DESERET NEWS: CHICAGO -- About 800 National Guard troops surrounded the Democratic National Convention headquarters hotel today as 2,500 antiwar demonstrators defied a city law that closes parks from 11 p.m. to 4 a.m.
Deputy Police Supt. James Rochfold said the guardsmen took over protection of the Conrad Hilton Hotel only becuase many of the police had been on duty 15 to 17 hours, and were tired.But it was obvious that city officials were worried about the presence of hippies and the peace demonstrators, most of whom had been routed from Lincoln Park with clouds of tear gas just after midnight, because they defied the same law. Three hundred police won the "Battle of Lincoln Park," and took firm posession of their trash-littered battlefield by stationing blue-helmeted men every few hundred feet along its southern edge.
The 1960s were restless years marked by race confrontations, anti-Vietnam War demonstrations and the antics of a generation of displaced, disgruntled and distraught young people. The 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago became a forum for much more than party politics, but it was just one of many riots that ripped American cities. Charismatic men such as Abbe Hoffman replaced legitimate government as the focal points to which the armies of unhappy Americans flocked to express their discontent.