Battleground Chicago: The Police And The 1968 Democratic National Convention

Did the police lose control of themselves in dealing with demonstrators during the 1968 Democratic National Convention? Or were they simply men who saw themselves as protecting their city from the forces of revolution? Kusch contends that Chicago's police were more than unthinking "thugs," that they had, in effect, become a counterculture, even more so than the people they ended up attacking. From Polish and Irish working class backgrounds, these men felt they represented a time gone by, a different way of life. The world they found themselves in during August of 1968 was an almost alien environment. Analyzing interviews of men who were on the streets and examining in-depth their actions and the reasons behind them, Kusch challenges traditional thinking on this pivotal event.

FRANK KUSCH is author of All American Boys: Draft Dodgers in Canada from the Vietnam War (Praeger, 2001). He holds degrees in history from Ohio University and the University of Saskatchewan. Historian and editor, he is currently working on a book about Richard Nixon and the antiwar movement.