early hours of April 6th, under the cover of darkness, Mayor Daley rode into the West Side to see the destruction firsthand.

Daley asked, "Why did they do this to me?"

Hours later, as the sun rose, West Side residents awoke to find themselves in the middle of a full scale military operation.

- [King] The ultimate weakness of a riot is that it can be halted by superior force.

- We saw the National Guard coming into Garfield Park, putting up tents and literal tanks.

I just didn't think that I would see my city of Chicago become, it looked like an invasion.

- [Narrator] 7,500 National Guardsmen had arrived overnight.

- They had a tank on on Roosevelt Road and Pulaski with troops lined up and down the street.

- [King] We have neither the techniques, the numbers, nor the weapons to win a violent campaign.

- One of the little kids ran up and started to yell, "Draft dodger, draft dodger," because his brother was in Vietnam.

And as far as he was concerned, these were the guys that had found a way not to go to Vietnam.

- [King] Our power does not reside in Molotov cocktails, in rifles, knives and bricks.

- I remember when we rode in the neighborhood, the sergeant saying, "Hold those weapons high, make these people see that you mean business."

- (King) Many of our opponents would be happy for us to turn to acts of violence in order to have an excuse to slaughter hundreds of innocent people."

- You saw National Guardsmen posted at every bridge and every entrance along 290 on both sides of it.

People couldn't cross those bridges and basically we were contained.

- Yeah, it just felt kind of eerie to walk down the street and there are these soldiers standing there with their weapons.

This is the nature of things.

- [Narrator] Despite an overwhelming military presence, 5,000 US Army troops arrived as reinforcements.

They set up encampments around the city.

The mayor ordered an unprecedented 7:00 PM curfew for all residents under the age of 21.

Liquor and gun sales were banned.

- You had to be in your house, wasn't no going to work.

Or you could, if you had to go to work, you had to wait until six o'clock.

I was able to maneuver through 'cause I guess they perceived me as a non-threatening 13-year-old kid.

I'm going to deliver papers this way.

Okay, go ahead.

- We were told that there was a sniper in an alley.

We were creeping down the alley.

It was very, very dark and all you could see was the dark shape of the fire escape zigzagging up the side of the building.

We heard a clink.

People kind of got on the ready, ready to shoot at whatever was up there.

And about that time a woman stuck her head out and said, "Joey, get yourself back in here right now and go to bed."

He was not a sniper, he was just a little kid.

And that just blew me away because I realized how close we came to maybe somebody taking a shot at that kid.

- [Narrator] The experience changed Dave Jackson.

He left the National Guard and was granted an honorable discharge as a conscientious objector.

- I was told I was the first one that that had ever happened