After losing the support of Cronkite and the public, Johnson chose not to nominate himself for re-election. The vacuum he created during the Democratic primaries was soon replaced by his vice-president Hubert Humphrey. But Humphrey's campaign was overshadowed by two political heavyweights who had gained traction among the antiwar activists: Robert F. Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy. Kennedy had long been a favorite of antiwar activists who had tried to convince him to run against Johnson in the Democratic primaries. But Kennedy's equivocations and ambivalence about running, no doubt reflected by his past experience after the assassination of his brother President John F. Kennedy, turned off his early supporters, who found a replacement in Sen. Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota. During the primaries, McCarthy, who ran as an antiwar candidate, became a contender against Johnson in the New Hampshire primary, winning 42% of the Democratic votes against Johnson's 49%. McCarthy was boosted by young college students, many of whom shared his antiwar views. Joining his campaign, they cut their long hair and beards and became known as "Clean for Eugene," a group of campaign staffers known for their discipline and dedication to their candidate. McCarthy was the only challenge being offered during those early days of the Democratic primary. When Kennedy finally decided to throw his hat in the ring, motivated by Johnson's falling poll numbers and the increasing quagmire in Vietnam, Democrats now had a choice between two antiwar candidates. Kennedy's appearance in the primaries was too late for the young activists who had urged him to run in the first place; they stuck by McCarthy throughout the primaries.
For Johnson, though, it was too late altogether. As his approval ratings continued to fall, Johnson appeared on television on March 31st to announce that he was not going to seek re-election. Yet this bombshell was overshadowed several days later when Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on April 4 in Memphis, Tennessee.
King, who was in Memphis to support striking sanitation workers, was shot while standing on the balcony of the Loraine Motel. His assassination set off a wave of riots in America's inner cities. At least 168 riots took place over a five day span, including a total of 3,000 arrests and 20,000 injuries. More than 55,000 members of the National Guard were deployed to return order to many American cities, but the damage was already done. King was dead and the dreams of a nonviolent civil rights movement had given way to anarchy. Aside from the terrible reactions, there were other quieter reflections as Americans sought to make sense of King's violent death. Others asked for calm. The night of the assassination, Robert F. Kennedy, speaking before a rally on a campaign stop in Indianapolis, Indiana, delivered one of his most heartfelt speeches, not only calling for calm but for greater understanding:
What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black.
Sadly, ironically, Kennedy would become a victim of the violence and lawlessness that gripped the United States at this time only a few months later. In Boston, performer James Brown literally kept that city in a state of calm when his concert, which had been planned prior to King's assassination, was televised live. Both Brown and Mayor Kevin White agreed that Brown's performance could prevent those from reacting violently to news of King's assassination. Boston was one of the few cities in America that was spared from the riots and many credit Brown for that. This incident signaled Brown's importance not only as a popular performer within the black community but a civic leader as well. Later that year, Brown would record his seminal black anthem "(Say It Loud) I'm Black and I'm Proud," and later became involved in many social causes affecting the black community.
In the absence of King's message of nonviolence, a new political movement emerged out of the black community whose foundation became an anthem of racial pride as demonstrated by Brown's hit. The Black Power movement, which rejected integration and King's philosophy of nonviolent political activism, and took its cues from the Nation of Islam's stance on self-defense. One of the most prominent and vocal figures to emerge out of the NOI was the late Malcolm X. Though Malcolm X, after his ejection from the black Muslims, rejected their rhetoric of racial separatism and came to embrace an international and geopolitical consciousness and applied it to the race problem in America, his assertive rhetorical style appealed to many black Americans, especially black men, who were cynical of the seeming passiveness of nonviolent civil disobedience. One such group which followed Malcolm X's lead was the Black Panthers. Founded in Oakland, California in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, the Black Panthers quickly lodged itself in the American consciousness with their aggressive rhetoric of justice, black pride, and armed self-defense. The Panthers developed a Ten-Point Program that outlined their goals and political philosophy within the black and oppressed communities, which included among others land, bread, education, and justice and earned the respect within the black community with their successful breakfast program. One of the most iconic images to emerge during this time included a photograph of Panther founder Newton, who was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in September, 1968 for the death of an Oakland police officer, sitting in a rattan chair, holding a spear in one hand and a rifle in the other.
