For Alaska and the U.S., events of 1968 still resonate 50 years later

"Turning and turning in a widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer.
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity."

William Butler Yeats published those lines in 1920, in his poem "The Second Coming." He penned them as part of a commentary on the mood in Europe following the First World War. They've been quoted often and applied to several periods of American history, including our own time. But perhaps they were never remembered as often as they were 50 years ago.

If you lived through 1968, you know it was not a happy time in America. Tension was high, and pundits and academics worried about the nation's well-being. Anti-war sentiment had been growing since President Lyndon Johnson had used the 1964 Tonkin Gulf incident to increase the number of American troops in Vietnam. Desegregation had many communities on edge — especially Boston, where the Boston School Committee defied court orders to bus students across attendance lines to achieve racial balance. The musical "Hair" opened on Broadway, challenging oldsters' notions of "hippiedom."

On Jan. 23, North Korean warships captured the U.S. surveillance vessel USS Pueblo, killing one crewman and imprisoning 82. A week later, on the night of Jan. 30, 80,000 North Vietnamese army troops and Viet Cong militia members launched the Tet Offensive, showing that they were far from defeated and demoralized, as American military commanders claimed.

Then, the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4, which led to riots in several cities, especially Washington, D.C., and of Robert Kennedy on June 5, so soon afterward, seemed to numb minds across the entire nation, rending its social fabric.

Kennedy's assassination took place while leaders of a poor people's encampment on the national mall, organized by Dr. King, were demanding from Congress an economic bill of rights. In July, Abbie Hoffman and the Youth International Party, Yippies, along with the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, announced plans for a Festival of Life at the Democratic national nominating convention to be held in Chicago in August. Mayor Richard J. Daley organized a law enforcement response that turned into a melee outside the convention hall, with hundreds of demonstrators beaten and arrested.

In September, women's liberation groups demonstrated at the Miss America competition in Atlantic City, and in October, winning sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos joined in a black protest salute from the medal podium at the Mexico City Olympic games.

Meanwhile, students and workers protesting against capitalism, consumerism and what they called American imperialism, rioted in France in May, paralyzing the government and causing President de Gaulle briefly to flee the country. And in August, Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev, determined to kill reforms approved by the Czechoslovak government, sent 200,000 troops and 2,000 tanks into that country, stifling a widely supported progressive movement there.

Some historians have called 1968 the most turbulent year in American history. By year's end, many Americans were emotionally exhausted, alarmed at the breakdown of civil discourse, decorum and stability, the outlook ahead highly uncertain.

For Alaska, 1968 was by any measure one of the most historic years ever. For while Alaskans could observe the national chaos from afar, much of the angst it generated was lost here, overshadowed by the announcement in May of the enormous oil find at Prudhoe Bay. The resource bonanza that would bring possibility, prosperity and population to the 49th state dwarfed most other considerations in people's thinking. Alaska had struggled economically through the 1960s, and North Slope oil held the promise of a secure future. Even the defeat in November of longtime territorial governor Ernest Gruening, running for re-election to his U.S. Senate seat, did little to dampen spirits. And only momentarily did the death of popular U.S. Sen. Bob Bartlett in December quiet Alaskans' new enthusiasm. Had they seen the future, many would have celebrated heartily Gov. Wally Hickel's appointment of Ted Stevens to replace him.

We've seen 1968's future, 50 years on, but its meaning is as unclear now as it was then.

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