Things are pretty unsettled today, but has there ever been a year like 1968? Assassinations, racial unrest, nationwide riots, and an endless war in Vietnam put the nation on edge. While President Lyndon B. Johnson’s popularity plummeted, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were cut down by assassins' bullets. Race riots and anti-war protests erupted in hundreds of cities across the country and the world. The hostilities and bitterness spilled over onto the floor of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago where massive demonstrations and an unforgiving police response nearly tore the party apart. Ball of Confusion tells the story of 1968 and the tumultuous presidential election through interviews with Larry J. Sabato, Ted Koppel, Skip Humphrey, Walter Mondale, Mark Updegrove, Fred Malek, George Wallace Jr., and Peggy Wallace, among others.
Watch it tonight at 10pm on WGBH 2.
