Original subtitles

- ♪ Hello, darkness, my old friend ♪

♪ I've come to talk with you again ♪

- The enemy is not beaten,

but he has met his master in the field.

- I'd like to say hi to Mom back there at home.

I know she's worried about me, so hello, Mom.

- ♪ And the vision that was planted in my brain ♪

- Diana Ross, yes. - Diana Ross.

Everybody knows Diana Ross. You're how many years old?

- 23 years old forever and ever.

- We are planning simultaneous action

in many cities.

- ♪ In restless dreams, I walked alone ♪

♪ Narrow streets of cobblestone ♪

- Today I state that I am a candidate

for president of the United States.

- I want it to be confirmed that I

will be in the New Hampshire primary.

- ♪ I turned my collar to the cold and damp ♪

- Well, I think we have to support, uh,

the president and the administration.

- ♪ By the flash of a neon light ♪

♪ That split the night

♪ And whispered

♪ In the sounds

♪ Of silence

- Mr. Speaker, Mr. President,

members of the Congress, and my fellow Americans,

I was thinking as I was walking down the aisle there tonight

of what Sam Rayburn told me many years ago:

the Congress always extends a very warm welcome

to the president as he comes in.

- As 1967 faded into 1968,

Lyndon Johnson knew he had compiled

one of the most important presidencies

for domestic policy in history.

- Our food programs have already helped millions

avoid the horrors of famine.

And last year, Medicare and Medicaid

brought better health to more than 25 million Americans.

- Also, that great period in which he passed

all this landmark civil rights legislation,

dismantling much of institutionalized racism,

would give him a place in history.

- In terms of civil rights, no tree in the forest

is as tall as Lincoln's except Lyndon Johnson.

- If ever there was a nation that was capable

of solving its problems, it is this nation.

- Johnson had to be the best.

He just was driven by this idea to be top dog.

That's also how he felt about Vietnam.

- Since I reported to you last January,

the enemy has been defeated in battle after battle.

- He knew all of that would make him a candidate

for some future Mount Rushmore.

But he also knew that he was unlikely

to be in any future Mount Rushmore

because of the Vietnam War.

This was the frustration

that made Lyndon Johnson's fingernails sweat.

- B-52 bombers today made six raids

on North Vietnamese positions

around the United States Marine base at Khe Sanh.

- Khe Sanh is a Marine base

up in the northwestern corner of South Vietnam.

And North Vietnamese forces

start surrounding it and attacking it.

- 6,000 American Marines and 500 South Vietnamese Rangers

are surrounded by 40,000 Communist troops.

- And General Westmoreland says, "This is great.

This is the big culminating battle that we've wanted."

- Johnson is very worried that the outcome of this battle

could change the outcome of the war.

- The eyes of the nation

and of all history itself...

Are on that little brave band of defenders

at Khe Sanh and the area that is around it.

- It's hard for me to imagine

that the '60s would've turned out the way they did

had there been no war in Vietnam.

all: Peace now! Peace now!

- They raise their voices, their placards,

and they march against the government.

- 1968 is the culminating moment

for a generation of young people

who really couldn't understand,

with so much unrest at home,

why there were so many resources

going into the Vietnam War.

- I had a big sign on my bulletin board at home

that said, "Alienation is when your country is at war

and you want the other side to win."

- They're stampeding people.

They just ran someone down back there.

- To understand the passion behind the antiwar movement,

you have to keep in mind

that the United States had a draft at the time,

that every year, young men were waiting

to find out would their number be the number

that's chosen for service?

- President Johnson orders another

10,500 men sent to the war.

- And there is also a sense that

even if you weren't chosen, your friends were chosen.

So you're in it together as a generation.

- In the beginning, it was said we were simply

sustaining and strengthening South Vietnam.

Well, the early escalation did not satisfy that,

and so the objective was extended to include

nation-building in South Vietnam.

Then we were told that we were saving

all of southeastern Asia.

- Eugene McCarthy was this senator from Minnesota

who entered the New Hampshire primary

as an anti-Vietnam War candidate.

And the young people flocked to his banner.

They cut their hair off. They put on clean clothes.

The saying at the time was that they were

"going clean for Gene."

- It's just crucial you pay very close attention

to the appearance you are presenting.

- Good afternoon, we're representing Senator McCarthy,

who's seeking the Democratic nomination for president.

- Right.

- When McCarthy chose to be a candidate,

I dropped out, you know,

at the end of the first semester

and went to work for the campaign.

The issue was Vietnam.

- You have to say that

this war has gone too far.

- What makes 1968 such a pivotal year

in American history is that an incumbent president

couldn't seem to hold his party together.

- Will there be some kind of split in the Democratic Party?

They're all getting quite vocal.

- Yes. - They're saying that

if the Republicans nominate a moderate

or a liberal Republican,

Democrats will come over and support him

and the conservatives in the Republican Party

will go over and support Lyndon Johnson.

- Yes. - Is that possible?

- Yes.

- Now here is NBC News correspondent Frank McGee.

- The new Communist campaign in Vietnam continues.

Just after midnight their time,

a band of Vietcong raiders blew up a power installation

and attacked two police stations in Saigon.

At Hue, the old imperial capital

400 miles to the north,

the Vietcong is holding on to part of the town.

- I remember there was a graphic

put up on the screen on the news.

It was these cartoon explosions

that were just all over this little strip of a country

on the other side of the world.

- It all amounts to the most ambitious series

of Communist attacks yet mounted,

spreading violence into at least ten provincial capitals,

stretching the entire length of the country.

- For a year that was supposed to start off

as being a grand, sophisticated,

you know, exciting year,

it was redefined literally in 48 hours by Tet.

- The attacks on the night of the 31st

were really my first exposure to major combat.

Initial reports were very clouded,

and we couldn't really get a good grasp

of what was happening,

except something was happening all over Vietnam.

- This is the main Vietnamese-language

radio station in Saigon.

- This neighborhood is called "Bàn Co."

- Nha Trang. - Saigon airport, Tan Son Nhat.

- Heavy casualties in Hue, South Vietnam.

- Hear the rounds flying low overhead.

- The Tet Offensive-- simultaneous attacks

on every city and town in South Vietnam--

shocked the American people.

- The enemy, very deceitfully,

has taken advantage of the Tet truce

in order to create maximum consternation

within South Vietnam,

particularly in the populated areas.

- Every year, there was a cease-fire

on the lunar New Year holidays known as Tet,

and they believed that year would be the same thing.

But that wasn't what happened.

- These are our American combat military police

and troops from the 101st Airborne Division,

half a block from the U.S. Embassy in Saigon.

Vietcong snipers and suicide commandos

were holed up inside the embassy compound

and firing from surrounding buildings.

Now CIA men and MPs have gone into the embassy

and are trying to get the snipers out...

by themselves.

- Military police got back into the compound

of the $2 1/2 million embassy complex at dawn.

The fighting went on for a total of six hours

before the last known Vietcong raider was killed

in the small residence of the embassy's

mission coordinator, George Jacobson,

who had been hiding out all alone all morning.

- You had quite an escape at the very end.

How did that happen?

- Well, they put riot gas

into the bottom floors of my house,

which, of course, would drive whoever was down below

up top where I was.

They had thrown me a pistol

about ten minutes before this occurred.

And with all the luck that I've had all of my life,

I got him before he got me.

- With the pistol. - I'm sorry.

- And he had what? - An M16.

- And you got him.

- That just really scared people because it--

that showed Americans being attacked,

the Marines unable to defend the embassy.

In reality, they did defend the embassy.

They--they killed them and drove them back,

but it's not the way it looked on TV.

And then at the same time,

the destruction of this beautiful, ancient city of Hue,

and, you know, my God, what are we doing here?

- It's been like this all weekend in Hue--

one nasty little firefight right after another.

Rounds going overhead.

Little firefight across the Perfume River.

What do you think of at a time like this?

- Oh, keeping down.

Bullets are flying overhead too fast.

- Well, we weren't prepared for combat in an urban area,

so we had to go in and, to use the Marine Corps phrase,

we had to adapt, improvise, and overcome

the many obstacles and challenges that we had.

How do you cross a street? How do you go in and attack

a fortified position which is a home?

- Colonel Cheatham, what are your men about to do?

- Well, I've got two companies here that are just about

to clear the next two blocks up.

- What kind of fighting is it going to be?

- It's house to house and from room to room.

- Had you ever expected

to experience this kind of street fighting in Vietnam?

- No, I didn't.

I think this is the first time the Marine Corps

has been street fighting since Seoul in 1950.

- Most of the fighting happens in the countryside.

But the North Vietnamese

political and military leadership

believed that large-scale military action in the cities

will stimulate a popular uprising

and basically make the American position

in South Vietnam untenable.

- He apparently hoped that

when his troops mingled with the people,

intimidated them, terrorized them,

that they would join his ranks.

- But the South Vietnamese people don't rise up.

- The biggest fact is that

the stated purposes of the general uprising,

a military victory or psychological victory,

have failed.

- The Tet Offensive may have been a huge military defeat

for the NLF and the North Vietnamese,

but psychologically, it was an enormous victory

because it suggested that this war had no end.

- We lost a lot of people.

We probably have to drop back today to regroup.

- How do you feel yourself?

- Scared, I guess.

But I'm hopeful we're gonna drop back and regroup

'cause I lost my engineer,

and I need another man to help me with my job.

- There was something deeply corrupt

and even evil in our involvement.

And I'll tell you the moment

that defined Tet all over the world.

It was the moment when General Loan,

who was the chief of police

of the Saigon Police Department,

pulled out a snub-nosed .38 revolver

and held it up to the temple of a Vietcong

and shot him, bang.

Eddie Adams of the AP took the picture.

It was, the next day, all over the world.

And it was injected

right into the center of the American brain,

and it made Americans feel morally unclean.

Can it be that we, who are the most idealistic people

in the world...

Can it be that we're actually evil?

That was what Tet did.

- Awful sick of it.

I'll be so glad to go home.

I don't know, just,

it's the worst area we've been in since I've been in Vietnam.

- Do you think it's worth it?

- Yeah, I-- I don't know, they--

they say we're fighting for something, I don't know.

- 1,000 striking sanitation workers

marched on Memphis City Hall this afternoon

and demanded Mayor Henry Loeb hear their grievances.

- On February 1st, in Memphis,

two sanitation workers were crushed

in the back of a garbage truck.

Memphis policy did not allow them to seek shelter

in a rainstorm because the white citizens of Memphis

did not want to see sanitation workers in their yards

and that sort of thing.

The rain was so terrible that they got into the back

of this barrel trash truck,

and a broom fell on the-- the lever

and compacted them with the garbage

and killed them.

- The situation in-- in Memphis was local.

That sense that they were desperate

led them to accept these conditions

until they just got to be intolerable.

And then they went on strike.

- The garbage collectors,

predominantly Negro,

want higher pay and union recognition.

- Public employees cannot strike against their employer.

I suggest that you go back to work.

- Police used riot control gas

and nightsticks this afternoon to break up

a disturbance among a group of striking garbagemen.

- Over 1,000 of us were maced,

and a march that stretched from down

at the beginning of that corner up to here

was broken up.

That became the cry, essentially,

for the entire Negro community to say,

well this-- the fight was on.

I saw that strike as another part

of the emerging movement of nonviolence

in the United States.

And that's the way King saw it as well.

- The vast majority of Negroes

in our country are still perishing

on a lonely island of poverty in the midst

of a vast ocean of material prosperity.

And it is criminal

to have people working at a full-time job

getting part-time income.

- I think King was inspired by that movement,

and he saw that as a poor people's movement.

- We are poverty-stricken, and we have been

at the bottom too long.

- It was always hard to be Martin Luther King,

but it was really hard in 1967, '68.

He had alienated many of his

moderately conservative white allies

by his attack on the war in Vietnam.

- Let us save our national honor,

stop the bombing,

and stop the war.

- On the other hand, his continued insistence

on nonviolence had alienated him

from many activists who felt that

nonviolence had run its course.

- Is this what you want to do, destroy the country?

- I'll destroy a whole bunch of y'all.

- You want to destroy who, now? You want to destroy who?

- You and a whole bunch of others like you,

anybody who gets in our way.

- People started saying, "We aren't gonna

"get our rights in the Martin Luther King way,

"so what are we gonna do?

"We're gonna build black power.

"We're gonna build black companies.

"We're gonna build black organizations.

We're gonna have our own power centers."

- Black power,

black power, my friends,

means that we are developing now

a new breed of cats.

- This is what spurred Stokely Carmichael.

- The major enemy is the honky and his institutions of racism.

That's the major enemy.

- This is part of what spurred

the Black Panther Party to organize.

all: ♪ No more pigs in our community ♪

- With the pigs and their mentors,

the people who control the pig, the power structure.

- So there was a sea change

in the civil rights movement and its goals,

and that impacts the black perspective

being played out every day in American society.

- ♪ Uh

♪ With your bad self

♪ Say it loud

♪ I'm black and I'm proud

♪ Say it loud

♪ I'm black and I'm proud

- "Say it loud. I'm black and I'm proud."

There's no ambiguity there.

You know, this is a civil rights anthem.

This is a black power anthem.

- I want you to know that I'm a man,

a black man, a soul brother.

- James Brown had been the dominant black musical figure.

He was the best showman by far

in any genre of music.

He also was a smart businessman.

He took over booking of his own shows.

He owned radio stations.

- This is Tony Scott from WRDW Augusta,

a James Brown station.

- So he was the hardest-working man

in show business.

Then he becomes soul brother number one.

- James Brown program.

- He's black and he's proud.

- Mr. Brown is number one soul brother

in the United States.

- You know, there's no question that

James Brown was a huge influence for Sly Stone.

You hear it in the music. But Sly Stone was different.

There were women, and the band was integrated.

That was a big deal.

all: ♪ I

♪ Am everyday people

- Sly Stone is a product of the black church

and also a child of the Bay Area,

with its incredibly progressive politics.

And he also was a radio DJ.

There was no show better,

there was no band more interesting to look at,

and he was writing hit song after hit song after hit song.

- ♪ Dance to the music

- When Sly came out with Haight-Ashbury/pimp outfits,

it was over.

Every R&B group had to flip it.

- So in 1968, the Supremes put out "Love Child."

both: ♪ Tenement slum

- And it's this whole idea of, you know,

what it's like to grow up in a tenement.

- ♪ Started my life

- "I started my life in an old, cold,

rundown tenement slum."

- ♪ Tenement slum

- ♪ My father left he never even married Mom ♪

♪ I shared the guilt my mama knew ♪

♪ So afraid that others knew

♪ I had no name

♪ Oh

- Diana Ross is singing this?

You know, for The Supremes,

this is a darker, more mature album.

They're actually singing about some social issues.

And then you always got to remember, you know,

Motown promoted itself as the sound of young America.

They never promoted themselves as the sound of black America.

For Motown, that was a big step.

all: ♪ Love child

- ♪ Never meant to be - ♪ Wait, won't you wait now

- ♪ Love child - ♪ Scorned by

all: ♪ Society

- Have you thought about graduate school?

- No.

- Would you mind telling me, then,

what those four years of college were for?

What was the point of all that hard work?

- You got me.

- "The Graduate" is probably the most important movie

of the '60s?

Maybe it's the best movie of the '60s.

- Elaine!

Elaine!

- The pervasive sense of alienation, of being

not at one with the world around you,

that's the idea of the '60s,

and that is the crucial idea of 1968.

- Now, you know, we are just about

the friendliest folks you would ever want to meet.

- In "Bonnie and Clyde," Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway

play this impossibly attractive couple

robbing banks as some kind of, you know,

sexual sublimation.

- What's it like?

- When it was released in '67,

people didn't know how to take it.

- What you mean? Prison?

- So it was rereleased in early 1968.

- Armed robbery.

- It had a tone that challenged people,

that they hadn't seen in a film before.

And this was a movie that changed the way people

regarded how those sort of movies were done.

- So we go to see "Planet of the Apes"

at a all-black theater in Brooklyn.

And we're having the best time because, like,

we identified with the apes.

Hell yeah, fuck-- fuck Charlton Heston.

I mean, you know, why are we rooting for him?

- Do we want something?

Come on, speak. Come on.

- Charlton Heston lands on this planet,

and he realizes that this planet is literally

a planet of the apes, except the apes are now in charge.

- Take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape.

- Charlton Heston would have to confront

the tragedy of a broken civilization.

- You maniacs!

You blew it up!

Oh, damn you!

God damn you all to hell!

- This was a hit.

It really captured something very deep in the psyche

of America in a year when the cities were falling apart.

- Please go in your homes.

Please go in your homes.

- In 1965, after the Civil Rights

and Voting Rights Acts passed, you have the Watts riots.

And then in '66 and '67 in Newark.

In Detroit.

Dozens of people are killed,

and Johnson is chagrined.

And he says, "Look what I've done for the blacks.

Why are they doing this to me?"

- There had to be a response to that by the establishment.

And that's what led to the Kerner Commission.

- We need to know the answer, I think,

to three basic questions about these riots.

What happened? Why did it happen?

What can be done to prevent it

from happening again and again?

- Now, asking the question and accepting the answer

are two different things.

And they didn't like the answer.

- For the last few days,

this country has lived under indictment:

a charge of white racism, national in scale,

terrible in its effects.

The evidence to support that charge

has now been presented in the text of a report

released just last night.

"Our nation," says the report,

"is moving toward two separate societies,

black and white, separate but unequal."

- Hands up! - Get them up.

- Get your hands up. Just go.

- You told people by the Civil Rights Act

that we would have more freedom,

and we told them that they'd pass this law

and we'd have this.

When you give people hope

and you don't fulfill that hope,

then you are more likely to have problems.

- Every time I come to town,

you overcharge me for everything I get.

And how in the world do you expect for me to get it?

Then if I go out there and steal something,

now, that's what make criminals out of people.

You're not gonna give them nothing,

just enough to keep you eating.

Yeah, I eat breakfast this morning.

I don't know where dinner coming from.

How do you think I feel?

- In 12 out of 24 riots studied by the commission,

the spark that touched off disorder

was a violent response of our own institutions.

- First one who drops their hands is a dead man.

- The answer was that American institutions created this

and that it was going to take

a lot of resources to deal with it.

- George Wallace is a Southern segregationist politician

and a former Democrat.

And he runs for president as an independent

and taps into the deepest wellsprings

of American rage and reaction.

- Well, I think that the Negro,

no doubt about it, has got out of hand,

and I think Wallace will enforce law and order.

- You can see character in his eyes,

got a little spark to him, a little backbone, you know.

That's what--that's what the American people need.

- Wallace realized that if you could remove

overt racism from conservatism

that lots of Americans would go for it.

all: We want Wallace! We want Wallace!

- Because they were tired of the rights revolution.

It was too much change for them too fast.

- Well, let's come to the basic question.

Would you let your daughter marry a Negro?

- I don't even want to--

in fact, I don't even want to get in a discussion of race,

really, because the most important thing in our country

is maintaining law and order.

Race relations are going to work themselves out.

I don't believe in intermarriages

of Negro and white, if you would.

I'm candid and honest about it.

I don't think it's good for either race.

I think the races ought to remain intact.

- One of the most astute men in the field

of politics and world affairs on the scene today.

Ladies and gentlemen, the former vice president

of the United States, Richard M. Nixon.

- When 1968 begins, it's an open question

whether Richard Nixon can win anything.

- You have that stigma as a loser.

- Yes. - Because of losing

two big contests.

How do you-- how do you plan to combat that?

- The way you combat it is to win something.

- Nixon lost two big elections to Jack Kennedy,

and he lost to Pat Brown in California.

And people would say the guy's a political loser--

talented, yes, but a loser.

- America will be watching on March 12.

Let the message go out from New Hampshire--

the people of New Hampshire want a change,

and America will have a change in November.

Thank you.

- Television is a vital political meeting place.

To be successful,

a candidate must use the medium

and use it well.

Richard Nixon prefers informal,

no-holds-barred discussions.

- Hi, how are you?

- New Hampshire was the first time we saw a new innovation

in televised campaigning.

Richard Nixon's aides would gather

a group of ordinary citizens and have them,

instead of the media, asking questions.

- Any further questions that you have?

- And they made it look like Richard Nixon

was this brave truth teller

who was willing to face down any critic,

when, in fact, it was completely staged.

- This is "The Nixon Answer,"

in which Richard Nixon discusses the issues

with citizens of New Hampshire.

- Lawlessness, crime,

is a major problem in this country today.

And we talk about civil rights.

You know what the most important

civil right in this country is?

It's the right to be safe in the streets,

to be safe in your home.

- Nixon's campaign in New Hampshire was a classic.

- Nixonite from way back.

- "There is a new Nixon," the reporters were saying.

He's much better disciplined.

He also is more relaxed.

He takes criticism well.

- I plan to shake a lot of hands,

and I have a good, strong hand,

and I also like to talk to people.

- The intelligence of the old Nixon

combined with the better behavior and outlook

of the new Nixon-- that's the candidate in '68.

- I am myself, and I'm going to continue to play that role.

If people looking at me say, "That's a new Nixon,"

then all that I can say is,

"Well, maybe you didn't know the old Nixon."

- After the initial attacks

of the Tet Offensive were beaten back,

Hue was still occupied by the enemy.

It had been completely overrun.

- The North Vietnamese are deeply entrenched

in buildings and bunkers, carefully camouflaged,

waiting for the Marines to move forward,

to gun them down in the open.

They have been holding out for three weeks

in what has become the longest,

bloodiest battle of the war.

- Initially, when we went into the Citadel,

the Citadel being a fortress

that was roughly four square miles,

it was occupied by some 7,000 NVA.

- What remains of an old tower fortress

built more than a century ago

again is put to combat use.

That's the North Vietnamese strongpoint.

That's where the rocket firing had been coming from.

Now the Marines are trying to silence the firing

with grenade launchers.

- I had a strong group of Marines.

They were magnificent in every way,

unwavering in going forward under intense fire.

- After 24 days of heavy fighting,

the Americans and the South Vietnamese troops

finally pushed the enemy out of the Citadel.

The estimate was that 80% of the city

was damaged or destroyed

and 80% of its population was homeless.

In order to preserve the city of Hue,

we had to destroy the city of Hue.

- Whatever price the Communists paid for this offensive,

the price to the allied cause was high.

For if our intention is to restore normalcy,

peace, serenity to this country,

the destruction of those qualities in this,

the most historical and probably serene

of all South Vietnam cities, is obviously a setback.

- Walter Cronkite and the CBS Evening News

had a very large audience,

and when he delivered what he did from Vietnam,

it had an impact.

- But it is increasingly clear to this reporter

that the only rational way out will be to negotiate,

not as victors but as an honorable people

who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy

and did the best they could.

- He felt that he had a public obligation

to actually share with the Americans

the fact that our government is not telling us the truth.

- No matter what we say,

it is our napalm burning thatched huts,

our antipersonnel bombs being used against simple people,

our gas reported to be nonlethal.

Just the other day, it was reported

to kill only 10% of the adults who inhale it

and 90% of the children, so it's only semi-lethal.

- The big surprise of the first primary of campaign '68

has been the strength of Senator Eugene McCarthy.

They hoped for perhaps 35%.

The total they ran up was a dream come true.

- The results on election night gave us a sense

that there was a real opportunity here.

We even got to feeling like,

"Well, maybe we can run a national campaign after all.

Let's take a run at this thing."

- The McCarthy vote was just not a peace vote.

It was an anti-Johnson vote on many other issues.

- Mr. Nixon, do you think you can be stopped now?

- Well, let me-- - No!

- Well, sir, that's a-- that's a fair enough question.

Uh...

I can say this, I'm not gonna stop myself,

that's for sure.

- New Hampshire was critical, but you know what?

We looked at the numbers,

and Nixon's total in New Hampshire

was more than all the other candidates

in both parties combined.

- New Hampshire was a significant turning point.

It locked in a certain popularity that he had.

And at the same time, you had the Democrats

fighting among themselves.

- The president and his advisors

are most concerned about what tonight's returns mean

in terms of Bobby Kennedy.

"McCarthy worked hard, had good financing

and good organization in New Hampshire,"

one of the president's advisors says,

"but McCarthy and New Hampshire

"don't mean a thing

unless they mean Bobby is coming in."

- Would this encourage you at all to change

your position supporting-- - I have no plans.

Yeah, I have no plans at the moment other than--

as I say, maybe I'll have something further to say

after I see the rests of the figures, thank you.

- Would you accept a draft, Senator?

- I don't think anybody's suggested that.

- Well, I'm suggesting it now.

Would you accept it?

- I don't think that's a practical matter.

- Would you refuse it?

- Well, I don't-- just don't think--

Will you accept one?

I don't think anybody's suggested that

that's going to happen.

- All of Bobby's more seasoned political advisors

were saying, "You don't depose an incumbent president.

"All you're gonna do is rip the party apart

and make sure that Nixon or whoever's gonna win."

He was also worried that if he ran against Johnson,

people would chalk it up to Bobby's ruthless desire

to be president or his loathing of Lyndon Johnson.

- Bluntly put, Lyndon Johnson and Bobby Kennedy

hated one another.

- Bobby Kennedy doesn't go after LBJ

until he's politically wounded.

- I am announcing today my candidacy

for the presidency of the United States.

I run because it is now unmistakably clear

that we can change these disastrous, divisive policies

only by changing the men who are now making them.

- Can you imagine the anger that Johnson had?

Here--here was his nightmare.

- I hear LBJ's trying to get rid of 150 pounds--

Bobby Kennedy.

- Make us sweep all the way down from Linden

back this way, you understand me?

All right, lock arms, four of you on each side of the street,

and let's--let's sweep it all the way down.

- Today in Memphis, a 3,000-man protest march

led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

in support of a seven-week-old

city sanitation workers' strike.

The strike has turned into a major racial issue

in Memphis.

- We were an orderly march going up to Main Street.

I was in the middle of it,

and there were some unruly people, no doubt loud people.

And I saw the police in a phalanx

and said to myself,

"They're gonna break up this march."

Then suddenly there are a handful of men

busting a window over here.

- Chaos has just broken out downtown.

- All right.

- Negro youth are smashing windows.

- And I went back to King in the first rank and said,

"Martin, the police up there are planning to break us up,

"and you're gonna be a major target,

so we're gonna turn around and go back."

- That sound you just heard was the sound

of tear gas fired by a police officer

in an attempt to thwart this unruly demonstration.

- Get that son of a bitch!

- If you do not leave this area,

you will face arrest.

We urge you to return to your homes immediately

for your own safety.

- Get your ass out of here! - Move it! Move!

- We must not allow the events of the day

to cause us to let up.

That would be a tragic error.

- There will be continued marches.

We will not stop.

- I don't think King had a choice.

He had to go back to Memphis

and prove that there could be

a nonviolent march.

- You have to bring into account there's two behind you

and one is right here over to my left.

- Good evening, my fellow Americans.

Tonight I want to speak to you

of peace in Vietnam and southeast Asia.

No other question so preoccupies our people.

- It is a new war in Vietnam.

The enemy now has the initiative.

Now, there are finite limits

to the destruction Vietnam can absorb.

There are only so many buildings

and so many people.

The time is at hand

when we must decide whether it's futile

to destroy Vietnam in the effort to save it.

- We are prepared to move immediately

toward peace through negotiations.

- Daddy tried to the end to get peace with Vietnam.

- I followed Chuck out to get on the plane to Vietnam,

and so there's a picture of Chuck and me

carrying this tin of cookies.

And before he left on the airplane--

I am now pregnant, but it's a secret.

And he says to me, "I have signed my will,

"and if I'm killed,

the Marine Corps will take care of everything."

- Now, as in the past,

the United States is ready to send its representatives

to any forum, at any time, to discuss the means

of bringing this ugly war to an end.

- By the end of March,

President Johnson is in despair.

Bobby Kennedy, his great nightmare, is in the race.

- I'm interested in the future of this country

and what this country must stand for.

And I don't think it's been satisfactory

up to the present time.

- So this on top of all the other bad news

that he had in March pushes LBJ over the edge.

- Finally, let me say this.

- He told very few people

about the last part of his March 31st speech.

- Of course, Mother knew that he was gonna do it that night.

I talked to him and said, "Please, don't do it."

But Daddy had made his decision.

- With American sons in the field far away,

with America's future under challenge

right here at home, I do not believe

that I should devote an hour or a day of my time

to any personal partisan causes

or to any duties other

than the awesome duties of this office.

- He just was worn out...

- Accordingly...

- By all of these heavy, heavy burdens.

- I shall not seek

and I will not accept

the nomination of my party

for another term as your president.

- I stood in the wings and--

and cried.

- Good night, and God bless all of you.

- But I think it lifted a lot from his shoulders.

And he said, "I did the best I could.

It was very hard. It was just very, very hard."

- In terms of politics, it's still a long time.

A lot of things can happen.

- The next president of the United States,

Hubert Humphrey. - Richard Nixon.

- I've come from Oregon.

We had rather a successful primary there.

- This campaign train is on a life-or-death mission.

- At Columbia University, students

barricade university buildings.

- The students push forward, and the police push back.

- Washington, Chicago, Detroit, New York.

Racial confrontation, violent destruction,

state of emergency. - Mine eyes have seen the glory

of the coming of the Lord.