Bob Herbert in the New York Times on the tumult that was 1968:
On April 3, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed in Memphis. Violence erupted in dozens of cities, and especially in Washington, where a number of people were killed and the fires were the worst the city had experienced since the British took the torch to it in 1814.
John J. Lindsay of Newsweek magazine said that when Bobby Kennedy was told that King had died, he put his hands to his face and murmured: “Oh, God. When is this violence going to stop?”
I was born about seven weeks later, and a week after that Kennedy himself was assassinated. Add to that the students rioting on the streets of Paris and Grosvenor Square, is it any wonder I’ve been suffering from post-traumatic-stress for nearly 40 years? Everyone around me thought the world was about to end.
For your delectation, here’s a sound of those times: The Staple Singers version of “For What it’s Worth” (1967 single on Epic Records):
DownloadThe Staple Singers “For What It’s Worth”
