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'We Can See Trouble Brewing'
Produced by Eight Forty-Eight on Monday, August 11, 2008
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By the evening of Wednesday, August 28, 1968, Chicago was a cauldron of tension, ready to boil over. At their national convention, Democrats were about to nominate a candidate who had not entered a single primary. Voters were angry. Taxi drivers across the city were on strike. Delegates were angry. Striking telephone workers had refused to install lines for live broadcast coverage beyond the convention hall. Reporters were angry.
And in the streets, thousands of people were congregating in Chicago’s Grant Park, many to protest the Vietnam War. They ran up against a wall of police officers. When Chicago exploded, there were 10, 000 embattled witnesses. But there are few recordings of the story as it all unfolded. Contributor John McDonough brings us one of those few, and one of the most extraordinary.
I was on Michigan Avenue in front of the Conrad Hilton, protected by my flimsy Chicago Tribune press credentials. But my view was limited to about 12 feet in any direction. Nothing I could say today would recreate the sense of chaos that a man named Fred Turner captured on his tape recorder.
TURNER: Wooff woof, test, test. This is microphone one feeding out of the Nagra mixer…
Fred Turner was a CBS staff engineer. Shortly after 7 on the evening of the 28, he was in room 505 of the Conrad Hilton Hotel, testing his mike levels.
CBS had set up a small studio in the suite where correspondents could interview newsmakers at the hotel.
TURNER: It’s now 7:30. Just dusk is creeping in, the sun is setting in the west, and I’m looking directly east over Lake Michigan. [cough]
A few minutes earlier the police had dispersed a crowd of demonstrators, and the tear gar was being sucked into hotel’s air conditioning. Turner was tearing up and coughing.
TURNER: A whole line of Chicago police dressed in helmets. And, nightstick thrust in hand. I dare say there’s probably 100-150 cops lined up from Balbo Ave. through to the next street to my right, I'm not quite certain what it is, but they're…The hippies had marched through here about 5 minutes ago, but have since disappeared.
To get a better view of the scene, Turner opened the window.
TURNER: You can probably hear the crowd coming up. They’re moving in. Wait ‘til I open the window. Jesus, won’t this window open up.
MAN: Let me give you a hand.
ambi: Window opens, street noise
TURNER: Oh yes, there are there are thousands of these hippies coming through, and the cops are lined up three deep right across Michigan Ave. the cops are moving down toward the hippies, and I would say about 200 cops on the run now, and the hippies are beginning to break up. With traffic as band as it is normally on Michigan Ave., it’s completely disorganized at this point with the hippies lousing up the street. We can see trouble brewing.
By 7:40 the protesters had begun sitting down.
TURNER: The hippies are beginning to sit down in the middle of Michigan Avenue and they’re lining up now three or four deep. And there are just thousands of them. The Mule Train I see is further on down Michigan Ave. Traffic has come to a standstill, nothing is moving. They’re down there shouting, 'Hi mule train, let’s go. Let’s keep moving.'...
In the midst of the tension, Turner glimpsed the mule train of the "Poor People’s March" passing the Art Institute and heading south on Michigan Ave. It was a slow, orderly procession, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference had a city permit. The police and the protestors deferred.
TURNER: This line of cops has completely held back the hippies…The mule train is still down here in front of us on Michigan Ave.
About 30 seconds later the procession passed by. The police then made their move.
TURNER: While this crowd had started out with only a thousand or two – Now they’re moving out. Now they’re moving in. The cops are moving in and they are really belting these characters. They’re grabbing them. Sticks are flailing. People are laying on the ground. I can see them. Colored people. They’ll never get up. There’s a girl that’s down on the ground, and she is. Two cops dragging a man by the head. His clothes and shoes all over the area. The cops are belting them. The cops are just laying it in. Oh, there’s piles of bodies on the street. There’s no question about it. You can hear them scream….[BOOM] tear gas probably or something going off. The have dispersed the crowd….
At 8:05 the clash paused briefly. Journalist Theodore White jotted in his notebook, "The Democrats are finished.” But it wasn’t over. The police pulled up reinforcements and formed two triangles – one marching across the Balbo Street bridge toward the Hilton, the second moving up Michigan Avenue. At 8:10 Turner recorded this:
TURNER: There they go. The cops are at them….I can say this, I’m not leaving this hotel until such time as I have a certain amount of police protection to get out of this. I wouldn’t dare walk out of this place with CBS equipment. There’s a guy they’re just dragging along and they don’t care. They don’t know whether he’s alive or dead. And the police care less. They just pull them along and the cops are falling down. Holy Jesus, look at that. Five of them are belting him. This man will never get up. I can’t explain the chaos that taking place down there. Flashlights are going off. Cops are at it again, and here they come into the Conrad Hilton. The hippies are around the corner. Oh they’re getting them now….This is a night in Chicago, I suppose, that will be hardly forgotten, not only in Chicago but quite possible across the entire country…..
ambi: crowd noise, chanting Sieg Heil
The crowd began to chant Sieg Heil.
TURNER: Daley’s police are going to get order to do again, and when they do there’s not going to be any mercy shown to this crowd. It’s a shame, but they’re deliberately taunting the police, not that the police don’t deserve it. They do because they are the most brutal bunch of cops probably in the U.S. There they go. They’re off again. There goes a group now that’s, and the tear gas and the cops are at them. They can’t get out of the way. They can’t go faster. There’s another group. And there’s a man that down and he got it…
By 8:20 the most vilified police romp in Chicago history was over. Vice President Humphrey had watched it all from suite 2525 in the Hilton. So had Eugene McCarthy two floors below. From such heights the sights and sounds below may have seemed remote, detached, perhaps like some work of urban art. But from room 505, it looked and sounded real enough.
Fred Turner’s account of that night was never broadcast by CBS.
He later retired from CBS. He died in the late 1990s.
Ed Turner's description of the Battle of Chicago is from the broadcast archive of J. David Goldin.
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