It started with a dispute over dorm rooms. Honestly. In March 1968, students at Nanterre University were fed up with restrictive rules that basically kept men and women from visiting each other's residences. It sounds almost quaint now, right? But that tiny spark landed in a tinderbox of global frustration. By May, France was paralyzed. We aren’t just talking about a few kids throwing rocks. We’re talking about 10 million workers on strike and a government on the verge of total collapse.
The 1968 Paris student riots weren't some isolated academic tantrum. They were the heartbeat of a year that felt like the world was tearing itself apart. You had the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, the assassination of MLK in Memphis, and the Prague Spring. Paris, however, felt different. It was visceral. It was poetic. It was incredibly messy.
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The Night of the Barricades
If you want to understand the madness, you have to look at the night of May 10th. This is what historians call the "Night of the Barricades."
Students in the Latin Quarter started ripping up cobblestones. Why? Because they needed weapons. They piled up cars, furniture, and those heavy stone blocks to create walls against the CRS—the French riot police. The air was thick with tear gas. If you've ever seen those grainy black-and-white photos of students in turtlenecks looking intense behind a pile of debris, that’s this night.
The police response was brutal. It backfired.
Instead of scaring people off, the violence radicalized the public. The next day, the unions joined in. This is the part people often forget: the 1968 Paris student riots became a massive labor movement. Imagine a country where the electricity stops, the trains don't run, and even the gravediggers go on strike. That was France in May.
Daniel Cohn-Bendit and the "Danny the Red" Factor
You can't talk about May '68 without mentioning Daniel Cohn-Bendit. He was a 23-year-old sociology student with a shock of red hair and a grin that seemed to drive the authorities crazy. He wasn't some stiff Marxist theorist. He was funny. He was sharp. When the government tried to deport him because he had German citizenship, the students marched through Paris chanting, "We are all German Jews!"
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It was a brilliant PR move. It turned a bureaucratic deportation into a symbol of universal resistance.
What Most People Get Wrong About the Demands
People think this was all about Maoism or hardcore Communism. Kinda, but not really.
While the leaders like Alain Krivine were certainly ideologues, the average student was fighting against something broader: l'ennui. Boredom. France under Charles de Gaulle was stiff, paternalistic, and suffocatingly traditional. The education system was a factory designed to produce obedient bureaucrats.
The slogans painted on the walls of the Sorbonne tell the real story:
- "It is forbidden to forbid."
- "Be realistic, demand the impossible."
- "Under the paving stones, the beach!"
That last one is famous. The idea was that if you ripped up the cold, hard infrastructure of the city, you’d find something natural and free underneath. It was as much a psychological revolution as a political one.
The Workers Enter the Fray
By mid-May, the factories were occupied. Renault, Sud-Aviation—workers just walked in and locked the doors. This is where it got scary for the elite.
De Gaulle actually fled the country for a few hours. He went to a French military base in Baden-Baden, Germany. He was basically checking to see if the army would still follow his orders if he had to take the city back by force. Think about that. The hero of the French Resistance, the man who was France, was so rattled by 20-somethings and factory workers that he almost quit.
Why it Fizzled (And Why it Didn't)
Eventually, the momentum slowed. The government offered the Grenelle agreements—basically a massive 35% increase in the minimum wage and a 10% hike in overall wages.
The workers took the deal. The students felt betrayed.
In June, de Gaulle called for a snap election. The "Silent Majority" came out in droves. They were tired of the chaos and the lack of gasoline. The Gaullists won a massive victory. On paper, the 1968 Paris student riots failed. The same old men were still in charge.
But look closer.
French society changed forever in those four weeks. The rigid social hierarchies cracked. Within a few years, abortion was legalized, the voting age was lowered, and the way professors interacted with students became way less formal. You can't put that genie back in the bottle.
The Legacy of the Latin Quarter
Today, if you walk through the Latin Quarter, you won't see many cobblestones. Most of them were paved over with asphalt so they couldn't be used as missiles again. The government is smart like that.
But the spirit of May '68 is the reason France has such a robust culture of protest today. When you see pension strikes or "Yellow Vest" protests, that’s the DNA of '68. They learned that if you shut down the city, the government has to listen.
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Takeaways for the Modern Observer
If you're looking to understand how social movements work, May '68 is the gold standard for a "rhizomatic" uprising. It didn't have a single headquarters. It didn't have a 10-point plan. It was a vibe that turned into a crisis.
- Symbols matter more than policy: The image of the cobblestone was more powerful than any manifesto.
- Overreaction is a gift: The brutality of the CRS did more to grow the movement than any student speech.
- Cultural shifts outlast political ones: De Gaulle won the election, but the students won the culture. France became a modern, liberal nation because of the pressure applied in those streets.
If you want to dive deeper into this, stop reading generic summaries. Look for the photography of Gilles Caron or the films of Jean-Luc Godard from that era. They captured the frantic, confusing energy of a month where it really felt like the world was starting over from scratch. You can still find the old posters from the Atelier Populaire online; they are masterclasses in minimalist political communication. Study them. They show how to boil a complex rage down to a single, haunting image.
The best way to respect the history is to realize that the "beach" is still under there, even if we've added more layers of asphalt since 1968.