1968: The Year America Came of Age

1968 was a year of turmoil, a year of tragedy, a year of change. It was the year of the Tet Offensive, the year two important figures in politics and civil rights were cut down in their prime, the year when America’s tolerance for social unrest and civil disobedience snapped, leading to Richard Nixon’s win in the presidential elections. I was born a few weeks after Nixon won the White House, November 27th to be exact. I was just one of many that year, a new generation that would emerge on the scene during the late eighties and nineties with our own values, music, and standards.

1968 was simply the year I was born in, a year whose events seemed remote to my daily reality. Yet, my generation was as much affected by the events of 1968 as those who lived through that year. When we are born, the times in which we are born into, somehow don’t define who we are and what we’ll become. Rather, it is when we come of age, when we shed our innocence and emerge awkwardly into young adulthood that the possibilities of our futures are molded and shaped. The times in which we grow into are as inextricably linked to this growth process as the homes or environments we grow up in. The same can be said of America.

The United States came of age in 1968. And everything that happened afterward, who we are as a country, can be traced back to that year, to the events which shaped our moral character, our fears and desires, and our visions of what should and could be possible in this country.

1968 was a year of losses, both personal and political. It seemed as though there was a conspiracy at foot, all these events leading to one inevitable conclusion: Nixon’s win and the ascendancy of the conservative movement began a few years earlier with Barry Goldwater’s presidential run in 1964. The year began with a win, but, in the eyes of Americans, it symbolized the losses this country has suffered since our engagement in Vietnam began. The Tet Offensive, timed during the lunar new year in Vietnam, was a crowning failure for the North Vietnamese, who failed to achieve all but one of their objectives. The North Vietnamese officers were beaten back by the ARVN and U.S. troops and suffered major casualties. But their attacks against more than 100 towns and cities, including Saigon, surprised South Vietnamese and U.S. military planners.