The End of the Sixties

The Destruction of an Era and Anna Luna

Many people have complemented me on my last eight substack installments. These were on the murders of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. I did this for two reasons.

First, in my opinion, those two cases do not get the attention they deserve. One of the main reasons they do not is because the assassination of President Kennedy stands like a sentinel over the sixties. It just about consumes the discussion of what happened to that dazzling decade. To take one example: there have been literally thousands of books written on the JFK case. Only a small fraction of that number have been penned on the other two.

Another difference is that there was a Hollywood blockbuster film made on the assassination of President Kennedy. I am referring of course to Oliver Stone’s JFK released in 1991. That film created a year of white-hot controversy in the press. The public demanded that congress declassify the still secret records on that case. That in turn caused congressional hearings to be held, which ended in the formation of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB). That body began its work in 1994. For four years the Board let loose a steady stream of previously classified documents. These did much to fill in previous holes in the John Kennedy assassination, and on many levels of that case.

Finally, of course, there is the fact that John F. Kennedy was the president of the United States. In other words, he was in position to run the country for three years, both domestic and foreign policy. In and of itself, that merits reams of day-to-day press attention. And when a president gets his head blown off at high noon in broad daylight on a city street with hundreds of witnesses around—with a film depicting that horrifying event—well, his assassination created the first post-war mega event.

But what I wish to address here is the rather ignored cumulative impact of the murders of MLK and RFK, within two months of each other in the spring and summer of 1968. In general, descriptive terms one can define what those two deaths did to the decade of the sixties. One can label the years of 1961-63 as the Camelot Sixties. This is when there were feelings of hope and aspiration--feelings JFK had fostered through his months-long campaign for the office. And which he was trying to carry through on after he was inaugurated. To take three examples: civil rights, a withdrawal from Vietnam, and the famous Peace Speech at American University.

When Kennedy was killed, as his brother Robert predicted, the détente JFK was seeking with the USSR went on ice. (David Talbot, Brothers, pp. 29-34) Johnson also reversed Kennedy’s withdrawal plan, Americanizing the Vietnam War to heights that would have been unimaginable under President Kennedy. And, as King thought, this staggering outlay of blood and treasure in Vietnam sandbagged the War on Poverty and the Great Society. Which caused three years of some of the worst racial riots in American history. Those brutal and bloody riots, complemented by the colossal anti-war demonstrations, turned the Camelot Sixties into years of rage and rebellion. Let us give the years 1964-67 the rubric of the Angry Sixties.

But there was still a glimmer of hope. Because King was trying to turn his struggle for civil rights into something even larger: getting out of Vietnam and turning America into a permanent peacetime economy. Secondly, as RFK had told the Russians, he would resign in 1964, run for a political office and then for the presidency. At that time, he would resume his brother’s quest for peace with Moscow. (Talbot, p. 32)

But I should add something here of key importance. The Bobby Kennedy of 1968 was not the Bobby Kennedy of 1961-63. Within hours of learning of his brother’s assassination, he immediately suspected that three groups were likely involved. The first was the CIA. The second was the Cuban exiles. And the third was organized crime. (Talbot, pp. 6-21). After his brother was buried, Bobby brought in emissary William Walton who was going to Moscow as a kind of artistic liaison to develop relations. He was the one who would give the Kremlin the message about the resumed quest for peace after Bobby ran for the presidency.

But Bobby also mentioned to Walton that he and Jackie Kennedy thought that JFK had been killed by a large domestic conspiracy. And Dallas was a perfect location to pull off such a crime. The realization of this reality seemed to alter Robert Kennedy. After months of hibernation due to grief, he emerged as a figure that proved to be even more liberal than his brother. For example, RFK once said the following about disrespect for the police in the ghetto: the law in the ghetto did not protect its citizens from paying premiums for inferior goods, from having furniture repossessed, or “from having to keep lights turned on the feet of children at night to keep them from being gnawed on by rats.” (Edward R. Schmitt, President of the Other America, p. 120).

But, in spite of this, as city after city went up in flames—Los Angeles, Newark and Detroit—Johnson would not let up on the war. In his January 12, 1966 State of the Union address, he seemed to insist that he could eliminate poverty, construct the Great Society, and execute a large land war in Asia, all at the same time. As King commented:

A few years ago, there was a shining moment, as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor. Then came the build-up in Vietnam, and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war….So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such. (Maurice Isserman and Michael Kazin, America Divided, p.192)

Between the fire and smoke in the inner city, and watching the Living Room War on TV, American youth was rising up in arms and taking to the streets. Johnson thought this might be Moscow inspired. So he told the FBI and CIA to check into that aspect--which turned out to be a dry well. (Bruce Schulman, Lyndon B. Johnson and American Liberalism, p. 146) Then, in the fall of 1967, he addressed a convention of the International Association of Chiefs of Police. (Allen Matusow, The Unraveling of America, p. 215) RFK predicted that this would happen. When the Detroit riot exploded he said this would spell the finish of the Great Society. And when he tried to offer a new package of legislation in that regard the White House failed to back it. (Schmitt, p. 190)

As the reader can see the Angry Sixties were really angry. And Johnson, who had actually caused the tumult, had no idea about how to make it all stop.

Once, Johnson had stood before congress and said these famous words in regards to his fallen predecessor: “Let us continue.” As the reader can see, that is not what Johnson actually did. And both King and Bobby Kennedy knew this. Bobby Kennedy said that his brother would have never sent combat troops to Vietnam. If South Vietnam could not defend itself, the USA could not win the war for them. (Chris Mathews, Bobby Kennedy: A Raging Spirit, pp. 304-05) In an appearance on the Mike Douglass Show—which can be viewed on YouTube-- King compared Vietnam to what President Kennedy had done at the Bay of Pigs: JFK admitted that he made a mistake by listening to the experts, he then pulled down the curtain on the failed operation.

In other words, both King and Bobby Kennedy were intent on getting out of Indochina. It was not until the Tet offensive that Johnson realized the fact that the war was lost. But by that time, it was too late to save his campaign for president in 1968. As revealed in Jules Witcover’s book 85 Days, RFK had decided to run against Johnson but he had done so just five days before the New Hampshire primary. So as not to have an impact on that election, he did not announce his candidacy until afterwards.

In an amazing outcome, LBJ almost lost the New Hampshire primary to Senator Eugene McCarthy. As Witcover reports, this was the death knell for Johnson’s candidacy. Polls indicated he would lose to McCarthy in Wisconsin. On March 31, 1968 Johnson went on TV and announced at the end of his speech on Vietnam that he would not be running for president. This opened the door even wider for RFK. Although his advisors wanted him to endorse McCarthy, King told them he wanted to wait to see what RFK was going to do. (Arthur Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy and his Times, p. 912) He did not feel that McCarthy was strong enough on civil rights.

We all know what happened. King was killed in early April. In Indianapolis, on the night King died, Bobby Kennedy gave probably his greatest speech. And that was the only major city in America that did not to go up in flames that evening. In early June RFK was also killed.

This led to a rudderless Democratic Party, since Vice President Hubert Humphrey would not separate himself from Johnson on the war—and he did not until mid-September. This meant that there was no strong anti-war candidate at the Chicago nominating convention. So the thousands of students who went there had no one to cheer. And when they tried to demonstrate, Mayor Richard Daley had his police there waiting for them--batons in hand. No one had ever seen such brutality at a political convention. Chicago was a debacle that Humphrey could not recover from. The deaths of MLK and RFK led to what I call the third phase of the decade: the Stoned Sixties, exemplified by Woodstock—psychedelic music, drugs and the ‘drop out’ syndrome.

The election of Richard Nixon marked the beginning of a rightward drift in American politics. Nixon was obsessed with Vietnam. As we know today, he sabotaged Johnson’s attempt at a peace treaty in 1968, promising Saigon a better deal if he was elected. And he continued a war that he knew could not be won through 1973. After this, as many have noted, the Republicans decided on a new strategy, penned by men like Kevin Phillips and Pat Buchanan and Lee Atwater. It mainly consisted of two strophes.

First, through symbolic language and gestures, there would be an appeal to racism in the South. This was best demonstrated by Ronald Reagan’s kick off appearance at the Neshoba County Fair in Mississippi on August 3, 1980. That fair was in direct proximity to the place where civil rights workers Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner were murdered in 1964. At that site, Reagan spoke about the concept of ‘states rights’. Which, of course, would have made sure that those murders were never solved.

The second appeal is to what I term, the calumny of hate—that is a constant harangue about divisive cultural issues. The latest being an obsession with trans athletes, to the point where they distract from what should be more important ones, like a declining standard of living. In my opinion if RFK and King had lived, this strategy would not have worked. In fact, Bobby Kennedy had worked on tactics to counter the man who really originated it all and who the GOP had borrowed it from. That would be Governor George Wallace. But LBJ’s failed presidency was specially packaged for this ‘law and order’ stratagem.

So if we examine the historical moment of the maelstrom of 1968 we can see that the dual assassinations of that year are as impacting as the JFK murder. In a very real way, they caused the termination of the sixties. All of that hope, vibrancy and expectation unleashed in Kennedy’s campaign of 1960 was literally killed off between April and June of 1968. The country and the Democratic Party have never been the same. Yet those two cases never get the attention that they deserve.

But the reader has an opportunity to do something about that right now. Which is a big reason I am writing all this. The Anna Luna Committee in congress has held two public hearings on the JFK case. Soon, they will begin declassifying records on the MLK and RFK cases. Please request that they hold public hearings on those cases also. There are two people one can contact to effect this:

William Christian, Chief of Staff to Anna Luna, Ph: 202 2255961, E mail: William.Christian @mail.house.gov

Jake Greenberg, Chief Counsel for investigations, Ph: 202 2255074, Email: JAKE.GREEBERG@MAIL.HOUSE.GOV

From my experience, Christian is more likely to reply to you. But if you can, contact both. Please suggest for the MLK hearings, author John Avery Emison and Judge Joe Brown. For the RFK case, I would recommend Lisa Pease.

If you can, do this today. Thanks.