I grew up at the same time only on the south side of Chicago. Richard J Daley was mayor. There was the tumult of the 1968 Democratic convention! The protests after the assassinations and during the Viet Nam war were so bad our parents put us on lockdown. I feel, however, this time is the most stressful in my life. The results of the 2016 election really have given me and others in my family so much more anxiety. There is so much hate now. I have no idea how the hate, lies, and divisiveness can ever be defeated. Now I have grandchildren. What will their future hold? It’s been 740 days since January 6, 2021. It’s January 16, Martin Luther King Day, a Federal holiday. I’m just waiting for Justice for our very fragile Democracy. Maybe tomorrow? It’s been long enough.
I agree with your Managing Editor. I cannot listen to the news hash and rehash the false equivalencies. Today, I am marching with a large group of League of Women Voters members and friends in a MLK day parade in Naples, Florida! This is the first organized by the NAACP in several years due to Covid. We will carry posters of quotes from Martin Luther King, and there are so many! This is the most motivating activity I have done in years! There are so very many remarkable quotes from Martin’s many speeches and books. Here is the one I will carry: “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy”. (From Strength to Love, 1963)
I am posting this from a reader, Judith Wright, who could not gain access to the Comments:
In 1961 I was one of the four hundred or so Freedom Riders who were arrested and jailed in our attempt (a successful one) to end segregation in interstate travel. Later my husband and I spend a year in Meridian Mississippi working on voter registration. My husband was part of the second attempt to cross the Edmond Pettis Bridge with Martin Luther King. The second attempt was the one when Martin Luther King knelt in front of the armed police on the other side of the bridge and decided that it was too dangerous and turned around to wait until he knew the demonstrators would have protection.
Here is what I have to say today:
Martin Luther King’s birthday should be a day for all of us to recommit ourselves to take action in whatever way we can to fight for equality. Maybe some of us can get out there and become activists. I guarantee you that it will be a completely rewarding part of your life. Others may not be able to do that, but remember that silence is complicity, so speak out in any way you can against the hate and lies that are going on now. Maybe you can write an editorial in your home paper, or maybe you’ll find yourself speaking to someone who says something racist, and you’ll stand up to them instead of keeping quiet. Talk to your friends and try to find ways to help fight the good fight.
I was there at Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream”speech, and though some things have changed, it has not come true yet.
It's amazing how vividly we can remember some events in our early lives. Your depiction of your reaction to Dr. King's assassination really shows how it affected you. I think I was too caught up in my own adolescence to have had such deep thoughts. I'd like to think that I've grown into them.
I was 13 in the spring of '68. The '60s were a scary time, with the Cuban missile crisis, nuclear threats, assassinations, riots, our entry into the Vietnam war, the draft, and so much more. It felt like the world was unraveling.
MLK's assassination, like JFK's, Malcolm X's, and Bobby Kennedy's, seemed almost surreal. I remember the extensive TV coverage, and couldn't imagine how or when the carnage would end. The unrest that both fed and resulted from those events was palpable.
But I must confess that I didn't realize Dr. King's historical significance until years later. I know I harbored latent prejudices in those days, in part because of the times, but also because I lived in a town where everybody looked like me. It wasn't until high school and college that I began to interact with people who didn't.
Dr. King's "I have a dream" speech is one of the most moving speeches I've ever heard. While his life was ended by an assassin's bullet, his dream lives on, as we continue to strive for the ever-elusive equality enshrined in our Declaration of Independence.
Also born in 1956, and attending Catholic school, I have similar recollections. But it struck me, reading yours, that 1. These assassinations never prompted gun control and 2. Political assassinations are a rarity now, but guns are everywhere. 3. The threats against Obama were, I understand, off the charts, and I still worry for him and any other black candidates today.
I had marched with the freedom riders, I was very idealistic and political. Many of the young men with whom I had gone to High School we're in Vietnam. The news every night was wrenching. So many young dying needlessly, in a jungle, in which we didn't belong. Then, April 4, 1968, it seemed our world fell apart. The man with the velvet voice, who spoke of dreams and equality. The man with whom I had marched, was killed with an assains bullet! I cried for hours. While I cried, another man had his eyes on a brilliant man who would be President, Bobby Kennedy. My tears had stopped and we had a new man, who would be President, and right many wrongs. I remember sitting at a red light, in my blue VW, when i heard the news June 5, 1968, that Bobby Kennedy had been assassinated while giving a speech in Los Angeles! It seems 1968 was the worst summer of my life. I thought, how can it get any worse I asked my 24 year old self? That summer was the worst, it is so much better we don't know the highs and lows that are yet to come.
The generation above me vividly remembered exactly where they were when they heard about Pearl Harbor. Until JFK was assassinated I didn’t understand how a memory could be so vivid. But my “vivid” memories then included the assassinations of MLK and then RFK. We remember these men and the words they spoke, their visions of a better world, not just the awful moments of their deaths.
What will we remember of Kevin McCarthy and MTG, not to mention DT? These self-serving politicians have brought us low. I also clearly remember that when Joe McCarthy died, my mother said “thank God!”. I think that that was the moment I started paying attention to history in the making.
Jan 16, 2023·edited Jan 16, 2023Liked by Robert B. Hubbell
Chris Whipple, author of the new book "The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden's White House" said the following on "Face The Nation" today:
"But, again, I -- substantively, I think this is really serious in one way because I think that it now becomes difficult, if not impossible, to bring charges on the Mar-a-Lago documents case. And the reason - the reason I say that is because no matter what anybody says about this being only about the facts and the laws, it is inarguably a political decision with enormous political ramifications. Jack Smith and Merrick Garland have to be thinking about a jury, choosing a jury, and whether that jury is going to think that what Trump did is all that egregious if documents keep popping up every other day in Joe Biden's residences."
I was amazed that Mr. Whipple seemed to think a jury would have trouble differentiating between Trump's repeated "seemingly" criminal failure to cooperate with the demands of the Archives to return documents and Biden's immediate return of documents upon discovery.
I was surprised that seemingly liberal writers like Mr. Von Drehle and Mr. Whipple would make such a bold and somewhat ignorant comment. It sounds like they think Americans are stupid.
Wonderful newsletter today. Your children and grandchildren are blessed to have you. You keep their history alive. ¨...demand for equality was so powerful that it thrummed the distant alluvial sand that passes for soil in the San Fernando Valley.¨ ❤️ No one, however, should forget that Hilary Clinton won the popular vote to become #45 - the President of the United States. Despite the bungling of James B. Comey and those who only read the ¨headlines as news¨ at the check out counter of their local supermarket.
I also grew up in a suburban bubble. I am a bit older, so this assassination frightened me on an adult level (college and full time work). I was also struggling in 1968 with how to escape the draft. The times had challenged my naive sheltered existence.
My town was 100% white. I had never had a relationship with a person of color. I had attended one of the "best" high schools. But the history classes really taught me nothing about the journeys of "others". It was a sanitized college prep program designed to keep us white and and in charge. To say it was a racist portrait of our past is such an understatement - I just can't find the words.
Dr. King's assassination was my youthful "bucket of ice water" wake up call. So was the fact that my country wanted me to kill Vietnamese people. The sum total of losing MLK, JFK and RFK sent chills down my spine. My family never spoke fondly of these leaders. But I knew that they were on the right side of justice. My whole world view was starting from scratch. My politics were in the air. But I was ready to start fresh and look at life from the point of view of those who grew up differently.
Although I managed to avoid being sent to the Far East as a grunt, I did spend some time in the army and got a cultural education that washed away 90% of the notions that my bubble upbringing had produced. The guys who had my back had accents so thick I could barely understand them. It wasn't the white kid from New England who shared his water and salt pills with me when I collapsed. I could barely understand him either. But after a few months I knew that where guys came from or what they looked like had no bearing on who I would prefer to share a foxhole with.
Your letter today caused me to find my memories of that time. Success. The ice buckets of these murders - of leaders and populations - altered who I was and sent me on journey of discovery and very much about empathy. I am grateful that my parents wanted me to attend "good" schools. But my real learning began after I left formal education. 1968 was the start of a new me.
I awoke on Thursday, April 4, 1968 in Memphis, TN in the Holiday Inn Jr. across the street from the Lorraine Hotel. I was a twenty year old Navy airman training at NAS Millington, TN. I was spending the night with a Delta Airlines flight attendant friend following an evening of partying in Memphis. Outside, the street was packed with police cars and people. The next few days got confusing very quickly.
We turned on the television to learn that MLK, Jr. had been assassinated across the street, and Memphis was locked down and in turmoil. Memphis police and soon the National Guard were everywhere. I telephoned the naval base, and they told me to go to the USO or a recruiting office when the curfew was lifted and get a ride back to Millington. In 1968, service men hitchhiked everywhere, but now that form of transportation was forbidden. Memphis had broken out with riots, so we were told not to go on the streets nor to hitchhike anywhere.
At the air station, I was housed in a cubicle comprised of three bunk beds, lockers and a table and chairs that we shared for studying. We were men from everywhere in America training to be aviation electronics specialists learning to maintain fighter jets on aircraft carriers that cruised off the coast of Vietnam. Navy, Marine and Coast Guard servicemen in the barracks were organized alphabetically. I was sleeping next to two black sailors, E. P. Johnson and E. V. Johnson. We had become military friends in the racially charged south. I was wondering how this terrible news of the MLK Jr. killing was playing out at the base and with my black friends.
After a long day, when I navigated through what was then known as the black part of Memphis through anguished protesters and got to the base, I walked into my cubicle. Sitting on their bunks were the “Johnsons” as they had become referred to in our company. All I could say to them was, “Sorry, guys.” They looked up at me through their anger and grief and said, “Thanks, Red.” We we’re still okay, but very different.
Robert, I'm thinking of how much Dr. King accomplished both before and since his much too early tragic death. After reading your post, I later read a newspaper article about President Biden hinting to another run at age 82. I just submitted the following letter to the editor of my local paper, THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS.
As we look forward to upcoming election seasons, and as we prioritize increasing voter participation, acknowledging the historically low turnouts among young voters, we must address the issue of age. There seems to be a hesitancy among political elites in both parties to “pass the baton.” Prospective candidates in their 70’s and 80’s continually make the argument that they’re as sharp as ever, that they haven’t lost a step, etc. That may be true, but it’s not helpful to motivating younger voters (like people under 70). There’s also an unhelpful, frankly insulting, hubris suggesting that no one else is as qualified.
As much as I appreciate maturity and wisdom, I submit that beyond a point these are not functions of age. What is a function of age is the privilege of focusing on developing those coming up to ensure there’s a deep bench of qualified, tested, and known leaders. That’s what I hope our “elder” political leaders will do.
It was a very dark day in a very dark period. The summer of 1967 had seen America in flames — torn apart by racial unrest and conflict, as well as the spreading and deepening recognition of the immorality of the Vietnam war. Tet had just occurred in January 1968. Johnson had just withdrawn from the prospective 1968 presidential campaign. For many college students like myself — especially those who had seen hateful northern white responses to MLK’s leadership of marches in cities like Chicago — Dr. King was a moral exemplar, perhaps THE exemplar in America. I was home from college that day. I remember thinking as I heard the news on the radio in the car — the thought and the exact location of my travel are frozen in sharp and clear memory, just as November 22, 1963 is — “Oh my God, how much worse can it get! Is this the end of tragedy in our country or are we destined for more and worse?”
Nineteen days later I joined a campus sit-in/revolt that held national attention for seven days, but the news continued to get worse. That was the summer of Bobby Kennedy’s assassination and the Democratic National Convention. On a personal note, in June I met a 16 year old girl quite serendipitously whom I subsequently took to a movie a few days later. She is now my wife of almost 47 years and the mother of our three children. But America elected Nixon in November, and for me anyway the 60s were effectively over.
Here is my own take on the Trump and Biden classified documents issue.
While it is undoubtedly important to sort out the potential criminality in the two cases and any consequential sanctions or penalties, it is also important we look closely at better managing chain of custody on classified materials. That we have lost track of the status, custody, and location of classified documents in today’s world is unforgivable and crazy. We have done a better job managing chain of custody of public library books than the most important documents related to our national security. How is that possible? I suggest our federal government conduct an assessment of management of chain of custody management of classified materials and enact stricter controls ensuring the status, location, and security of such materials is known, tracked, and closely managed. There is no good reason this should not be possible.
Like you and your wife, I too was born in 1956 and experienced all the events you described on the other coast, in Brooklyn, New York. I recall being sent home from school on the day JFK was assassinated and then watching his funeral on television. I remember seeing Jack Ruby kill Lee Harvey Oswald on live TV. Why did I remember all that as a 7 year old? Partially because of my mother's grief, she idolized JFK, and partially because it was when television really came alive. I have a vague memory of hearing Martin Luther King's, I Had a Dream Speech on television as well, it was on my sister's birthday. I remember the hope he inspired, and the tragedies of 1968.
One of the memories that stand out for me the most from those years, and this reflects the changes in news reporting from then to now, is watching the American Flag draped coffins being brought back to the United States from Vietnam. Nothing made the war more alive for me as a little girl, then seeing those coffins. We don't see that on the news anymore. War has been sanitized.
Martin Luther King was a great American. It is sad to be fighting once again battles that we thought had been won.
I grew up at the same time only on the south side of Chicago. Richard J Daley was mayor. There was the tumult of the 1968 Democratic convention! The protests after the assassinations and during the Viet Nam war were so bad our parents put us on lockdown. I feel, however, this time is the most stressful in my life. The results of the 2016 election really have given me and others in my family so much more anxiety. There is so much hate now. I have no idea how the hate, lies, and divisiveness can ever be defeated. Now I have grandchildren. What will their future hold? It’s been 740 days since January 6, 2021. It’s January 16, Martin Luther King Day, a Federal holiday. I’m just waiting for Justice for our very fragile Democracy. Maybe tomorrow? It’s been long enough.
On April 4, 1967, I managed to get to the Riverside Church and hear Martin Luther King, Jr.’s
historic speech in which he proclaimed his opposition to the Vietnam War. MLK was relentless in
his condemnation of the War, calling it “madness” and declaring “...that no one who has any
concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America’s soul
becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read ‘Vietnam’.”
Here’s a link to a transcript of MLK’s Riverside Church anti-Vietnam War speech:
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/beyond-vietnam
Despite precisely and convincingly elucidating the interconnection of the anti-Vietnam war
movement and the civil rights movement, MLK’s speech was heavily criticized, even by the
NAACP. And a New York Times editorial headlined, “Dr. King’s Error,” asserted: “...to divert the
energies of the civil rights movement to the Vietnam issue is both wasteful and self-defeating.”
Along with many other readers, I was enraged by the Times editorial and my respect for the paper
was considerably diminished. As we know, MLK not the Times had it correct.
I agree with your Managing Editor. I cannot listen to the news hash and rehash the false equivalencies. Today, I am marching with a large group of League of Women Voters members and friends in a MLK day parade in Naples, Florida! This is the first organized by the NAACP in several years due to Covid. We will carry posters of quotes from Martin Luther King, and there are so many! This is the most motivating activity I have done in years! There are so very many remarkable quotes from Martin’s many speeches and books. Here is the one I will carry: “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy”. (From Strength to Love, 1963)
I am posting this from a reader, Judith Wright, who could not gain access to the Comments:
In 1961 I was one of the four hundred or so Freedom Riders who were arrested and jailed in our attempt (a successful one) to end segregation in interstate travel. Later my husband and I spend a year in Meridian Mississippi working on voter registration. My husband was part of the second attempt to cross the Edmond Pettis Bridge with Martin Luther King. The second attempt was the one when Martin Luther King knelt in front of the armed police on the other side of the bridge and decided that it was too dangerous and turned around to wait until he knew the demonstrators would have protection.
Here is what I have to say today:
Martin Luther King’s birthday should be a day for all of us to recommit ourselves to take action in whatever way we can to fight for equality. Maybe some of us can get out there and become activists. I guarantee you that it will be a completely rewarding part of your life. Others may not be able to do that, but remember that silence is complicity, so speak out in any way you can against the hate and lies that are going on now. Maybe you can write an editorial in your home paper, or maybe you’ll find yourself speaking to someone who says something racist, and you’ll stand up to them instead of keeping quiet. Talk to your friends and try to find ways to help fight the good fight.
I was there at Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream”speech, and though some things have changed, it has not come true yet.
Judith Wright info
It's amazing how vividly we can remember some events in our early lives. Your depiction of your reaction to Dr. King's assassination really shows how it affected you. I think I was too caught up in my own adolescence to have had such deep thoughts. I'd like to think that I've grown into them.
I was 13 in the spring of '68. The '60s were a scary time, with the Cuban missile crisis, nuclear threats, assassinations, riots, our entry into the Vietnam war, the draft, and so much more. It felt like the world was unraveling.
MLK's assassination, like JFK's, Malcolm X's, and Bobby Kennedy's, seemed almost surreal. I remember the extensive TV coverage, and couldn't imagine how or when the carnage would end. The unrest that both fed and resulted from those events was palpable.
But I must confess that I didn't realize Dr. King's historical significance until years later. I know I harbored latent prejudices in those days, in part because of the times, but also because I lived in a town where everybody looked like me. It wasn't until high school and college that I began to interact with people who didn't.
Dr. King's "I have a dream" speech is one of the most moving speeches I've ever heard. While his life was ended by an assassin's bullet, his dream lives on, as we continue to strive for the ever-elusive equality enshrined in our Declaration of Independence.
Also born in 1956, and attending Catholic school, I have similar recollections. But it struck me, reading yours, that 1. These assassinations never prompted gun control and 2. Political assassinations are a rarity now, but guns are everywhere. 3. The threats against Obama were, I understand, off the charts, and I still worry for him and any other black candidates today.
I will never forget the summer of 1968. I was 24.
I had marched with the freedom riders, I was very idealistic and political. Many of the young men with whom I had gone to High School we're in Vietnam. The news every night was wrenching. So many young dying needlessly, in a jungle, in which we didn't belong. Then, April 4, 1968, it seemed our world fell apart. The man with the velvet voice, who spoke of dreams and equality. The man with whom I had marched, was killed with an assains bullet! I cried for hours. While I cried, another man had his eyes on a brilliant man who would be President, Bobby Kennedy. My tears had stopped and we had a new man, who would be President, and right many wrongs. I remember sitting at a red light, in my blue VW, when i heard the news June 5, 1968, that Bobby Kennedy had been assassinated while giving a speech in Los Angeles! It seems 1968 was the worst summer of my life. I thought, how can it get any worse I asked my 24 year old self? That summer was the worst, it is so much better we don't know the highs and lows that are yet to come.
MLK’s final speech: https://substack.com/redirect/ed9de4d8-ebae-4c17-bac1-5df4ee3cafed?j=eyJ1IjoiMXQzanp5In0.Fg56nIgVJtiC-rfya-Yur3y93wcEbEt_zToOuNO67Z0
The generation above me vividly remembered exactly where they were when they heard about Pearl Harbor. Until JFK was assassinated I didn’t understand how a memory could be so vivid. But my “vivid” memories then included the assassinations of MLK and then RFK. We remember these men and the words they spoke, their visions of a better world, not just the awful moments of their deaths.
What will we remember of Kevin McCarthy and MTG, not to mention DT? These self-serving politicians have brought us low. I also clearly remember that when Joe McCarthy died, my mother said “thank God!”. I think that that was the moment I started paying attention to history in the making.
Chris Whipple, author of the new book "The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden's White House" said the following on "Face The Nation" today:
"But, again, I -- substantively, I think this is really serious in one way because I think that it now becomes difficult, if not impossible, to bring charges on the Mar-a-Lago documents case. And the reason - the reason I say that is because no matter what anybody says about this being only about the facts and the laws, it is inarguably a political decision with enormous political ramifications. Jack Smith and Merrick Garland have to be thinking about a jury, choosing a jury, and whether that jury is going to think that what Trump did is all that egregious if documents keep popping up every other day in Joe Biden's residences."
I was amazed that Mr. Whipple seemed to think a jury would have trouble differentiating between Trump's repeated "seemingly" criminal failure to cooperate with the demands of the Archives to return documents and Biden's immediate return of documents upon discovery.
I was surprised that seemingly liberal writers like Mr. Von Drehle and Mr. Whipple would make such a bold and somewhat ignorant comment. It sounds like they think Americans are stupid.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/full-transcript-face-the-nation-jan-15-2023/
Wonderful newsletter today. Your children and grandchildren are blessed to have you. You keep their history alive. ¨...demand for equality was so powerful that it thrummed the distant alluvial sand that passes for soil in the San Fernando Valley.¨ ❤️ No one, however, should forget that Hilary Clinton won the popular vote to become #45 - the President of the United States. Despite the bungling of James B. Comey and those who only read the ¨headlines as news¨ at the check out counter of their local supermarket.
Robert,
I also grew up in a suburban bubble. I am a bit older, so this assassination frightened me on an adult level (college and full time work). I was also struggling in 1968 with how to escape the draft. The times had challenged my naive sheltered existence.
My town was 100% white. I had never had a relationship with a person of color. I had attended one of the "best" high schools. But the history classes really taught me nothing about the journeys of "others". It was a sanitized college prep program designed to keep us white and and in charge. To say it was a racist portrait of our past is such an understatement - I just can't find the words.
Dr. King's assassination was my youthful "bucket of ice water" wake up call. So was the fact that my country wanted me to kill Vietnamese people. The sum total of losing MLK, JFK and RFK sent chills down my spine. My family never spoke fondly of these leaders. But I knew that they were on the right side of justice. My whole world view was starting from scratch. My politics were in the air. But I was ready to start fresh and look at life from the point of view of those who grew up differently.
Although I managed to avoid being sent to the Far East as a grunt, I did spend some time in the army and got a cultural education that washed away 90% of the notions that my bubble upbringing had produced. The guys who had my back had accents so thick I could barely understand them. It wasn't the white kid from New England who shared his water and salt pills with me when I collapsed. I could barely understand him either. But after a few months I knew that where guys came from or what they looked like had no bearing on who I would prefer to share a foxhole with.
Your letter today caused me to find my memories of that time. Success. The ice buckets of these murders - of leaders and populations - altered who I was and sent me on journey of discovery and very much about empathy. I am grateful that my parents wanted me to attend "good" schools. But my real learning began after I left formal education. 1968 was the start of a new me.
I awoke on Thursday, April 4, 1968 in Memphis, TN in the Holiday Inn Jr. across the street from the Lorraine Hotel. I was a twenty year old Navy airman training at NAS Millington, TN. I was spending the night with a Delta Airlines flight attendant friend following an evening of partying in Memphis. Outside, the street was packed with police cars and people. The next few days got confusing very quickly.
We turned on the television to learn that MLK, Jr. had been assassinated across the street, and Memphis was locked down and in turmoil. Memphis police and soon the National Guard were everywhere. I telephoned the naval base, and they told me to go to the USO or a recruiting office when the curfew was lifted and get a ride back to Millington. In 1968, service men hitchhiked everywhere, but now that form of transportation was forbidden. Memphis had broken out with riots, so we were told not to go on the streets nor to hitchhike anywhere.
At the air station, I was housed in a cubicle comprised of three bunk beds, lockers and a table and chairs that we shared for studying. We were men from everywhere in America training to be aviation electronics specialists learning to maintain fighter jets on aircraft carriers that cruised off the coast of Vietnam. Navy, Marine and Coast Guard servicemen in the barracks were organized alphabetically. I was sleeping next to two black sailors, E. P. Johnson and E. V. Johnson. We had become military friends in the racially charged south. I was wondering how this terrible news of the MLK Jr. killing was playing out at the base and with my black friends.
After a long day, when I navigated through what was then known as the black part of Memphis through anguished protesters and got to the base, I walked into my cubicle. Sitting on their bunks were the “Johnsons” as they had become referred to in our company. All I could say to them was, “Sorry, guys.” They looked up at me through their anger and grief and said, “Thanks, Red.” We we’re still okay, but very different.
Robert, I'm thinking of how much Dr. King accomplished both before and since his much too early tragic death. After reading your post, I later read a newspaper article about President Biden hinting to another run at age 82. I just submitted the following letter to the editor of my local paper, THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS.
As we look forward to upcoming election seasons, and as we prioritize increasing voter participation, acknowledging the historically low turnouts among young voters, we must address the issue of age. There seems to be a hesitancy among political elites in both parties to “pass the baton.” Prospective candidates in their 70’s and 80’s continually make the argument that they’re as sharp as ever, that they haven’t lost a step, etc. That may be true, but it’s not helpful to motivating younger voters (like people under 70). There’s also an unhelpful, frankly insulting, hubris suggesting that no one else is as qualified.
As much as I appreciate maturity and wisdom, I submit that beyond a point these are not functions of age. What is a function of age is the privilege of focusing on developing those coming up to ensure there’s a deep bench of qualified, tested, and known leaders. That’s what I hope our “elder” political leaders will do.
It was a very dark day in a very dark period. The summer of 1967 had seen America in flames — torn apart by racial unrest and conflict, as well as the spreading and deepening recognition of the immorality of the Vietnam war. Tet had just occurred in January 1968. Johnson had just withdrawn from the prospective 1968 presidential campaign. For many college students like myself — especially those who had seen hateful northern white responses to MLK’s leadership of marches in cities like Chicago — Dr. King was a moral exemplar, perhaps THE exemplar in America. I was home from college that day. I remember thinking as I heard the news on the radio in the car — the thought and the exact location of my travel are frozen in sharp and clear memory, just as November 22, 1963 is — “Oh my God, how much worse can it get! Is this the end of tragedy in our country or are we destined for more and worse?”
Nineteen days later I joined a campus sit-in/revolt that held national attention for seven days, but the news continued to get worse. That was the summer of Bobby Kennedy’s assassination and the Democratic National Convention. On a personal note, in June I met a 16 year old girl quite serendipitously whom I subsequently took to a movie a few days later. She is now my wife of almost 47 years and the mother of our three children. But America elected Nixon in November, and for me anyway the 60s were effectively over.
Here is my own take on the Trump and Biden classified documents issue.
While it is undoubtedly important to sort out the potential criminality in the two cases and any consequential sanctions or penalties, it is also important we look closely at better managing chain of custody on classified materials. That we have lost track of the status, custody, and location of classified documents in today’s world is unforgivable and crazy. We have done a better job managing chain of custody of public library books than the most important documents related to our national security. How is that possible? I suggest our federal government conduct an assessment of management of chain of custody management of classified materials and enact stricter controls ensuring the status, location, and security of such materials is known, tracked, and closely managed. There is no good reason this should not be possible.
Like you and your wife, I too was born in 1956 and experienced all the events you described on the other coast, in Brooklyn, New York. I recall being sent home from school on the day JFK was assassinated and then watching his funeral on television. I remember seeing Jack Ruby kill Lee Harvey Oswald on live TV. Why did I remember all that as a 7 year old? Partially because of my mother's grief, she idolized JFK, and partially because it was when television really came alive. I have a vague memory of hearing Martin Luther King's, I Had a Dream Speech on television as well, it was on my sister's birthday. I remember the hope he inspired, and the tragedies of 1968.
One of the memories that stand out for me the most from those years, and this reflects the changes in news reporting from then to now, is watching the American Flag draped coffins being brought back to the United States from Vietnam. Nothing made the war more alive for me as a little girl, then seeing those coffins. We don't see that on the news anymore. War has been sanitized.
Martin Luther King was a great American. It is sad to be fighting once again battles that we thought had been won.