People Got to Be Free
by Doug Bradley
History tells us — and we’ll be reminded of this innumerable times this week as the Democratic Party’s Convention returns to Chicago — that “the whole world was watching” when Mayor Daley’s police waged war with anti-war protesters on Michigan Avenue on August 29, 1968.
Truth is, the whole world wasn’t watching, at least not watching what was going on in Vietnam at the exact same time. Hell, the U.S. war in Vietnam was, supposedly, what the Chicago protests were all about. Then why the myopic tunnel vision? How did the police and the protesters and the politicians and the pundits all miss one of the bigger, and uglier, stories of that brutal, cruel war?
And irony upon ironies, both August 29, 1968 incidents — Chicago and Vietnam — revolved around the same initials.
LBJ
In America, those initials stood for our president, Lyndon Baines Johnson, who would be celebrating his 60th birthday during the 1968 convention but was being told to stay away because he and his Vietnam policies were the source of the Chicago demonstrations. More than one protester would be heard chanting, “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?”
In Vietnam, LBJ stood for Long Binh Jail, the military prison for U.S. servicemen at Long Binh post, where I was later stationed in 1970–71. The LBJ uprising lasted for nine days and was as chaotic as anything in Chicago. One inmate was killed, 52 others were injured, 63 MPS were hurt, and scores of buildings were burned down.
But not a word, not a whisper, from the White House or the military or the press about what happened at Long Binh Jail. Maybe that was because we didn’t want the American public to know that we were incarcerating U.S. soldiers in Vietnam in large numbers in crowded, unhealthy conditions? The officer in charge of LBJ, Lt. Col. Vernon D. Johnson of South Carolina, later admitted that the facility was designed to only hold about 400 inmates but that the number had exceeded 700 at the time of the riots.
And neither he nor the brass ever explained why African American GIs made up almost 90 percent of LBJ’s inmate population…
Meanwhile, back in Chicago, the whole world was watching the chaos, confusion, and tyranny. As unpleasant as it was, the show went on. Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey became the Democratic nominee for President. And his Republican rival Richard Nixon told us he had a “secret plan” to end the war.
The story that eventually came out about the LBJ riot focused on the 129 courts-martial that were levied against the “insurrectionists” for charges including murder, assault on a superior officer, aggravated assault, mutiny, aggravated arson, larceny and “willful destruction of government property.”
Sounds a lot like the charges levied against the Chicago demonstrators. At least they had an audience. The prisoners at LBJ didn’t.
The number one song that week was “People Got to Be Free” by my favorite “blue-eyed soul” group, the Rascals.
All the world over, so easy to see People everywhere just wanna be free Listen, please listen, that’s the way it should be There’s peace in the valley, people got to be free
Near the end of the song, lead singer Felix Cavaliere opines about “the train of freedom.” “It’s about to arrive any minute now,” Felix tells us, because it’s been “long overdue.” But, like Chicago, like the protests, like the prisoners at LBJ, “look out ’cause it’s a’comin’ right on through.”
Apparently, “People Got to Be Free” was partly a reaction to the long-haired Rascals having been threatened by a group of Florida rednecks. Even better, after the song came out, the group would only perform it at concerts that featured an African American act.
When that condition was not met, the Rascals canceled several shows in protest. It took a while, but the train to freedom was beginning to come through. A question for us today. Has it arrived?
About the Author: Vietnam veteran Doug Bradley is the author of Who’ll Stop the Rain: Respect, Remembrance, and Reconciliation in Post-Vietnam America, co-author with Craig Werner of We Gotta Get Out of This Place: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War, which was named best music book of 2015 by Rolling Stone magazine, and DEROS Vietnam: Dispatches from the Air-Conditioned Jungle, now available as an audiobook. His music-based memoir, The Tracks of My Years, will be released by Legacy Book Press in 2025.
