1968 America's tragic year: the 1960s was already shaping up as one of America's most turbulent decades. But in 1968, it seemed Like the nation was beginning to spin out of control.

• Author: Davey, Monica
• Position: TIMES PAST

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Long before Martin Luther King Jr., stepped onto a hotel balcony in Memphis, Tenn., on a spring evening in 1968, tensions in America were running high, especially among young people.

Opposition to the war in Vietnam--and the draft that sent hundreds of thousands of 18- and 19-year-old men into battle--was growing. The civil rights movement had fractured, with more radical leaders sharing the spotlight with King and other proponents of nonviolence.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

American culture itself seemed to be reeling. If crew cuts, hula hoops, and TV shows like Leave It to Beaver defined the quiet, conformist 1950s, then long hair, tie-dyed clothes, "hard rock," and hippies proclaiming "don't trust anyone over 30" and "do your own thing" seemed to typify the restless, louder 1960s.

But when King, still the most prominent and respected civil rights leader of his time, was fatally shot as he stood on the Lorraine Motel's second-floor balcony on April 4, 1968, it unleashed a wave of anger, sadness, and, in some places, violence.

Then, only two months later, Senator Robert F. Kennedy (President John F. Kennedy's brother), who was running for President on an anti-war, civil-rights platform, was assassinated in Los Angeles as he celebrated his June 5 victory in the California Democratic primary.

Their deaths 40 years ago, along with other events in 1968, made it seem as if America was coming apart at the seams.

"The country was already a tinderbox with things so fragile and so flammable that people were ready to erupt," says David Farber, a history professor at Temple University in Philadelphia.

In his long fight for civil rights, King had followed in the footsteps of Mohandas K. Gandhi, the Indian leader (himself assassinated in 1948) who believed that peaceful nonviolent protest was the only way to effect change. King attracted scores of young, middle-class Americans, who had traveled to the South to register black voters, participated in sit-ins at segregated restaurants, or marched on college campuses to call for action against segregation and poverty. But as the 1960s progressed, King was challenged by more radical figures who thought his approach wasn't bringing change fast enough.

"King, the last apostle of nonviolent change was brought down violently." says Farber. "That [led] to a sense for some that nonviolence was not going to work anyway."

RIOTS

In the days after King's death, riots broke out in cities across the...