Anne and I went to see The 1968 Exhibit at the Missouri History Museum yesterday. This traveling exhibit tries to cover all facets of this pivotal year in American history. Anne and I were both freshmen in high school in 1968 / 1969. She was living in Ann Arbor and I was in the suburban Washington portion of Maryland. The bottom picture above is an animated GIF. Click on it to see it move. The following is the exhibit’s synopsis of itself:
The social forces that swirled through the turbulent 1960s crested in 1968. It was a turning point for a generation coming of age and a nation at war. The year saw the peak of the Vietnam War, the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, riots at the Democratic National Convention, assertions of Black Power at the Olympic Games and feminist demonstrations at the Miss America pageant. Hair opened on Broadway, Laugh-In debuted and became the number-one show on TV, Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate picked up Oscars and Johnny Cash gave a legendary performance at Folsom Prison. President Lyndon Johnson spoke of a country “challenged, at home and abroad” in his State of the Union address; his successor, Richard Nixon, promised in his nomination acceptance speech that “the long, dark night for America is about to end.” In the closing days of the year, we saw Earth in its entirety for the first time from the window of the Apollo 8 space capsule.