Weekly timeline for 1968: A year of change and tumult
April 8: Baseball’s opening day is postponed because of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
April 10: President Johnson replaces General Westmoreland with General Creighton Abrams in Vietnam.
April 10: “Heat of the Night†wins best picture, Rod Steiger and Katherine Hepburn named best actor and actress, and Mike Nichols tapped best director (for “The Graduateâ€) at the 40th Academy Awards.
April 10: Orlando Jones born in Mobile, Ala.
April 11: President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968. The act prohibits housing discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, physical handicap or family status.
April 11: United States Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford calls 24,500 military reserves to action for two-year commitments, and announces a new troop ceiling of 549,500 American soldiers in Vietnam.
April 11: Western “Will Penny,†starring Charlton Heston, opens.
April 14:, The Matt Crowley play “The Boys in the Band” opens in New York.
April 14: Phil and Ronnie Spector married.
April 14: Anthony Michael Hall born in West Roxbury, Mass.
Sources:
The Whole World Was Watching: An oral history of 1968. A joint project between South Kingstown High School and Brown University’s Scholarly Technology Group
Timelines of History
Timeline 1968
Rock Timeline
Wikipedia Music Timeline
Frank Eugene Smitha’s Macrohistory and World Report