Scores of protesters in streets across the country. A looming presidential election. Violent stand-offs between law enforcement and the citizens they had sworn to protect. And, amid the prospects of political and cultural change, a chilling and inescapable backdrop: thousands upon thousands of Americans dead.
The summer of 2020 was, by any stretch, a historic one. But for some it’s a season that feels remarkably like the summer of 1968.
Instead of President Trump, it was Lyndon B. Johnson, succeeded by Richard M. Nixon. The tragedy that cost American lives was not a pandemic but the war in Vietnam. Racism was central to the protests — the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated just months earlier — but so were a relentless draft and demands for peace.
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