I was 11 through most of 1968 (I'd turn 12 in September). For some reason, I remember everything that happened in the news that year. My parents subscribed to The New York Times, and reading the paper was a religion in our Manhattan apartment. Everyone took a section. And not just for the news. My father was Lou Myers, the commercial artist (and later New Yorker cartoonist) whose wild illustrations for major advertisers often graced full pages of the paper. It was exciting turning the pages and seeing one or more. [Pictured above, Lou Myers cartoon illustration for United Aircraft circa late 1960s]
In 1968, almost everything that had been building up in the '60s reached a break point. And so little made sense. The Tet offensive began in Vietnam in January, the Mai Lai massacre occurred in March and was soon revealed, the same month President Johnson announced he wouldn't seek re-election, Martin Luther King was assassinated in April and Columbia University was seized by students that month, Bobby Kennedy was killed in June, Chicago went nuts during the Democratic Convention in August, two African-America Olympic track athletes raised gloved fists on the stepped medals stand in protest that summer, Richard Nixon won the presidency in November and the Beatles' White Album came out on the fifth anniversary of President Kennedy's November 22 assassination. No one I knew had a clue what that album was about, just that there was way too much music to consume and a million enigmatic messages to untangle.
Earlier that year, in June, when school let out, my family went to Paris to stay with family friends. Then we spent about four weeks driving through Europe (four of those days were spent in an Alpine village after our windshield cracked and needed to be ordered and replaced). Paris in May had endured the worst street violence since the storming of the Bastille in 1789. Remnants of the battles were still evident. While it's easy to understand why America was melting down, what exactly were the issues that pulled Paris apart?
As May 2018 comes to a close, Jimi Mentis sent along a link to this terrific BBC documentary that explains how Paris and other European cities reached a boiling point 50 years ago...
