1/ I’ve repeatedly told my children what we are seeing now in terms of violence and unrest is nothing compared to what we’ve seen before, 1968 in particular. 1968 was significantly more violent and significantly more global. In chronological order:
2/ March. The Polish 1968 political crisis was a series of major student, intellectual and other protests against the communist regime of the Polish People's Republic. At least 2,725 people were arrested between 7 March and 6 April.
3/ The March/April period was a fateful month. First, on March 31st, LBJ announces he is not running for re-election, his presidency in tatters over Vietnam. On April 4th, MLK is assassinated. On April 6th, Black Panther Bobby Hutton was killed after. . .
4/ . . .Eldridge Cleaver lead him into an ambush with Oakland police. Cleaver claimed Hutton was shot by police with his hands up; the police claimed Hutton was fleeing custody. Hutton’s funeral was on April 12th and attended by 1200 people.
5/ Then in late-April 1968, a sit-in at Columbia University over a Harlem land grab for a new university gym (“Gym Crow” as it was called), turned into a serious crisis as students took over the administration building and took a dean hostage. 
6/ The occupation lasted a week when on April 30th, 1,000 police stormed the building and made over 700 arrests. 100 students were injured.
7/ Then the turmoil spreads overseas. Beginning in May, a period of civil unrest occurred throughout France, lasting some seven weeks and punctuated by demonstrations, general strikes, and the occupation of universities and factories.
8/ At the height, the economy of France came to a halt. The protests reached such a point that political leaders feared civil war or revolution; the national government briefly ceased to function after President Charles de Gaulle secretly fled France to Germany at one point.
9/ The unrest began with a series of student occupation protests against traditional institutions. France's trade unions called for sympathy strikes, which spread far more quickly than expected to involve 11 million workers, then more than 22% of the total population of France.
10/ It was the largest general strike ever attempted in France, and the first nationwide wildcat general strike. The strike was met with forceful confrontation by police.
11/ The de Gaulle administration's attempts to quell those strikes by police action only inflamed the situation further, leading to street battles with the police in the Latin Quarter, Paris. By late May, the flow of events changed.
12/ The Grenelle accords, concluded on 27 May between the government and trade unions, won significant wage gains for workers. The violence evaporated almost as quickly as it arose, and the Gaullists emerged stronger than before.
13/ June. Another eventful month. On June 3, Andy Warhol was shot by Valerie Jean Solanas over a professional dispute over a manuscript. Warhol survived. On June 5th, Robert Kennedy was mortally wounded by Sirhan Sirhan. He died on June 6th.
14/ July. On July 23–24, in the Glenville section of Cleveland, gunfire was exchanged for roughly four hours between the Cleveland Police Department and the Black Nationalists of New Libya, a Black Power group.
15/ The battle led to the death of three policemen, three suspects, and a bystander. At least 15 others (police, gunmen, and bystanders) were wounded. The gun battle sparked the Glenville Riots on July 26–27.
16/ Then, the African American mayor of Cleveland, Carl Stokes, refused to allow white police officers to patrol. When African American leaders in the neighborhood were unable to quell the violence, Stokes sent the Ohio Army National Guard and the rest of the Cleveland Police.
17/ August. Again, the unrest goes global. On August 20th in Operation Danube, approximately 250,000 Warsaw pact troops attacked Czechoslovakia. 137 Czechoslovakian civilians were killed and 500 seriously wounded during the occupation.
18/ The invasion successfully stopped Alexander Dubček's Prague Spring reforms and strengthened the authority of the authoritarian wing within the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ). And also lead partly to the fracturing of the Communist Party worldwide.
19/ Six days later we had the Democratic Convention and everyone knows what happened there. With thousands of protesters expected, 12,000 Chicago Police officers were deployed, along with the National Guard.
20/ Walter Cronkite noted on air, "The Democratic Convention is about to begin in a police state. There just doesn't seem to be any other way to say it."
21/ The world seemed to calm down after. LBJ halted the bombing in Vietnam, Nixon was elected in November promising “law and order,” and shortly thereafter the Rolling Stones released “Sympathy for the Devil.”
h/t as always to @DonLuskin for recording what the S&P 500 did every step of the way. Multiple high profile shootings, a mini-hostage crisis, riots, invasions, nationwide strikes, national figures fleeing their country. Quite the year.
