A Protestor Reflects on the 1968 Democratic National Convention

(or How Jack Became my Lawyer)

By Lee Edmundson, November 2022

If there is to be a rational understanding of this event, there has to first be my back story. Context. Here goes…

In October, 1967, my older brother, a student attending Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, took part in the first nationwide resistance to the Selective Service System, the Viet Nam Draft. The October 17th Resistance.  He had a 2S (college) deferment, which he sent back to the System.  Two weeks later he received his 1A draft classification. Two weeks later, he received his Induction Notice into the military.

He routed to Maxwell Air Force Base outside Montgomery, Alabama, where, when it came his time, he refused induction into the military.  That was roughly November, 1967.

At the same time, I was a Junior year Cadet attending Lyman Ward Military Academy,  in south Alabama. I was ranked Sergeant, Commander of the school’s precision rifle Drill Team, on the Student Council and Dean’s List. An outstanding student by any and all measures.

Every Christmas, wherever we were, we came home to Birmingham, to Lake Drive, to Mama’s house, our home.

When I met my brother there at Christmas break in 1967, I confronted him. “You refused induction”, I said. “That makes you a traitor to our country”.

I should confess at this juncture of my life and schooling, I wanted nothing more than to join the military after turning 18 — in May, 1968. I wanted to join up, go to Nam and kill “Gooks” – Viet Cong (VC). America’s enemy. Our enemy. My enemy. I wanted initially to be a sniper, as I was a really good shot with a rifle. Lately though, I’d learned of a different mission — the Tunnel Rats — who descended into the maze and labyrinth of VC tunnels built long before the current war by the (then) Viet Minh. Criteria for being a Tunnel Rat was to be short, wiry and fearless, I was all three. And that’s the ambition I brought home to Mama’s that Christmas.

“What do you know of the Vietnamese people?” Brother asked me. “They’re godless Communists who we have to fight and defeat there”, I replied.

Let’s talk, Brother said.

We went to the local bootlegger, bought a six-pack of beer, sat down and talked. This was Christmas vacation, 1967. Brother’s seminar began a century earlier in 1865, when the first French Troops debarked in Saigon and Hanoi. To keep the peace there. To protect the Catholic missionaries and French entrepreneurs.

The French colonialization, the Japanese occupation during WW2, the Viet Minh under Ho Chi Minh fighting alongside Americans in Indochina against the Japanese, the French reoccupation after the Japanese surrender. The Viet Minh taking up arms against the French. Dien Bien Phu. The 1954 Geneva Accords (which the United States declined signing). The partition of the country. The 1956 reunification election the US nixed. Diem brought from a Boston Catholic Seminary installed as South Viet Nam’s President. The regime’s oppression of the Buddhists. It was a graduate level seminar in deep Vietnamese history told over underage beer across two weeks at Christmastime, 1967.

It changed me forever. 

Billy went back at the end of break to Yellow Springs and Antioch College. I went back to Camp Hill and Lyman Ward Military Academy, seeing everything with different eyes. I knew I could not last there.

Green Berets from Fort Benning, Georgia rapelled out of the tall pine trees alongside our parade ground in one demonstration. They taught us how to silently cut a throat, how to make “bungee sticks” — sharpened bamboo for booby traps. Taught us how to hog-tie prisoners. They didn’t, thankfully, teach us how to waterboard, though I later learned they could have.

I now saw it all as an act. An abomination of humanity. I figured a way out.

Two seniors, an adopted Junior and I pulled a prank, a stunt, on one of our favorite teachers. This was on a Friday night. Beer was definitely involved. The following Monday morning word went across the hill from Tallapoosa Hall (where we perpetrated the prank) that heads were going to roll. (I will not go into deeper detail of the prank here).

I met with my cohorts and told them to turn me in for it. I’d take the rap, they’d get off free. They all agreed. I was expelled (shipped is the term we used) from LWMA in March, 1968. Went back to Birmingham. Got a job. Marched in an antiwar rally. Went to work as a volunteer for Citizens For McCarthy 1968, futile as it was in Alabama. We met in Gene Crutcher Books basement. David Walbert — Jim and Aileen’s son — Jim and his wife were stalwart liberals in ultra conservative/reactionary Birmingham  in the 1960s — provided the chairs.

I ended up being the group’s press agent. I had a marvelous mentor, Hank Black, a reporter for the Birmingham Post Herald, the “Liberal” Birmingham newspaper. Under his tutelage, I churned out weekly press releases. On a portable manual typewriter.

We affiliated ourselves with the National Democratic Party of Alabama (NDPA), a black and poor white coalition party formed by the charismatic John Cashin of Huntsville, Alabama, aimed at unseating the Rooster Democrats (Read: George Wallace) delegates from the 1968 convention.

I went to Chicago to lobby members of the Democratic party’s credentials committee to seat the NDPA candidates instead of the Rooster/Wallace party’s.

When I told Brother of my plan to go to Chicago, he wanted to join in. I first drove from Birmingham to Yellow Springs to pick him up, spent the night there. Walked through “Red” square. Took off for Chicago the next day.

We pulled into Chicago on Sunday, the day before the convention was set to convene. We went to Lincoln Park, where we parked my car far away and walked. There were police everywhere. On three wheelers, motorcycles, in busses. Hundreds. 

We walked to a glade where the Yippies were celebrating their Festival of Light. They had a flatbed truck with a sound system and a band was playing Rock & Roll and people were dancing. Seemed to me a lot of them were stoned. The pungent aroma of marijuana wafted through the air. Everywhere.

Then the police marched in. Two lines, on both sides of the sidewalk that transected that section of the park. The line was drawn. Lines of Chicago’s blue facing an growingly unruly crowd. There might have been a thousand or so protesters (perhaps more, I wasn’t counting) facing about 500 police. 

As the phalanx of police marched in my brother Bill said, “Keep towards the back”. I went towards the line, such was my nature. I witnessed policemen step out from their line and club protesters confronting them. I saw this more than once, many times. Unprovoked except for words, mere words.

The police and protesters never mixed it up that afternoon. Things eventually calmed down on both sides of the line. Bill and I left for a church, in the suburb of Austin, where we were to stay that night. We listened to the radio reporting as the police “cleared the park” that Sunday night. Sounded awful. Lots of tear gassing. Many riot batons employed. 

Next morning I had to check in with my NDPA contacts at the Hilton Hotel on Michigan Avenue (where, two nights later, all hell would break loose). We took the El down into the Loop. My people informed me that lobbying was going to begin at 3pm that afternoon. With time to kill, Bill and I headed back to Lincoln Park, where we were informed that a march was organizing to protest the arrests of someone named Wolf Lowenthal (I’d never heard of him) and Tom Hayden (who I had heard of) that morning, for “trespassing” in the public park. Outrageous. 

I served as a marshal on the march to police headquarters, keeping folks on the half of the sidewalk the police allowed us. Later, I took over carrying the speaker of the public address system Rennie Davis employed to keep the march orderly.

We protested in front of the central police station, then it  was decided that we would take the protest to the Democratic Party Headquarters at the Hilton on Michigan Avenue. We went. I still carried the speaker. When we got to Michigan Avenue, converging on the Hilton, I saw a contingent of protesters breaking towards a statue on a knoll across the street in what I would later learn was Grant Park. I gave the speaker to someone else and broke for the statue myself.

I’d separated from brother Bill. I had no earthly idea of where I was geographically. I hadn’t a clue about how to get back to Austin, where the church and my car were. People were climbing up the statue. I followed. I figured (wrongly, naively, duh) that I could see Brother in the crowd of (over a thousand or more) demonstrators. Babe in the woods.

I was atop the statue. Some guy in a hard hat asked me to hold a stick with a flag attached to it. I complied. After a couple of minutes, a guy with close cropped hair said to me, “Tie the flag to the statue”. I replied that I had nothing to tie it with. Then another guy with close cropped hair handed me a necktie. I set to work. Laser focused on the task. 

A minute or two later the same guy said, “I’m going. Are you?”. I said “No, I’m gonna get this flag tied on up here”. He went. A second or two later I had this strange feeling. Looking up from trying to tie the flag on, I saw that everyone had abandoned the statue, which was now ringed by a battery of uniformed policemen. Things changed. radically. I was confused. Didn’t know what next to do.

While orienting, a policeman on the ground called up to me. “Are you scared? Do you need some help down?” I said, Yeah. He called up to me, “Come to the rear of the horse (it was an equestrian statue, a rider mounted on a horse), slide down the tail. If you fall, I’ll catch you”. Relieved, I handed him down the flag and moved to the rear of the horse. I started sliding down the tail, and then he ducked under the statue while pulling out his night stick. I knew I’d get clubbed if I continued down. These guys meant business. I’d seen their operations the day before in Lincoln Park. I panicked, and went back up the statue.

I scrambled all the way to the top, straddling the statue’s head. (I later learned this state was of General Jonathan A. Logan, a Civil War Union hero).

Looking out from the top I saw the great crowd… just standing there. Out of harm’s way. I flashed the V peace sign with both hands, bidding them to come to my rescue. No one came. No one moved.

I realized if I stayed at the top of the statue, sooner or later the police might very well shoot me off it. I climbed down to the flanks of the horse. One cop (I’m going to use “cop”instead of “policeman” henceforth) climbed up and grabbed my legs. I spun away to the other side. Then he pushed me over. I grabbed the saber welded onto Logan’s side, but slightly missed the grab, and so my forearm wedged between the edge of the saber and the side of the horse. I was stuck, hanging in midair.

I felt choppy punches to the back of my head. The cop who’d shoved me over the side had climbed the rest of the way up and was hitting me. Film later showed he then kicked me in the back of my head. 

Another cop, a young one, was suddenly facing me, having himself climbed of the statue’s saber. He began punching my balls. Then my solar plexus. He was dedicated and aggressive. Film shows two cops on the statue’s base each grabbed my legs, two others joined in.  I was screaming in the face of the cop facing me, “Let go. Let go. I’ll come down. Let go of my legs. You’re breaking my arm!” They didn’t relent. Finally exerting enough downward pressure to break my right arm’s radius. I’ll never forget the sound, a sort of wet, popping sound, not unlike that sound when one separates a turkey leg from its carcass at Thanksgiving dinner..

Breaking the arms freed it from its pinning between the saber and the body of the statue. I fell. It was about eight or ten feet all the way to the ground. Either I blacked out or was knocked unconscious — does it matter which? Perhaps both.

Next thing I knew, I had a camera lens about a foot from my face, hands cuffed behind my back, with a Chicago’s finest on either side of me. I wasn’t walking, they were dragging me. They threw me into the back of a patrol car and we were off to — ironically — the Central Police station I’d been protesting outside of not 20 minutes earlier.

They booked me, photo, fingerprints. My arm was numbed by the flood of endorphins. Then they started interrogating me. Was I this? Was I that? Did I know so and so? Are you a Communist? etcetera, etcetera, and so on. One officer had me up against a wall. In my face with his accusations. I finally broke down and cried. They scoffed at me. “Poor little protester”, I recall.

They took off my sweatshirt, and for the first time I saw my arm. It was indented mid-forearm. They all saw it, too. They called for their doctor. He showed up, gave it a look. I remember his saying, “It’s broken. May be fractured. Take him over to Bridewell” (Correctional Institute, which had an infirmary attached) .

They put me in the back of a paddy wagon. No sling for the arm. I took the ride with it resting across my legs. We got there. Waited a while and finally a doctor showed up, looked it over, said it was definitely broken, possibly fractured, and told them to take me over to Cook County Hospital. Back into the paddy wagon. Still no sling. Got to Cook County, had to be admitted, but couldn’t be because I was underage, they had to get permission from my mother. They sent her a telegram. That was about 7 pm. The incident had occurred about 3pm. Finally, about midnight, her telegram arrived from Birmingham granting permission to admit and treat me. I received my first pain shot shortly after midnight, and was shackled to the foot of my hospital bed.

Very early the next morning — this would be Tuesday, doctors came in and tried to set the arm. It was too swollen, and the break was too severe. They scheduled me for surgery the next day. There was no gurney to transport me to surgery — this was Cook County Hospital on the detainees ward, after all. I was escorted on foot to surgery with an armed attendant on either side, occasionally having to hold me up. I was walked to the operating room in leg irons, shackles binding both ankles.. Surgery went swimmingly. They opened up the arm and screwed a metal plate into the bones to align the two parts of my broken right radius. They then sent me back, in leg irons, and then shackled me again to the foot of the bed.

I eventually came out of the anesthesia. I don’t remember if it was later that day or the next day, but I was awakened and saw my brother at the side of the bed. With him was this older man, who eventually stepped forward, informed me he was with the ACLU, that they were going to bail me out, and — I’ll never forget this statement from him — “Get you out of these leg irons”.

That was your Jack. Solid. Straight. Next day I was bailed out and the leg iron removed.

I never saw Jack again. Never got to thank him until you, Linda, telephoned me.

I spent another 5 days in hospital. Bro Bill drove up from Yellow Springs in my car, picked me up — casted arm and all — and drove me home to Mama’s in Birmingham.

I was on multiple charges: Disorderly Conduct, Resisting Arrest, and, worst of all, Aggravated Battery on a police officer in the course of his duty (a Felony). The ACLU’s Roger Baldwin Foundation took my case, for excessive force in my arrest. My new lawyers told me straight: if I were to go to trial in the next 6 months, I would be convicted, and do time in Cook County Jail. Their strategy was to get continuances, which they did. For many, many months, until things cooled down. After five or six trips back to court in Chicago, I finally pleaded guilty to Resisting Arrest, which my then ACLU attorneys informed me “justified” the police violence against me. In exchange for this plea, the other charges were dropped, and I paid a $500.00 fine, and that was that. Somewhere in mid-1969.

Coda: In December, 1969, I received a summons from Judge Julius Hoffman’s court to testify for the defense in the trial of the Conspiracy 7.  I was subpoenaed to appear for the defense of Rennie Davis and John Froines, who’d led the march that day from Lincoln Park to the Central Police Station and then to the Hilton Hotel. That’s a whole ’nuther story.  

I was born two months premature and spent the first three weeks of my life in an incubator. I am the second child/son of William Atkins 'Billy' and Ruth Barrett Edmundson. Daddy was a WW2 veteran and owner of what was then touted as, "The largest retail toy store in the Southeast" -- Southern Toy Company in Birmingham, Alabama. Mama was an artist, primarily a painter. She'd attended Parsons School of Design in NYC after High School.

I enjoyed an idyllic childhood until Daddy suddenly died when I had just turned eight. He was 46. I characterize my childhood to folks thusly: Until Daddy died, it was a Frank Capra movie. Afterwards, it became a Tennessee Williams play. 

I was sent to Georgia Military Academy after being expelled from junior high school. I was expelled from there after three months. Went back to the same junior high and was expelled again. Went to Lyman Ward Military Academy, where I excelled until being expelled (I've written about this gambit). Was sent to public High School, kicked out of there after 3 months.

After which, I went to work for Eugene McCarthy.

After Chicago, I realized my dream of becoming the junior senator from Alabama was no more. On a dare, I auditioned for a play and was cast. Thus began my 45+ year sojourn in theatre. I graduated the Drama Studio-London with a graduate degree in acting, and San Francisco State University with my BA in Drama. 

I've been an actor, director, producing director, technical director, lighting designer, fight choreographer, master carpenter and set designer for literally scores of productions in the UK, and regionally across the US. I've made my home in Mendocino, California since 1980.

In the words of Robert Hunter, "What a long, strange trip it's been".