|
|
1968 Series on WKAR News Programs
Continuing this Month on 90.5 WKAR
NPR News Programs Highlight 1968
“I have been to the Mountaintop.” – Reverend Martin Luther King, from his speech delivered on April 3, 1968 at the Church of God in Christ Headquarters, Memphis, Tennessee, the day before he was assassinated, by James Earl Ray.
“Accordingly, I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President.”—President Lyndon Johnson, from his speech delivered on national television, March 31, 1968.
“There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why…I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?”-- Senator Robert Kennedy, during the 1968 presidential campaign. (Kennedy was shot on June 5, 1968 at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles by Sirhan Sirhan; he passed away on June 6.)
1968.
It seems like yesterday to many of us. Especially if one was coming of age during this pivotal decade when the mood of the country segued from carried-over 1950s conservatism at the 1960s opening to an almost anything-goes attitude by its end.
In April, NPR marked the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. as the opening segment of its year-long (and occasional) series Echoes of 1968.
The series will explore how the defining events of ’68 reverberate to this day from the previously mentioned King assassination to the founding of Intel and the horror of the My Lai Massacre to the birth of the Big Mac, tracing the far-reaching effects at home and abroad of this year four decades hence.
Other stories will explore how suburban communities grew in population and wealth as inner cities lost jobs, businesses, and residents; the influence of government housing initiatives on inner city and low-income houses; changes in the music industry since the founding of Apple Records; and how presidential politics has evolved since the 1964 campaign, which saw a sitting president not seek reelection, another presidential candidate assassinated, and the Democratic Convention in Chicago disrupted by anti-war protests.
Echoes of 1968 will also look at the evolution of technology since the founding of Intel, how feminism has grown from a nascent movement into a predominant force in society, and how the space program has changed since the day a manned space capsule first circled the moon. There are also planned segments on the creation and influence of the movie rating system and the effect of federally mandated three-day holiday weekends by moving and combining remembrance days so they always fall on Mondays.
Overseas, NPR News correspondents will recall the events on the streets of Europe in 1968, from Paris to Prague, and look back on how politics in Europe has changed through the decades, including the fall of the Iron Curtain and the embrace of much of Eastern Europe by the European Union. NPR reporters will also look back to the days of the war in Vietnam, the protracted peace talks to end the war, and the rebuilding and reconciliation that has taken place both within Vietnam and between it and the United States.
Echoes of 1968 will be aired within three regular NPR series including Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Weekend Edition Sunday.
published: June 10, 2008
|
|
