That year, Americans, and especially Democrats, were up in arms over the US involvement in the Vietnam War. Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy had been assassinated earlier that year, and the party entered the convention divided between pro- and anti-war candidates
[The party’s infighting was] escalated by a Democratic president, Lyndon Johnson, who believed [that by supporting the war] he was continuing the wishes of the martyred president, John F. Kennedy.
A lot of Democrats saw [the war] as part of this great anti-communist crusade, and a lot of people saw it as imperialism — that we were interfering in another country’s civil war. The idea that we had to get out was very prevalent on the left wing of the Democratic Party.
The last day of the convention was Thursday, and that’s when they said, we’re going to walk to the convention come hell or high water. Mayor Daley says, no way. Meanwhile, his police, who have been seething since April, were feeling an itchy trigger finger. There was all kinds of fearful rhetoric on both sides.
And another group of people wanted to parade to the convention hall, and they were much more conventionally political. A lot of them were radical revolutionaries and the kind of people who would hoist flags of the enemy in Vietnam, the Viet Cong.
Daley put his foot down and said these long-haired miscreants aren’t going to get the time of day in our city, which only ratcheted up the tensions and made them even more determined. The protesters essentially said: “We’ll sleep in the park even if you don’t want us to. We’ll march to the convention hall even if you don’t want us to. We’ll put our bodies on the line, in both cases.” Noel King.
Tom Hayden would say things like, “If blood is going to flow, it should flow all over the city.” By which he meant if there are attacks on protesters, we should go in all the neighborhoods. But that was interpreted as an intent to attack innocent people all over the city. Vox.
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