Struggles for black justice, clashes between police and protestors, a Republican president running on a law and order ticket… a look at an extraordinary year that echoes in 2020
In the summer of 1968 I was 16 years old and, in retrospect, those months appear significant for me only because I had sat my O-level examinations, and was waiting apprehensively for the results. Consequently, the rest of the summer of 68 remains something of a blur, but it’s not surprising that my memories are vague: the 1960s are over half a century ago now – a fact that, I suppose, makes them genuinely historical.
And yet, just before that same summer, the US was aflame with the most widespread riots in its history, following the assassination of Martin Luther King in April. Nine weeks later, in June, Robert Kennedy was also assassinated, and the autumn began with the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, in August, terminating the hopes of the Prague Spring with brutal efficiency.
