Nation rocked with war protests, race riots
Although remembered by many for the Summer of Love, the rest of 1967 was filled with a lot of anger, frustration and fear.
It was a year of growing dissatisfaction with the war in Vietnam as evidenced by demonstrations and by indictments against boxer Muhammad Ali and Beach Boys member Carl Wilson for refusing induction and draft evasion, respectively.
In October, thousands of war protesters tried to storm the Pentagon, and four people poured blood on Selective Service records.
The U.S. had almost 500,000 troops in Vietnam, and, in February, the troops began the largest offensive of the war. About a dozen nuclear tests were done in the U.S., while Russia and China also exploded several nuclear weapons.
On a positive note, a treaty banning the use of nuclear weapons in space was signed, and U.N. Secretary General U Thant made public proposals for peace in Vietnam. Coincidentally, it also was the year J. Robert Oppenheimer, labeled the father of the atomic bomb, died.
It was a year of growing racial unrest that was symbolized by the inauguration of Lester Maddox as governor of Georgia. In May, African-American students seized the finance building at Northwestern University, and a month later race riots broke out in the Roxbury section of Boston.
Similar riots soon followed in Tampa, Fla., Cincinnati, Ohio, and Buffalo, N.Y., leading up to riots in Newark, N.J., in which more than two dozen people were killed. Before the summer was over, more racial clashes occurred in Cairo, Ill., Durham, N.C., Memphis, Tenn., Cambridge, Md., Milwaukee and Detroit, with more than 40 people killed and 2,000 injured in the latter.
President Lyndon Johnson set up a commission to study the cause of the urban violence three days before the Milwaukee riots, where four died.
Not all the racial news was bad. Among the history-making changes, Maj. Robert Lawrence Jr. was picked as the first black astronaut, Thurgood Marshall was sworn in as the first black Supreme Court justice and Carl Stokes became the first black mayor of a major American city when he took office in Cleveland.
It was the year of the first Super Bowl, the debut of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood and the "Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour" and the airing of the final Milton Berle show. It was the year Jimi Hendrix burned his guitar for the first time. And, at the box office, the movie "Casino Royale" premiered.
At least James Bond and "Casino Royale" still are around.
Posted in Local on Monday, July 9, 2007 12:00 am Updated: 10:13 pm.
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