Sock it to Me: 1968 Exhibit Stirs Imaginations in the Midwest

By Cindy Gomez-Schempp
Staff Writer

“And some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak…Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.” – Martin Luther King Jr., Delivered 4 April 1967, Riverside Church, New York City

Looking at today’s climate of dissent, one wonders if the time that Dr. King referred to when a new spirit would be “rising among us” is now. Although Dr. King gave this speech just before he was murdered in 1968, this speech sounds like one that speaks to the people occupying Wall Street, Baltimore, LA, Lexington, Fargo-Moorhead or any of the #occupy movements. Rev. Dr. King’s words make us think back to a time in our troubled history when we as a people were speaking, protesting and resisting. But it also reminds us that during that turbulent time in our history, like today, wars and rumors of wars terrified people. We are reminded that millions back in 1968 were living in abject poverty and extreme discrimination, that Dr. King sought change for these conditions in his “Poor People’s Campaign”, which culminated in “Resurrection City”, a shanty town set up in Washington D.C. to force our government to see the injustice of poverty. Today, the “I am the 99%” and Dr. Cornell West and Tavis Smiley’s “Poverty Tour” movement is echoing the anguish of 1968.

The Minnesota Historical Society wants you to: Tune in, Turn on, and Drop by their 1968 Exhibit, now showing at the St. Paul Minnesota History Center on 325 W. Kellog Blvd. The exhibit opened Oct. 14, and will go until Mon. Feb. 2. The Minnesota Historical Society in partnership with the Chicago History Museum, the Oakland History Museum of California, and the Atlanta History Center will be traveling to various U.S. locations, see online schedule for more information: http://www.the1968exhibit.org

The large and well orchestrated exhibit is visually stimulating, media interactive, and culturally relevant: If you go, here are some of the highlights of the exhibit to notice:

:: Pick up a newspaper from December 24, 1968. It’s a real blast to the past to read through the headlines of the day and skim through the classifieds and the ads.
:: Stop and listen to the music. Hits from 1968 are playing throughout the museum in the cafeteria and the museum shops.
:: Go online to http://www.the1968exhibit.org to access an interactive timeline which shows events that happened during each month of 1968; read the 1968 blog and find out the deeper story behind individual exhibits; share your own experience of the exhibit or the year. There are also a variety of educational materials online.
:: Make sure to take a device that allows you to scan the QR codes at the exhibit to read more, see photos or watch video or audio that gives you more information and enhances the experience.
:: Visit and experience historical fixtures like a Vietnam helicopter, or a space capsule! America got to see herself from the window of Apollo 8, a global community sharing a planet, and simultaneously - because of Vietnam - as a monster capable of human atrocities that still shame a nation today. See more on the U.S. cover up implicating that Colon Powell “whitewashed” the illegal and inhumane U.S. military actions during the My Lai Massacre visit: http://tiny.cc/MyLai

Be prepared to get transported into the past when you enter, and to leave the exhibit pondering the parallels of 1968 to our present. Everything about 1968 signaled change. A war weary nation full of racial angst, political satire, moon missions, protest music, riots, brown berets, black panthers, feminists, and hippie love, was undertaking the colossal challenge of change and growth in times of uncertainty. These included the mass murders of activists, students, protesters and of some of America’s most pivotal historical figures – Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and thousands of people in the U.S. and abroad opposed to war and violence. Vietnam was the war then, but today our nation is involved in various lengthy wars that seem to be having the same draining and demoralizing effect on Americans today that Vietnam had back in 1968. As Dr. King admonished from the past, “ These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.”

Much of the turbulence of the time came chiefly from the clash of freedom (civil rights, women’s rights, human rights) with oppression (war, discrimination, poverty, police brutality, massacres). Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., examined the injustice of poverty when juxtaposed to the lavish spending on the military arm of our country to the detriment of the soul of the U.S.A, her people “You are even unjustly spending $500,000 to kill a single Viet Cong soldier, while you spend only $53 a year per person for everybody categorized as poverty-stricken. Instead of spending $35 billion every year to fight an unjust, ill-considered war in Vietnam and $20 billion to put a man on the moon, we need to put God’s children on their own two feet.” To find out more about the crippling poverty among people of color in 1968, check out http://tiny.cc/Citystories where you can find stories of the failed Resurrection City which was bulldozed by the government to silence a hungry and desperate community clamoring for justice. Even then, Martin gave us hope saying of the failed venture,  “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it always bends towards justice.”

Dr. King’s death seemed imminent even to him, and it was no surprise that he should be killed. King was saying things in 1968 that made him appear as a traitor to his own country who at the time was in a war with Vietnam by challenging the justice of the war while simultaneously pointing out the unfair distribution of wealth to military efforts and ignoring the poor. Sounding more like Jeramiah Wright, Obama’s former spiritual advisor, King prophesied “If America does not use her vast resources of wealth to end poverty, to make it possible for all of God’s children to have the basic necessities of life, she too will go to Hell.”, adding that “God didn’t call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war…we’ve committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world.”

Politics of the time figure large in the 1968 exhibit. Humphrey, Nixon, Wallace, and the not so well known communist, Black Panther, and Independent party candidates announced the possibilities for the America that would emerge from the ashes of 1968. The tragic murder of Bobbie Kennedy so soon after the assassination of his brother J.F.K, wrenched hearts and minds in America. Visit the PPP’s online gallery to see the outpouring of respect: http://thepeoplespressproject.org

Many of the exhibits focus on the counterculture that arose in 1968 including openness about sex, sexuality and the use of psychedelic clothes, birth control, and drugs. The changing role of women and people of color and their self determination to establish freedoms was evident in everything from the Swanson’s TV dinners which allowed women to leave their kitchen duties to the Virginia Slim ads announcing “You’ve come a long way, baby”. In 1968 Miss America was boycotted both by feminist white women and black women shut out all together from the competition. Meanwhile, Playboy was on the rise and drugs and ‘free love’ were encouraged.

People of color were appearing on TV together but still segregated in pay, housing, education and quality of life. The discourse about interracial marriage with movies like “Look Who’s Coming to Dinner” and Aretha Franklin on Time magazine’s cover brought blacks and people of color closer to the immediate consciousness of Americans, but the plight of people of color continued to be repressed as the growing social injustices of the time spawned the emergence of the American Indian Movement in Minnesota, the beginning of the brown berets, and called for a black presidential candidate like Eldridge Cleveland of the black panthers. Dr. King urged, “I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin…we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

The journey one begins when experiencing the 1968 exhibit is not one that ends when you leave the museum, or the museums’ website. If you can’t visit the exhibit, there is enough online and through the photo gallery at the PPP’s website that you can really benefit from the learning experience and take a trip down memory lane in the process. There are many lessons that can be gleaned from history and the year 1968 is one full of groundbreaking ideas that shifted our collective consciousness forever. Make it a point to experience 1968 for yourselves.

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If You Go:
What: The ‘1968 Exhibit’
Where: Minnesota History Center, St. Paul, MN
When: Tues. 10am-8pm, (free 5-8pm); Wed.-Sat. 10am-5pm; Sun. noon-5pm
Info: $10 adults, $8 seniors & college students, $5 child 6-17 age; 5 and under free http://www.the1968exhibit.org