5. 1968
During 1968 divisive issues tore America’s social fabric apart. Race riots turned large swathes of America’s cities into smoking ruins. Peaceful demonstrations turned violent, sometimes through the actions of outside instigators, sometimes through the actions of the police and National Guard. College campuses became the sites of high indignation, rather than higher learning. Protestors marched against the draft, American involvement in Vietnam, racial inequality, feminine inequality. That spring, Soviet troops crushed the beginnings of reforms in Czechoslovakia meant to provide more freedom for Czech citizens. Instead, the reform movement was crushed under the boot heels of more than half a million Soviet troops.
The murder of Martin Luther King in April led to massive riots in American cities, with the notable exception of Indianapolis, where a campaigning Robert F. Kennedy delivered an impassioned speech, imploring the largely black crowd to remain peaceful. Two months later Kennedy too lay dead, struck down by an assassin. Student riots occurred in Paris, France, Belgrade in Yugoslavia, and in Rio de Janeiro. A massive earthquake struck the Philippines, while in Costa Rica a volcano dormant for centuries suddenly erupted, burying three villages. For people across the globe, 1968 appeared as the end of the earth, with humanity rapidly approaching violent extermination.