Historians Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook on “How the New Deal Coalition Fell Apart” in the DNC Chicago riot of 1968.

After a moment of goofy kidding around mimicking the “Yippies,” Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland tell the most dramatic story of this seminal event which many of us saw on our TVs, horrifying our parents, especially after the political assassinations which occurred between 1963 and 1968.

“The Democratic National Convention is in Chicago, and the incumbent president, Lyndon B. Johnson, has pulled out of the race. Anti-war protestors are flooding the streets of the city, and Johnson continues to press on with the war in Vietnam. Bobby Kennedy’s assassination has turned the Democratic candidacy contest into a two-horse race between Hubert Humphrey and Eugene McCarthy. And while they’re battling inside the convention for delegates, the real fight is taking place on the streets.

“Dope-smoking youth activists known as the “Yippies” have called for a protest against the Vietnam War, and their threats made in the name of the ‘politics of play’ have been taken seriously by Chicago police, who react with brutal force. Flowers and poems meet truncheons and guns. As DNC votes are being counted, images of these confrontations are broadcasted on newsreels across the nation.”