The 1968 Exhibit Exhibition Walkthrough
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CONTACTS: Lauren Saul Sarah Fergus Director of Public Relations Public Relations Manager 215.409.6895 215.409.6759 [email protected] [email protected] THE 1968 EXHIBIT EXHIBITION WALKTHROUGH The year 1968 reverberates with an awesome power down to the present day. A year of violence and upheaval, of intense political divisions, of wars abroad and wars at home. A year of vivid colors, startling sounds, and searing images. A year that marked a turning point for a generation coming of age. A turbulent, relentless cascade of events that changed America forever. The 5,000-foot exhibition is divided chronologically, by months of the year. Each month is themed around key events to highlight the various political, military, cultural, and social shifts that happened that year—from the height of the Vietnam War and the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, from the bitter 1968 presidential election to the Apollo 8 mission when humans first orbited the moon. Visitors enter the exhibition gallery through a beaded curtain into an alcove that displays each month of 1968 with a brightly-colored icon. Video footage plays while guests take in famous quotes from the year, before entering into the first month. JANUARY: “THE LIVING ROOM WAR” The immensity of the Vietnam War came crashing into American living rooms in 1968 as it never had before. On the night of January 31—during a cease-fire for Tet, the Vietnamese New Year’s feast—North Vietnamese forces launched a series of bold surprise attacks, striking hundreds of military and civilian targets throughout South Vietnam, including the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. The Tet Offensive persisted well into February and proved to be a turning point in the war and in American public opinion. U.S. generals had been talking about “successes” and “progress” and “victories,” and President Lyndon B. Johnson, in his January 17 State of the Union address, had announced that “the enemy has been defeated in battle after battle.” The Tet Offensive also led to a shift in coverage of the war in the U.S. media, especially television. Graphic images of violence and bloodshed began to appear more frequently, and the human cost of the war emerged as the dominant theme in newscasts and reports from the field. In this section of The 1968 Exhibit, visitors enter a quintessential ’60s living room. A television plays news reports about the escalating conflict of the Tet Offensive and Walter Cronkite casting doubt over the war effort. In the coffee table sits a compact recorder used by the Spielmann family in Minnesota to send taped-recorded “letters” to their son Bill, who had entered active duty in the U.S. Navy in June 1967. He served on the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown in 1968, where he worked as a machinist in the main engine room. -MORE- ADD ONE/THE 1968 EXHIBIT WALKTHROUGH In the couch’s end table sits the Better Homes and Gardens Decorating Book, 1968 edition. This decorating book includes step‑by‑step instructions and photos on how to arrange and decorate the modern home, including the embroidered pillow displayed on the couch. The book’s suggestions inspired the décor of this “January 1968” living room setting. Overpowering the living room setting is a major focal point of the exhibition—a Bell UH-1 Helicopter—a representation of the war literally crashing through the television screen into the homes of Americans for the first time ever. A multipurpose utility helicopter famous for its use during the Vietnam War (its first combat operation), the UH-1, commonly referred to as the “Huey,” was developed by Bell in the 1950s. Bell produced more than 16,000 of the powerful helicopter between 1955 and 1976, over 7,000 of which served in Vietnam. This Huey, #66V01008, was manufactured by Bell in 1966, and used in Vietnam by the U.S. Army from 1967 through 1970. The Minnesota Historical Society (MHS) purchased it as a collection of scrap parts from Northwest Helicopter Service in Olympia, Washington, in October 2010. It has been restored by a group of more than 20 volunteers, many of whom are Vietnam veterans with decades of experience in flying and maintaining Army helicopters. Working with MHS technicians, these aviation enthusiasts poured several thousand hours of time into repurposing this Huey to be disassembled for shipping and reassembled for display. A media display that relates combat stories from Vietnam War veterans is lodged inside the helicopter for visitors to take in. Visitors can listen to oral histories from eight individuals who served on both sides of the war, including: Donna-Marie (“DM”) Boulay, who served in Vietnam in the Army Nurse Corps from February 1967 to March 1968; Dai Vinh, who joined the South Vietnamese Army in 1963 at the age of 18 but ultimately fought alongside American troops against the Viet Cong; novelist Tim O’Brien, who was drafted into the Army after graduation from college in 1968; and Trudell Guerue, a member of the Red Lake Band of Ojibwe, who served in Vietnam as a captain in the 173rd Airborne Brigade. A glass case inside the helicopter displays a collection of items indicative of service in Vietnam, loaned from the military veterans who helped restore the Huey helicopter. The items include a tape recorder, a C-Ration set, a can opener, an accessory packet, a Bia Saigon beer can, a “Tiger-stripe” field hat, a KA-BAR knife and scabbard, and an engraved Zippo lighter. FEBRUARY: “WE’RE LOSING THIS WAR” The American military force in Vietnam—which in 1968 numbered more than a half million—was overwhelmingly made up of young men. Their average age was 22; more than 80 percent of the deaths in Vietnam were men between the ages of 18 and 25. For thousands in this generation, Vietnam marked a coming of age. The U.S. military death toll in Vietnam in 1967 had nearly doubled from the previous -MORE- ADD TWO/THE 1968 EXHIBIT WALKTHROUGH year, from about 5,000 to more than 11,000. The figure would go even higher in 1968, when the monthly death totals averaged more than 1,200. On February 18, the Pentagon announced the war’s highest weekly death toll: 543 U.S. soldiers, lost in the bitter fighting of the Tet Offensive. At the end of this bloody month, CBS News anchorman Walter Cronkite gave a pessimistic assessment of the war during a special report on national TV: “It seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate” (“Report from Vietnam,” February 27, 1968). Registering at age 18 for the Selective Service—“the draft”—had been a vital American rite of passage for decades. But with the escalation of fighting in the war, and the call up of tens of thousands of more troops, the prospect of being drafted and sent to Vietnam became very real. The draft eventually raised more than 2 million men for service during the Vietnam era. And millions more enlisted because of a “draft effect”: fear of adverse assignments that awaited a draftee in the Army as opposed to an enlisted man. Opposition to the war was often conflated with opposition to the compulsory service of the draft. A flag-draped coffin sits in this section of the exhibition, with soldiers’ memorabilia resting on top: a “boonie” hat worn by Mike Maurer of the 82nd Airborne Division in Vietnam who served from 1968 to 1969; a draft card belonging to Jon Walstrom, who registered in 1960; and a letter from Tim Doble to his fellow marine who tragically died aside him while learning to play guitar. In memory of the deadliest week of the war—February 11–18—this section of the exhibition houses a tombstone dedicated to the 543 U.S. servicemen killed that week, as well as the more than 2,200 Americans killed in action in the month of February. The tombstone was donated to the exhibition by the Memorial Rifle Squad Volunteers at Fort Snelling National Cemetery. MARCH: “THE GENERATION GAP” Revolution was in the air in 1968: a worldwide movement of youth, liberation, and radical change. Campuses and cities in all parts of the world exploded in protests—against the status quo and against the war in Vietnam. Millions of young people were forging new identities and breaking with the past by experimenting wildly in style, in sexual freedom, in drugs, and in music. Women of the baby boom generation (born 1946–64) began swelling college enrollments by the mid-1960s. Nearly 700,000 students who entered college in fall 1968 were women. Nearly 49 percent of girls who graduated from high school in 1968 enrolled in college that fall—the highest rate ever up to that point. For young women, college meant far more than just greater educational opportunity. It also led to a rise in status and political consciousness as well as opened new avenues to personal freedom. Exhibition visitors take in a re-created 1960s dorm room as the main framework for this section of The 1968 Exhibit. The dorm features an open desk drawer displaying a variety -MORE- ADD THREE/THE 1968 EXHIBIT WALKTHROUGH of items, including, notably, a pack of Ovulen-21, an oral contraceptive first marketed in 1966. At first, most women who sought out the pill were married; in fact, there were laws in some states prohibiting the distribution of any birth control devices or information to single women. By 1968, however, the “sexual revolution” was in full swing, and millions of young unmarried women were “on the pill.” Also on display in the student’s desk drawer is a GE transistor radio box, a Kodak Instamatic box, hippie glasses, rolling papers, a (fake) joint with a roach clip, and a “Don’t Trust Anyone Over 30” button.