ABSTRACT
By the 1960s, Chicago’s role as a primary focus for anti-urban sentiment had begun to ebb away. In these years, the myth that had been linked with Chicago’s name no longer regenerated itself with every scandal that broke out inside the city limits. The past remained, but it no longer cast its pall over the city’s present and future to the degree it once had. The strength of the city’s dark reputation did not lessen due to an increasing respect for Chicago as much as through a growth in the competing negative images of other urban spaces. Chicago still felt its share of urban disorder, but now these events were deemed typical. The tumultuous 1960s brought civil disruption to many American cities; Watts erupted in 1965, students took over university buildings on college campuses, such as in the much-watched Columbia University take over in New York City in 1968, and Newark and Detroit faced devastating racial violence in 1967. Chicago itself faced race riots after the assassination of Martin Luther King in the spring of 1968 and the so-called “police riots” during the Democratic National Convention of August 1968. But much of the popular rhetoric explained Chicago’s violent moments as part of the general emotional landscape of the 1960s rather than an aberrant form of Chicago-style outburst.
