18. The summer of 1967
The summer of 1967 is often referred to as the Summer of Love. It was the year The Beatles released their masterpiece Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Peace and love were watchwords, and Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco became an icon of the era. It was also the summer in which American cities exploded in riots across the country. Buffalo, Cairo, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Newark, and Portland all suffered through multi-day rioting. Two of the worst that long summer occurred in Detroit, and in Newark. In all, 159 riots occurred in the United States in 1967, leaving behind 83 dead, thousands of injuries, and property damage in the tens of millions.
Night after night, Americans turned to the nightly news on one of the three networks which existed at the time, hosted by experienced and trusted professional journalists. They saw American boys returning in body bags from the quagmire of Vietnam, the streets of their cities exploding in violence, and increasing numbers of American youth simply dropping out of society. American streets were patrolled by armed National Guardsmen. To quell the Detroit riots, the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions of the US Army deployed in the city’s streets. All of it was seen on television by increasingly disturbed Americans, as it became more and more apparent to some that the country was falling apart.