'Retracing my own steps' from 1968
Writing a book about the pivotal presidential election of 1968 turned out to be a walk down a not-always-pleasant memory lane for Michael Schumacher.
“It really fired me up all over again,” Schumacher said of writing “The Contest,” newly published by the University of Minnesota Press. “It flooded back to me what those times were like.”
In 1968, Schumacher was an 18-year-old political junkie who kept a close watch on national and international events, including the war in Vietnam, the Civil Rights movement and, of course, that year’s presidential election. It was a year of tragedy, with the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. It was a year in which a sitting president, Lyndon B. Johnson, announced he would not run for re-election.
