By 1968, a sense of crisis gripped the country. Riots in the cities, campus unrest, and a nose-thumbing counterculture escalated into a general youth rebellion that seemed on the verge of tearing America apart. Calling 1968 “the watershed year for a generation,” SDS founder Tom Hayden wrote that it “started with legendary events, then raised hopes, only to end by immersing innocence in tragedy.” It was perhaps the most shocking year in all the postwar decades. Violent clashes both in Vietnam and back home in the United States combined with political assassinations to produce a palpable sense of despair and hopelessness (America Compared).