The Summer of ’68 Chicago Style—The Shit Hits the Fan

Note:  Fourth in a series of re-posted memoirs.  In which I meet the Cops—twice—and things come to a head in Lincoln Park Sunday night.

The high school kids at the Movement Center at the Methodist Church on Diversey staggered out of their bed rolls late on Sunday morning. The church service upstairs finally woke the last of them. We served them a breakfast of Cheerios in re-constituted non-fat dry milk, powdered eggs, toast, and coffee made by the gallon in an industrial urn. Breakfast conversation was confined mostly to grunts and groans. A few asked about the day’s activities as if they were back at summer camp.

 We slapped together more peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and wrapped them in waxed paper as rations for the day. As they straggled out the door, a few of us cleaned up the kitchen. I hauled a couple of galvanized garbage cans out to the dumpster in the ally. As I was heaving the second one in, I was surprised by two burly guys.

 “We wanna talk wit you,” one of them said. My mind flashed on dialogue from an old gangster flick. Luckily I restrained myself from replying, “What about, flatfoot?”

 It turns out they wanted to know just who was inside. “We know the SDS is here. You one of them?” “No” I replied quite truthfully. Having no SDS chapter at Shimer, I had never taken out a card.

 “We know who’s in there, we just need you to confirm it,” the second cop said. “It’ll go easier on you if you do.” He rattled off a couple of names I didn’t recognize anyway. They could have been there, but I was blissfully ignorant.

 We danced around for a bit, me not giving any info, them asking questions they knew I would not answer. After a few minutes another guy emerged from the Church with more garbage. He took one look at us and ducked back in.

 “Well, I guess that’s all we need,” said cop #2. They let me go and climbed into a dark sedan. I realized that the whole point of the exercise was for me to be seen talking to them. They hoped that the others would assume I was a spy. Did it work? I have no idea.

***

 Nobody remembers how cool Chicago was that week. Freakishly cool. August in Chicago was usually the month of sweltering temperatures and TV news stories about the eternal battle between the Fire Department and neighborhood kids about open hydrants. Many mini-riots erupted when the hydrants were shut down. And many Chicagoans escaped the heat by coming to the Lake Front parks to sleep. Whole families would do it.

Not that year. Starting Sunday daytime temperatures hovered in the upper 60’s, low 70’s. Nights were downright chilly. That may have been good for the folks who usually spent heat waves in the park because that year Mayor Daley had camping in the parks made illegal to head off the Yippies. Parks, he announced, would be closed by police at exactly 11 pm. No exceptions. Thus were the battle lines drawn.

The cool weather changed my outfit. Gone were the short-sleeve white shirts, replaced with cheap plaid flannels bought at Woolworths for $2 each. It was even cool enough for a jacket. I had a jean jacket borrowed from my pal Bill Delaney that had the Rocking Bar D brand of his family’s South Dakota ranch emblazoned on the back. I pinned on a peace button. The red kerchief stayed. To prepare for the expected clashes with police, I lined my battered white Stetson with rolled-up newspaper in the crown as a make shift helmet. Around my waist I strapped my dad’s World War II utility belt—the same one I used as a kid to play endless hours of Army. Hung on the belt was a G.I. canteen and ammo pouches stuffed with first aid supplies. I had appointed myself a volunteer medic. In addition to the expected gauze, bandages, band-aids and iodine, there were a dozen or more white pocket handkerchiefs filched from Dad—in those distant days men had drawer fulls of them.

That’s how I set out from the church some time after noon that Sunday. This time I cut down Clark Street then over into Lincoln Park north of the Zoo. The park, which would be teaming with families on most weekend days, was nearly deserted. On Columbus Drive I saw two more of Chicago’s finest. They were bending over at the rear of their unmarked car. As I grew closer I could see that they were using masking tape to cover the numbers on the license plate.

 I walked up to them. For some reason, I decided it would be a good idea to talk to them. This can only be ascribed to a case of serious mental illness. “What you doin’” I ask. In a split second I found my face being pushed into the trunk of the car, my glasses falling off to the side. My arms were twisted up my back and my feet were being kicked wide apart. If you are from Chicago, you know the position. One cop was screaming at me “What the fuck is it to you, asshole!” or words to that effect. I was sure I was going to be beaten senseless and thrown into the back of the car, perhaps never to be seen again.

 But the second cop pulls the guy off. “Let him go…we don’t have time for this shit…we got bigger fish to fry.” Cop number one let me up and gave me a hard shove. “I’ll be looking for you, kid.” They drove off as I searched for my glasses and felt the first rush of adrenalin that I would experience several more times that week.

***

As I approached the south end of the Park, I saw a growing crowd milling about.   The Yippies had promised a free concert as a lure to bring more kids to the park.  Of course they had no permit.  But all summer long regular “happenings” in Lincoln Park on Sunday afternoon had included musical performances, including rock bands, and no permits were needed.  Abbie Hoffman, I would learn later, was frantically trying to get last minute permission.  Meanwhile acoustic performers like Phil Ochs and Country Joe McDonald stood on park benches and tried to keep the crowd entertained.  Only one rock band—the self-proclaimed Detroit revolutionaries MC5 had shown up.  Late in the afternoon police allowed the band to begin to play, but prevented a flat bed truck from coming in to act as a stage and denied them city power.  Hoffman tapped the electric service of nearby concession stands and the band began to play.

The concessionaires complained and police ordered the power disconnected.  The crowd was getting restless and angry. They started taunting police who were standing by in large numbers.  The Yippies again attempted to bring in the flatbed truck, nearly reaching the planned stage area.  MC5 tried to set up on it as Hoffman and others encouraged the crowd.  Police demanded that the truck be moved out of the Park.  Hoffman evidently agreed to move it to the street by the park.  When the truck started retreating fighting broke out between cops and kids.  Several were arrested and hauled away was police began to form cordons around the crowd.

That’s when Hoffman told the crowd that “the Pigs had shut the festival down.”  Speeches replaced music.  They tried to organize the crowd.  Don’t fight to stay in the park at closing, we were told, “Take it to the streets.”

All evening long tensions rose in the park.  Police formed skirmish lines and pushed into the crowd with batons swinging two or three times.  Kids responded with anything they could throw.  Some tear gas was used. 

After dark things grew even more chaotic in the park.  Word circulated for designated Marshalls to move into position.  That was me.  A dozen or so of us took up space on a low ridge not far inside the park, ready to move.  We lay among the trees and watched a movie unfold as police advanced across the park.  A large knot of protesters rallied around a kid with a Vietcong flag riding on the shoulders of others.  The crowd held at the edge of the park, surged back in, and retreated again a few times.  The long line of Police advanced throwing tear gas ahead.

All at once the knot around the flag poured into the street.  That was our signal.  With my stomach doing things I never imagined possible, the other marshals and I took our place in a line between the police and the crowd.  We were stretched thin.    Miraculously, the maneuver seemed to work.  The police line halted at the park’s edge.  The crowd moved out and began to disappear at Clark and North, scattering into side streets.  Tear gas hung in the air.  But the whole thing seemed to me to be suddenly over without the major battle I had envisioned.

There was no one around to tell us what to do.  I decided to head back to the Movement Center.  I headed up Wells to Lincoln.  There was almost no traffic.  The streets were dark.  Behind me I could hear occasional sirens.

By the time I made it to Dickens I was tired and thirsty.  There was a large bar at the corner with big plate glass windows.  The lights were dimmed inside but it was open.  I decided I need a beer.  There were just two men at the long bar.  I settled down a few stools away from them and ordered a tap beer.  It was delivered in a schooner.  Maybe the best beer of my life.

One of the men, a tall fellow with a dark beard, glasses and a Greek fisherman’s cap asked me if I had been in the park.  I told them I was.  They called me over and bought me another beer.  The bearded on introduced them.  “I’m Carl Oglesby, this is Carl Davidson.”

“I’ve heard of you,” I stammered foolishly.  Of course I had.  These guys were real movement heavyweights—the President and Vice President respectively of SDS.  I was flattered by their attention.  They asked me what had happened.  I gave them my account of the evening.

“How is it back there now?” they asked.  I told them that it looked to me like everything was over for the night.  “I guess we’ll go have a look.”  So we left.   Them headed south on Lincoln on my intelligence.  I headed north.

When I got back to the Church, I found folks huddling around a radio.  It seems that after I left protesters reformed around the Clark/LaSalle/North Ave. intersection.  The police surged out of the park to meet them.  A running battle in the streets of Old Town with protestors and cops playing tag and the streets choking with gas went on until morning.  A few of our kids straggled in with horror stories.

I wondered what I had sent the two Carls into.

The Summer of '68 Chicago Style--Saturday—Preliminary Maneuvers

 Note:  Third in a series of re-posted memoir stories.  I finally arrive on the scene, get my bearings, and settle in for the week.

On Saturday I made my way to the city, just with just an old gas mask bag stuffed with a couple of changes of shirts, socks, and underwear; a bedroll tied up with clothesline; and a little gear to be described later.

First stop was the south end of Lincoln Park, the big open meadow by the softball diamonds and near the path to the pedestrian overpass of Lake Shore Drive to the North Avenue Beach. You know the place.

According to the flyers the guys at the Seed gave me, there would be intensive training going on there for the week ahead. In fact some folks had been out there for two or three days already practicing street demonstration maneuvers. There were already a few hundred folks there that sunny afternoon.

They were all practicing a kind of snake march perfected by Japanese radicals, who were famous the world over for their disciplined and aggressive street tactics. People set up four or five abreast. The front ranks held a bamboo pole tightly at their waists. Rank upon rank followed, each clasping tightly to the waists of the ones in front of them. The stepped heavily in unison shout/chanting “Wasshoi! Wasshoi! Wasshoi!” Long columns moved in swooping lines across the field. I was told that the chant meant something like “Heave Ho! Heave Ho! Heave Ho!”

The object of this maneuver was to build up such compact energy that the marchers could crash trough any police line. And I am sure it worked great for the highly disciplined Japanese with their matching white headbands inscribed with radical slogans. It was a lefty Banzai charge.

Even as I watched the spectacle unfold before me, I had my doubts that stoned hippies and nerdy college kids could really pull it off. My guess was that Chicago’s Finest would break that charge with about as much carnage as General Picket’s ill advised foray at Gettysburg.

But being game for anything, I latched on to the tail of a passing column and gave it my best. Being one of the clumsiest human beings on the planet, I was unable to maintain the rhythmic alternation of feet. I was soon snarling with those in front, to the side, and then behind me as more joined in. Panting and working up an unwelcome sweat, about ten minutes into the exercise I tripped and brought the whole tail of the snake collapsing on top and around me.

Unharmed, but ashamed I slunk away. The line reformed and Wasshoied their way on.

Despite all of the attention to this training, during the week that followed I never once saw any one attempt to use the march on the street. Maybe I missed something. Or maybe the whole thing was just to get into the heads of the many plain clothes and uniformed cops who were watching the proceedings.

I did have a more specific training purpose that day. My friend Amy Kesselman, an SDSer who was part of the Rogers Park community organizers who had helped out my old high school group, the Liberal Youth of Niles Township (LYNT)—which by the way had to be the wimpiest acronym in radical history—had signed me up to be a demonstration marshal.

Marshals were common on all of the big peace marches. They generally marched ahead and to the sides of the main bodies. Their jobs were to keep the marchers moving in good order, discourage any break-out of violence, and act as a buffer with the cops. For the New Mobilization folks who envisioned that the demonstrations in the upcoming week would pretty much resemble those peaceful marches this made perfect sense.

After wandering around for a bit I found a knot of people who turned out to be Marshals and their trainers. Our instructions were amazingly simple. On Sunday night, the first night when large numbers of people were likely to be in the park attempt to camp for the night, we were to place ourselves so that when the police tried to close and clear the Park, we would form a skirmish line between them and the protestors. The idea was to safely evacuate the Park onto the streets of Old Town. What would happen then was a matter of some disagreement. The Yippies wanted to “take it to the pigs on the streets.” The Mobe and SDS people wanted the crowd to disperse safely to re-assemble for planed marches later in the week.

I asked if we were to get arm bands or badges to identify ourselves as marshals. The trainers looked at me as if I had just arrived from Venus. No, we were told, that would just make us targets for the Pigs. But the People would supposedly understand who we were by our actions. Well, okay then.

***

By then it was late afternoon. It was time for me to check into my Movement Center. Movement Centers were expected to provide housing and food for demonstrators. There were several supposedly scattered across the city, each designated for an interest group or organization. My friend Amy again set me up with one for high school students which was organized by the SDS folk. Since I was just a year out of high school, I was supposed to be a monitor and mentor—as well as a cook and baby sitter.

My Movement Center was at the Methodist Church at Diversey and Sheffield, a fair hike up Lincoln Avenue from the south end of the Park. When I got there kids were already unrolling sleeping bags on the basement floor. I found a place to stash my bedroll and was put immediately to work in the kitchen making dinner—opening industrial size cans of pork and beans, boiling weenies, and slapping together peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Someone brought out a portable record player. Simon and Garfunkel were playing.

I got to meet my fellow monitors, pleasant but very hard core SDSers. They were looking for opportunities to educate the youth. The youth were looking for places to smoke dope and sleep with each other.

I talked the longest to a guy named Ted Gold from Columbia University. He would go on to be a key figure in the Weatherman faction in the breakup of SDS. In March of 1970 Gold and Diana Oughton, a pretty blond girl who was also at the Movement Center, were among four who would blow themselves up making bombs in a New York Brownstone. But they seemed pleasant enough that night and worlds away from making explosives.

Late that evening some kids drifted in from the Park. There had been some scuffling and rock throwing when police closed the Park and tear gas was used on the streets of Old Town.

Things were beginning.