Hardcover, 136 pages
9.25 × 11 in.
24.13 × 27.94 cm
Chicago 1968 represents, perhaps as no other moment in American history,
the flashpoint of cultural resistance to a militarized world out of
control. In the summer of 1968, still reeling from the assassinations of
Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy only months earlier, thousands of
young people descended on the National Democratic Convention to show
their opposition to the Vietnam War and their desire for a Peace
platform. The showdown between "the longhairs" and "the pigs" would
become one of the most violent and starkly emblematic confrontations
ever broadcast on nightly news in the United States. "The whole world
was watching," CBS reporter Dan Rather uttered on the floor of the
convention center in Chicago, and he was correct: The 1968 Democratic
Convention was the first nationally televised political convention.
Police and National Guard troops, clashing with protesters, herded tens
of thousands of demonstrators into exit-less corridors, and as the
mayhem ensued, police indiscriminately cracked heads.
Witnessing it all were some of the most attuned minds of the day,
including Norman Mailer, Allen Ginsberg, Studs Terkel, and the "hard
hitting investigative team" Esquire had assembled, which included
Terry Southern, William Burroughs, and Jean Genet. Shortly after bumping
into Southern at the bar of the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles,
photographer Michael Cooper decided to tag along, gaining official
accreditation as photographer.
Editors Nile Southern and Adam Cooper, having dreamt for many years
about a print collaboration featuring their fathers' collective
work--none more poignant than their accounts of the protests at the
National Democratic Convention--here present Chicago 1968: The Whole
World is Watching, a kaleidoscopic, on-the-ground account, told
primarily through the words of Terry Southern and the photographs of
Michael Cooper, a fitting tribute to two great artists of the 20th
century.
Edited and with texts by Adam Cooper
and Nile Southern
Associate Editors J.C. Gabel and Meg Handler
Designed by Lisa Bechtold
