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Rewind Moments
Pacifica Radio Archives staff will produce, and make available, a series of 1968 Revolution Rewind Moments for broadcast by Pacifica sister stations and affiliates. Many of these tapes were recently transferred from master reel-to-reel tapes, thanks to your support and modest grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the GRAMMY Foundation and the Ford Foundation. |
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The Vietnam Tet Offensive, February, 1968
President Johnson's state-of-the-union address on January 14, 1968 estimated the cost of the Vietnam war to the U.S. at $25 billion dollars a year. In the morning hours of January 31, the lunar new year, combined forces of the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam and the People's Army of Vietnam began a military campaign that became the turning point in the conflict. Record casualties were suffered on both sides.
- Listen: Pacifica Radio reporter Dale Minor reporting from Khe Sanh, 1968 [BB1325]
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Melina Mercouri, A Greek Patriot, 1968
In April 1967, a group of Greek military colonels forged a right-wing military junta and successfully lead a coup d'etat that remained in power until 1974.
In 1968 Greek actress Melina Mercouri was thrown into the political battle when she was stripped of her Greek citizenship. Pacifica Radio was there to record her outrage not only at the Greek Military junta but at the United States government for being the third nation to recognize the junta leaders. When democracy returned to Greece, Melina Mercouri became the first member of parliament for the Panhellenic Socialist Movement and in 1981 became the first female minister of culture in Greece. Mercouri died in 1994.
- Listen: Melina Mercouri at the New School, 1968 [BB3539]
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On the Victory Stand: Mexico City Olympics, 1968
In October of 1968, Mexico City was ablaze with Olympic fever and the world was watching. The Games of the XIX Olympiad had one defining, controversial moment: Tommie Smith and John Carlos, gold and bronze medalists in the 200-meter sprint, mounted the victory stand and, with bowed heads, raised their fists in protest.
Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin (then known as Black Panther H. Rap Brown, former head of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee) described the event on Pacifica station WBAI in New York the day the story broke in the New York Times. In 1975, Olympic gold medalist John Carlos spoke to sports sociologist Jonathan J. Brower about the action.
- Listen: John Carlos, 1975 [BC2744]
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My Lai Massacre, March 16, 1968
In January 1968, the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong Tet Offensive escalated the Vietnamese war, resulting in staggering casualties on both sides.
March 16, 1968 is remembered for the My Lai massacre — not only the 300 apparently unarmed villagers killed in a U.S. search-and-destroy mission under the command of Lieutenant William Calley, but also the subsequent government cover-up of the atrocities. In 1969 journalist Seymour Hersh was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for breaking the story. As a result of Sy Hersh's investigations, a military investigation was held, and Lt. Calley was charged with murder and convicted by court-martial. He eventually was released after serving three-and-a-half years.
- Listen: Seymour Hersh interviewed by Steve Bookshester, Dec. 1968 [BB3559.01-.03]
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Student Actions: Columbia University, NYC
Novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand rarely spoke on public radio. But in the spring and summer of 1968, the author of Atlas Shrugged appeared on Pacifica station WBAI's airwaves to speak about current events: The Soviet Union's invasion of Czechoslovakia, the presidential candidates, and on the student actions at Columbia University.
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James Baldwin on race in 1968
James Baldwin came to prominence in the 1950s. In his first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, and his earliest book of essays, Notes of a Native Son, he wrote eloquently about human relations and race in America. By the 1960s, Baldwin the author had become Baldwin the civil rights spokesperson, bearing witness to the immorality of racism. On the eve of April 3, 1968, the night before the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Baldwin was confronted by conservative white reporter R.H. Darden in his Beverly Hills Hotel suite.
- Listen: Baldwin and Darden, 1968 [BB4514]
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Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
In October 1968, singer and draft resistance activist Joan Baez was arrested with 119 others for blocking the entrance to the Armed Forces Induction Center in Oakland, California. After serving ten days in the Santa Rita Rehabilitation Center, she spoke at the University of California in Berkeley. In December she was again arrested for blocking the Oakland Armed Forces Induction Center and sentenced to serve 90 days at Santa Rita Rehabilitation Center. Pacifica Radio was there to record Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who visited her there.
- Listen: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at Santa Rita, January 1968 [BB1460]
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2001: A Space Odyssey
Stanley Kubrick's science fiction classic, 2001: A Space Odyssey, is one of the most celebrated films of all time. The film's April 1968 release was an intellectual event that explored the themes of evolution, technology and artificial intelligence. That same year, Pacifica radio brought to the airwaves Arthur C. Clarke's short story The Sentinel, from which the film draws.
- Listen: The Sentinal, by Arthur C. Clarke, 1968 [BB1002]
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Madame Nguyen Thi Binh
Madame Nguyen Thi Binh, who today is the vice president of the Socialist Republic of South Vietnam, was given voice on Pacifica Radio in 1966; she was interviewed in Vienna after the international women's conference on the welfare of children. In 1968 at the height of the violence in Vietnam, Pacifica reporter Madeleine Duckles spoke with Madame Thi Binh , who was then a member of the central committee of the national liberation front of South Vietnam.
- Listen: Interview with Madame Nguyen Thi Binh [BB2332]
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Alan Watts, 1968
Through a series of weekly broadcasts, begun in 1960 on Pacifica station KPFA in Berkeley, Alan Watts became one of the foremost interpreters of Eastern disciplines for western minds. Through this medium, he popularized Zen Buddhism. In September of 1968, he gave a lecture at the Unitarian church in San Francisco, where he led the audience in the Om chant.
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Coretta Scott King, Ten Commandments on Vietnam, April 27, 1968
April 4, 1968 was a defining moment in United States history, with the assassination of the civil rights movement leader, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Three weeks later, his widow Coretta Scott King delivered an address in Central Park in New York City at the 27th annual peace march. Mrs. King reads her husband's notes on the Vietnam war.
- Listen: Coretta Scott King, April 27, 1968 [BB1331]
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The Poor Peoples Campaign, Rev. Jesse Jackson, 1968
The Poor People's Campaign was conceived by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1967. In May 1968, in the wake of Dr. King's assassination on April 4th, the Reverend Ralph Abernathy led as many as 7000 people from nine caravans from all parts of the country. They converged by mule train, bus, car, train and foot on to Washington, D.C. where they put up temporary shelters on a 16-acre site named Resurrection City, U.S.A. African-American demonstrators from the South, Native Americans from reservations and whites from Appalachia were there to lobby Congress for economic justice for all poor people.
In this setting, a young Jesse Jackson leads the demonstrators in the now-famous call-and-response, I Am Sombody — which he later performed with the children of Sesame Street. For complex reasons, the Poor People's Campaign failed to achieve its goals, and on June 23, 1968, Resurrection City was closed.
- Listen: The Rev. Jesse Jackson, The Poor People's March [BB3191]
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Margaret Mead, April 3, 1968
The opinions of renowned cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead were broadcast by Pacifica Radio as early as 1962, and until shortly before her death in 1978. In 1968, she spoke at the First Unitarian Church in San Francisco at the Human Values Under Pressure Forum. Here she reads a moving poem by a 15-year-old boy.
- Listen: Margaret Mead, April 3, 1968 [BB1812]
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The Poetry of Thich Nhat Hanh, 1968
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. nominated Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh for the 1967 Nobel Peace Prize to honor his efforts at a peaceful reconciliation to the Vietnam conflict. Thich Nhat Hanh advocates the Buddhist philosophy of non-violence and compassionate action. He continues to teach The Art of Mindful Living in retreats from his exile in France and in workshops around the world. In 1968, Pacifica Radio Archives presented Thich Nhat Hanh reciting his poem The Witness Remains in English and the original Vietnamese.
- Listen: An Hour with Thich Nhat Hanh, 1968 [BB1990]
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