Even before the presidential candidate arrived at the rally, the arena seethed. Fistfights broke out as the national anthem played. Supporters tore up demonstrators’ signs, beat them with sticks, pummeled them with folding chairs.
The year was 1968; the candidate was Alabama Gov. George Wallace.
If you’re struggling with feelings of deja vu, you’re not alone. The dark turn of the 2016 presidential campaign – the ugly scuffles at Donald Trump’s rallies – has brought back memories of the turmoil of the 1960s, and fueled fears that America is headed to a similarly angry and violent era.
Will it happen? There’s no way of knowing. Some note this is a different time: When Wallace climbed the stage of Detroit’s Cobo arena, on Oct. 29, 1968, college campuses were exploding, American cities were in rubble and Wallace’s incendiary words were just some of many, many angry words of that era.
As contentious as our times may seem, they’re not that bad – yet. But protesters, drawn by Trump’s positions against immigrants and Muslims, have been ejected from his rallies. Trump says he does not encourage violence; the fault, he says, lies with the demonstrators.
In fact, if you take the long view, what’s happening is not all that unusual. Politics and violence have been mated since the republic’s earliest days. It was black power activist H. Rap Brown – serving a life sentence in the 2000 murder of a sheriff’s deputy – who said “violence is as American as cherry pie.”
Michael A. Cohen, author of the forthcoming book “American Maelstrom: The 1968 Election and the Politics of Division,” said aside from Detroit – where the violence was so great that Wallace cut his speech short after a few moments – the candidate held similarly contentious rallies in Minneapolis, San Diego and elsewhere.
His speech at New York’s Madison Square Garden drew more than 15,000 spectators, among them an unknown number of demonstrators who heckled him while others were guarded by a huge show of police force outside the arena.
Like Trump, Wallace was openly disdainful of his protesters. Cohen believes Wallace courted mayhem, thinking it helped his cause. He taunted hecklers from the stage:
Cohen said the context of Trump’s rallies is far different than Wallace’s. Our times are placid compared to the chaos of the ‘60s. He fears the months to come: “This is only March. If Trump’s the nominee, I can’t even imagine what will happen in September or October.”
