The 1968 Democratic National Convention was held August 26–29 at the International Amphitheatre in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Earlier that year incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson had announced he would not seek reelection, thus making the purpose of the convention to select a new presidential nominee for the Democratic Party. Vice President Hubert Humphrey and Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine were nominated for president and vice president, respectively.
Marc Riboud was a French photographer, best known for his extensive reports on the Far East: The Three Banners of China, Face of North Vietnam, Visions of China, and In China.
Phan Thị Kim Phúc, referred to informally as the girl in the picture and the napalm girl, is a South Vietnamese-born Canadian woman best known as the nine-year-old child depicted in the Pulitzer Prize–winning photograph, titled The Terror of War, taken at Trảng Bàng during the Vietnam War on June 8, 1972.
Cornelius Mahoney Sheehan was an American journalist. As a reporter for The New York Times in 1971, Sheehan obtained the classified Pentagon Papers from Daniel Ellsberg. His series of articles revealed a secret United States Department of Defense history of the Vietnam War and led to a U.S. Supreme Court case, New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971), which invalidated the United States government's use of a restraining order to halt publication.
Norman R. Morrison was an American anti-war activist. On November 2, 1965, Morrison doused himself in kerosene and set himself on fire below the office of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara at the Pentagon to protest United States involvement in the Vietnam War, leading to his death. This action was inspired by photographs of Vietnamese children burned by napalm bombings, and may have been inspired by Thích Quảng Đức and other Buddhist monks, who burned themselves to death to protest the repression committed by the South Vietnam government of Catholic President Ngo Dinh Diem.
Huỳnh Công Út, known professionally as Nick Ut, is a Vietnamese-American photographer who worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles. He won both the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography and the 1973 World Press Photo of the Year for his 1972 photograph The Terror of War, depicting children running away from a napalm bombing attack during the Vietnam War. In 2017, he retired. Examples of his work may be found in the collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.
Flower power was a slogan used during the late 1960s and early 1970s as a symbol of passive resistance and nonviolence. It is rooted in the opposition movement to the Vietnam War. The expression was coined by the American Beat poet Allen Ginsberg in 1965 as a means to transform war protests into peaceful affirmative spectacles. Hippies embraced the symbolism by dressing in clothing with embroidered flowers and vibrant colors, wearing flowers in their hair, and distributing flowers to the public, becoming known as flower children. The term later became generalized as a modern reference to the hippie movement and the so-called counterculture of drugs, psychedelic music, psychedelic art and social permissiveness.
Flower child originated as a synonym for Hippie, especially among the idealistic young people who gathered in San Francisco and the surrounding area during the Summer of Love in 1967. It was the custom of "flower children" to wear and distribute flowers or floral-themed decorations to symbolize ideals of universal belonging, peace, and love. The mass media picked up on the term and used it to refer in a broad sense to any Hippie. Flower children were also associated with the flower power political movement, which originated in ideas written by Allen Ginsberg in 1965.
Opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War began in 1965 with demonstrations against the escalating role of the United States in the war. Over the next several years, these demonstrations grew into a social movement which was incorporated into the broader counterculture of the 1960s.
Hibiscus was an American actor and performance artist. Starting his career in New York City, he moved to San Francisco, where in the early 1970s he founded the psychedelic gay liberation theater collective known as the Cockettes.
Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) is an American tax-exempt non-profit organization and corporation founded in 1967 to oppose the United States policy and participation in the Vietnam War. VVAW is a national veterans' organization that campaigns for peace, justice, and the rights of all United States military veterans. It publishes a twice-yearly newsletter, The Veteran; this was earlier published more frequently as 1st Casualty (1971–1972) and then as Winter Soldier (1973–1975).
The Vietnam Solidarity Campaign (VSC) was originally set up in 1966 by activists around the International Group with the personal and financial support of Bertrand Russell.
Catherine Leroy was a French-born photojournalist and war photographer, whose stark images of battle illustrated the story of the Vietnam War in the pages of Life magazine and other publications.
The Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, which became the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, was a coalition of American antiwar activists formed in November 1966 to organize large demonstrations in opposition to the Vietnam War. The organization was informally known as "the Mobe".
In the 1960s, several "be-ins" were held in Central Park, Manhattan, New York City to protest against various issues such as U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War and racism.
The 1967 March on the Pentagon was a massive demonstration against the Vietnam War that took place on October 21, 1967. The event began with more than 100,000 protesters at a rally near the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.. Later about 50,000 people marched across the Potomac River to the Pentagon and sparked a confrontation with U.S. Army paratroopers who were standing guard there. The demonstrations were highly polarizing, and also produced the famous photograph of a protester placing flowers in a paratroopers' rifle.
Guerrillero Heroico is an iconic photograph of Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara taken by Alberto Korda. It was captured on March 5, 1960, in Havana, Cuba, at a memorial service for victims of the La Coubre explosion. By the end of the 1960s, the image, in conjunction with Guevara's subsequent actions and eventual execution, helped solidify the leader as a cultural icon. Korda has said that at the moment he shot the picture, he was drawn to Guevara's facial expression, which showed "absolute implacability" as well as anger and pain. Years later, Korda would say that the photograph showed Che's firm and stoical character. Guevara was 31 years old at the time the photograph was taken.
Flower Power is the title of a photograph taken by American photographer Bernie Boston for the now-defunct newspaper The Washington Evening Star. Taken on October 21, 1967, during the March on the Pentagon by the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, the photo shows protester George Harris placing a carnation into the barrel of an M14 rifle held by a soldier of the 503rd Military Police Battalion (Airborne).
Taking a Stand in Baton Rouge is a photograph of Ieshia Evans, a nurse from Pennsylvania, being arrested by police officers dressed in riot gear during a protest in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on 9 July 2016. The protest began in the aftermath of the shooting by police of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. The image, taken by Jonathan Bachman for Reuters, became a viral phenomenon on social media, described by several media organizations as "iconic", with some comparing the image to well-known images of other lone protesters, such as the photograph of "Tank Man" in the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.
