1968 - at MHS

It all started with a Groupon offer: Join the Minnesota Historical Society for $35. I should have renewed our membership long ago, no doubt. Well, here was my chance.

The next morning, after getting the African chicken stew with groundnuts and sweet potatoes going in the crockpot, we puttered over to MHS to see the highly-touted exhibit dedicated to that tumultuous year, 1968.

It’s a lively and fascinating show, and the entryway to the exhibit was packed when we got there. “It will thin out as we start to move on through,” Hilary assured me. Not true.

The first room sets the scene with a few pieces of sleek furniture, including an old television “console” from the midst of which Walter Cronkite tells us that the war in Vietnam is probably unwinnable and would, at best, end in stalemate. (This grim prognostication, which I believe was from Cronkite’s special, Who, What, When, Where, Why?, stood in stark contrast to the official reports being released to the public in those days.)

Stepping around the corner, we came face to face with a Huey helicopter. Many visitors linger here for quite a while, listening to veterans tell their horrific tales of jungle combat as video clips are projected onto the back wall of the copter’s interior. As a result, there’s a huge bottleneck. But that’s all right. It adds to the atmosphere of crowds and mayhem that typify many aspects of the era.

Skirting around this mob, we began to follow the almost daily timeline of events from month to month. Events from many spheres of life are highlighted, from fashion to foreign policy, from moon shots to Memphis riots. Resignations. Assassinations. Martin Luther King. Mayor Daley. Timothy Leary. Goldie Hawn. Some changed our world, while others are now the stuff of trivia questions.

The Russians invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968 to quell the Velvet Revolution. A few months later, Elvis started his comeback tour. Women’s liberation groups targeted the Miss America contest, and the American Indian Movement got going in Minneapolis. At the end of the year unemployment stood at 3.3 percent.

I turned sixteen in 1968. I remember the assassinations, the moon shots, the riots at the Democratic convention. But these events took place at the periphery of my “real” world, which was centered around canoeing, poker, the Butterfield Blues Band and Cannonball Adderley, and high school debate. “Resolved: that the United States should prohibit unilateral military intervention in foreign countries.” I could argue either side.

Everyone seemed to be enjoying the album covers. Laura Nyro, Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, Arlo Guthrie, the Moody Blues. The corny patchwork fashions and psychedelic designs of the era are also well-represented. You can even take a close look at a pair of Janis Joplin’s pants! I never liked that stuff at the time, and no one likes it now, as far as I can tell, except at Halloween.

Perhaps I was a bit straight-laced or “culturally aloof” at the time. A friend of mine later wrote in my high school yearbook, “I want to see you down at the University campus next year…wearing beads!”