000 attend a march in San Francisco.

December 4: In an early morning raid, Chicago police fire nearly 100 shots into a west side apartment. Illinois Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton and Party member Mark Clark are killed. One or two shots were fired by the Panthers.

1970

February 18: The jury reaches a verdict and the Chicago 7 conspiracy trial ends. All the defendants are acquitted on conspiracy charges. Froines and Weiner are acquitted on all charges. Davis, Dellinger, Hayden, Hoffman, and Rubin are each convicted of individually crossing state lines with the intent of inciting a riot; each is sentenced to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine. Judge Hoffman cites all the defendants—plus their lawyers William Kunstler and Leonard Weinglass—for numerous contempts of court and imposes sentences ranging from 2½ months to four years. Defendants are freed on bail pending an appeal.

March 6: Three members of Weathermen are killed when the bomb they are building in a New York townhouse explodes.

April 30: Three divisions of American troops cross the border from Vietnam into Cambodia to destroy enemy camps and supplies. Student strikes shut down hundreds of college campuses in the U.S. over the next few days.

May 4: Four students are killed and nine injured by National Guard troops during protests at Kent State University in Ohio. In the aftermath, demonstrations spread to more than a thousand campuses and 100,000 rally in Washington, D.C.

May 15: At Jackson State College in Mississippi, two students are killed and twelve are injured when city police and highway patrolmen fire on a dormitory building.

August 24: A homemade bomb explodes in a stolen van parked at the loading dock outside the Army Math Research Center on the campus of the University of Wisconsin at Madison. A graduate student is killed and five are injured. The Army Math bombing is the first loss of innocent life caused by antiwar activists and divides the Left into those who condemn it and those who justify it.

1971

March 29: U.S. Army Lieutenant William Calley is found guilty of 22 murders in the My Lai massacre and sentenced to life in prison. (Twenty-six officers and soldiers, including Calley’s immediate superior officer, Captain Ernest Medina, were initially charged in connection with their actions at My Lai, but Calley is the only one convicted. Calley’s sentence was later reduced and he served less than four years.)

May 3: In Washington D.C. tens of thousands of anti-war activists use civil disobedience tactics to try to shut down the Federal government in protest of the Vietnam War. Arrests number about 12,000. Chicago Seven defendant Rennie Davis is a key organizer of the actions.

June 13: The New York Times begins publication of the History of U.S. Decision Making Process on Vietnam Policy, better known as the Pentagon Papers—a secret Defense Department study, prepared in 1967-69, of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. The Pentagon Papers were leaked to the Times by Daniel Ellsberg, a former Defense Department analyst. (Read an excerpt from the Pentagon papers.)

1972

February 8: An appeal of the convictions of Dellinger, Hayden, Davis, Hoffman, and Rubin on the individual charges of crossing state lines with the intent to incite a riot is heard by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.

February 9: An appeal of the contempt sentences of the Chicago 7 and their attorneys is heard by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. In a separate proceeding an appeal of the contempt sentences of Bobby Seale is also argued.

May 11: Ruling by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals voids a few of the contempt citations of the Chicago 7 and their attorneys, but remands the rest for trial by a judge other than Julius Hoffman. The Court also issues its reversal of the contempt sentences for Seale and remands all the citations for retrial. (The government decides not to proceed with a contempt trial for Seale, but to go to trial on the contempt charges against the Chicago 7 and attorneys Kunstler and Weinglass.)

June 17: Five men are arrested in a break-in at the Democratic National Committee offices in Washington’s Watergate complex.

July 10: The 1972 Democratic National Convention opens in Miami Beach. The new delegate selection rules and processes set into motion by the 1968 convention have changed the makeup of the convention. However Mayor Daley, leader of the Illinois delegation, ignored the new rules. The Daley delegation was challenged and the credentials committee rejected his delegation, replacing it with a delegation led by the Rev. Jesse Jackson. George McGovern wins the nomination.

November 7: Nixon is re-elected to a second term as President, defeating McGovern.

November 21: Ruling by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals on the convictions of Dellinger, Hayden, Davis, Hoffman, and Rubin for crossing state lines with the intent to incite a riot. Citing judicial error, the convictions are reversed and a new trial is ordered. The Court adds “that the demeanor of the judge and the prosecutors would require reversal if the other errors did not.”

1973

January 4: The U.S. Attorney announces that it will not seek a new trial on the individual counts of Dellinger, Hayden, Davis, Hoffman, and Rubin.

January 27: The U.S., North Vietnam, South Vietnam, and the Vietcong sign a ceasefire agreement in Paris. By April the last American combat soldiers have left Vietnam, leaving only military advisers and security forces.

October 29: Trial on the contempt citations of the Chicago 7 and their attorneys before Judge Edward T. Gignoux, a U.S. District Court judge from Maine. For the trial, the government reduces the number of contempt charges to 52. Rubin, Hoffman, and Kunstler are found guilty of two contempts each. Dellinger is found guilty of seven contempts. However in consideration of “judicial error, judicial or prosecutorial misconduct, and judicial or prosecutorial provocation” no sentence is imposed.

1974

July 27-30: The House Judiciary Committee votes three articles of impeachment against President Nixon in connection with the Watergate burglary.

August 9: Facing impeachment and eroding public support, Nixon resigns.

1975

April 30: The last American personnel in Vietnam leave via helicopter from the roof of the U.S. Embassy as Saigon becomes Ho Chi Minh City. Three million Americans served in the war; nearly 58,000 were killed, 150,000 seriously wounded, and over 1,000 are missing in action.