1968: The Year That Changed America

The death of Senator Robert Kennedy roils the presidential race. Republican Richard Nixon fights to head off a last-minute challenge from Governor Ronald Reagan of California. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party has lost its most popular candidate and is at war with itself over the Vietnam War. Mayor Richard J. Daley vows to maintain law and order as protesters and politicos converge in Chicago for the Democratic National Convention. The world watches as anarchic events inside the convention hall fuel violent clashes in the street. Vice President Hubert Humphrey gains his party’s nomination and enters the presidential race as a decided underdog and takes a bold political stance in hopes of reversing his fortunes.

Just days after political demonstrations lead to the deaths of scores of students, the Summer Olympics open in Mexico City. Before an international audience, two American sprinters protest the national anthem from the medal stand. As the presidential campaign tightens, President Johnson calls a halt to the bombing of North Vietnam, a move calculated to help the surging Humphrey campaign. Richard Nixon attempts to sabotage the peace talks. And the insurgent candidacy of independent George Wallace threatens to throw the election to the House of Representatives. On Election Day, the vote is so close that a winner is not declared until the following morning. The victor can claim perhaps the greatest comeback in American political history. On television, Elvis Presley launches a comeback of his own. The widows of Senator Robert Kennedy and Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. look back at the year that was. And on Christmas Eve, Apollo 8 comes around the dark side of the moon and broadcasts, live around the world, the first-ever images of the earth from space.