Scholars of contemporary American history have struggled to find the words that adequately convey the magnitude of the crises that shook America in 1968, a year in which Americans, as one historian explained, “experienced too much history.” Book and film titles have characterized 1968 variously as “the year that rocked the world,” “the year the dream died,” and “the year that shaped a generation.” Historian Garry Wills succinctly captured the tone of that epochal year when he wrote, “There was a sense everywhere in 1968, that things were giving. That man had not merely lost control of his history, but might never regain it.”