1968: The Global Revolutions

On March 19, 1965, Todd Gitlin and other SDS organizers led hundreds of demonstrators in a protest and sit-in at the Wall Street headquarters of Chase Manhattan Bank. The Rockefeller-owned financial giant was among the leading American corporations to support South Africa’s Apartheid regime. Decorous by later standards, participants in this episode of civil disobedience were orderly, well-dressed, and mostly uncomplaining, even as they were lifted one by one into waiting police paddy wagons. From his cell later that day, Gitlin jotted down notes describing the scene in jail.