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On September 24, 1969, thirteen months after the riots that shocked America, the trial of the so-called "Chicago Eight" began in the oak-paneled, twenty-third-floor courtroom of Judge Julius Hoffman. The 300 members of the panel of potential jurors were overwhelmingly white, middle-class and middle-aged.
- Prominent Voices Challenged The Legitimacy of The Anti-Riot Law.
- There Was A Clear Cultural Clash Between The Judge and The Defendants.
- The Judge Ordered Bobby Seale to Be Chained and Gagged in Court.
- Famous Writers and Performers Took The Witness Stand.
Three months before the Chicago Eight trial began, a group of prominent writers and thinkers published a letter to the editors of The New York Review of Booksarguing that the anti-riot law set a dangerous precedent. “The effect of this ‘anti-riot’ act is to subvert the first Amendmentguarantee of free assembly by equating organized political protes...
During the trial, yippies Hoffman and Rubin sometimes used unusual tactics to draw attention to their arguments. In one instance, they showed up to court wearing judicial robes to protest Judge Julius Hoffman’s decision to revoke Dellinger’s bail. When the judge demanded they remove their robes, they took them off and stomped on them. Underneath, t...
Froines argues Hoffman and Rubin’s robe incident “was basically a minor disruption,” and that “the main event in terms of disruption was Bobby Seale being chained and gagged.” Seale had chosen lawyer Charles Garry to represent him in court, and because Garry needed gallbladder surgery, he asked Judge Hoffman to postpone the trial. To Garry’s shock,...
During the trial, the defendants argued that the anti-war demonstrations had been peaceful, and that the violence was instigated by the police. To make this point, the defense called over 100 witnesses, many of whom had been in Chicago during the protests. At the time, a lot of prominent writers and performers were involved with the anti-war moveme...
- Becky Little
- 2 min
The trial of the Chicago Eight exemplified the state of turmoil that existed in the United States in 1968. Because the Chicago conspiracy trial opened with eight defendants, this group of radical leaders is sometimes referred to as the Chicago Eight.
Aug 15, 2016 · The contentious, political, and cultural conflict of the sixties was exemplified in the events of the 1968 Democratic Convention, the civil disturbances and the subsequent Chicago 8 Trial. Even before the August convention arrived in Chicago, the American people felt the turbulence of 1968.
The Chicago Eight trial was a mile-stone in American legal history. The defendants demanded not only the right to challenge the government’s specific charges but to protest the very legitimacy and fair-mindedness of the case against them. The Chicago Eight, as well as their lawyers, deduced that Julius Hoffman, the judge who was trying them, was
The first measures against slavery—the Confiscation Acts and Lincoln’s partial, compensated emancipation proposals—were thus designed to weaken the movement toward secession and to encourage the Confederacy to end the war.
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By threatening the sectional harmony that was the hallmark of the Second Party System, the Proviso constituted an acute threat to both Democratic and Whig unity. More so than even their votes against slavery, Northern congressmen’s oratory belied claims that they prized sectional accord.
