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)
In a few months I will be moving to a very red area of Maryland. I am looking for ways to volunteer and connect with like-minded folks. LWV seems like a good way to start.
My mother joined the LWV in the 1950s and helped people vote most of her adult life. Her commitment inspired me to formally join with grassroots activists in 2021.
Robert Hubbell, this MLK Day Newsletter is so profound, inspirational --will require several rereadings plus reading the articles cited, a history course in itself.
Also, I share your Editor’s sentiment on not watching and reading news, but your analysis and the comments of readers here are a must, unmissable.
Even here is conservative red Naples and Florida, there are so many League members willing to work to educate. There is something uplifting about working for good causes.
Check out your local LWV and you will be glad that you did! BTW, men can join the LWV! Having recently transferred my membership from the LWV Orange County FL (a very large league) to the LWV Pulaski County (Little Rock, Arkansas) I can tell you there are people doing the work register voters, educate voters and advocate for democracy. The LWV is in for the "long haul"
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.
Read or listen to his 1967 Christmas sermon, a reminder that the dream still lived then and still lives today. https://youtu.be/1jeyIAH3bUI
Like you, I was too caught up in being a teenager to have paid over much attention to what seemed to be just another in a series of crazy, meaningless crimes the meaning of which wouldn't become clear to me for many years.
Thanks, Dave. I don't recall listening to that one previously. I've made a point of listening to some of his inspiring speeches today. He was an amazing orator, and a man whose legacy is immeasurable. It's interesting to me how he borrowed certain phrases and themes from his other works, something I do routinely (self-plagiarism, I call it). Repetition is reinforcing, and also helps to develop an idea and expand its meaning.
I was particularly struck by his discussion about ends and means. It brought focus to something I've thought about for some time but couldn't quite figure out how to explain. I don't believe the ends justify the means; they excuse the means. I think I'd change Dr. King's analogy of the seed and the tree to the means being the tree, and the ends being their fruit. We don't allow fruit of a poisonous tree in legal proceedings, and we shouldn't accept it as untainted in a moral or other context. I wrote against "ends justify the means" in a piece on Torture and Terrorism in 2009, when some were advocating torture at Gitmo as a means to thwart terrorism. I may take another run at the concept, armed with Dr. King's words, in drawing distinctions between the means by which the political parties try to achieve their ends.
I'd forgotten that one too Bob until David French posted it in his Sunday French Press column yesterday. The other essential part of the tree analogy is that the seed must be sound in order to grow a productive tree and obtain positive fruit. We seem to have forgotten or tried to avoid remembering in this country that our past successes have been based at least in part on our principles of freedom and equality under the law for all. I'm not sure where I'd go to develop this but will keep it around for further conversation.
While working on a summer job at the Johns Hopkins University Operations Research Office, I became well-versed in details of nuclear weapons effects. I had vivid nightmares. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, that information came to the front of my mind. I knew enough to be truly fearful – my fears compounded by the fact that my fiancée and I were, at the time, living a few hundred miles apart.
Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream” speech:
I was in the throng, and can say it was more thrilling than any rebroadcast I’ve been exposed to. The sound system at the Lincoln Memorial enabled King’s voice to envelop us (or so it seemed), enlarging the effect of his delivery. The booming resonance of his voice, the cadence of his delivery, and its sway on listeners blended to magnify his words and thoughts. Almost 60 years later, my mind’s eye *feels* King’s speech and the emotions it evoked.
King was unquestionably one of the greatest people of my age – perhaps *the* greatest.
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.
Obama was perceived to be a visceral threat by his opponents because he was such a fine orator and because he stood for major changes in American society. It’s reminiscent of “that man in the White House” (FDR), but with racism mixed in.
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.
I was just a young teenager when JFK, MLK, and RFK were assassinated. The memory of being told school was being let out because our President was dead is vivid in my mind. I walked home in a daze. They were amazing orators with ideals.
Isn’t it curious that Kevin and Joe, who are scourge, have the same last name?
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.
Well, many Americans ARE stupid. And many will eat up the "whataboutisms" that the MSM media feed us like meat to hungry beasts. But...
Both Von Drehle and and Whipple are so wrong as to be laughable. I read them with astonishment.
Here is an analogy:
Person number 1 has a car accident. He gets out of the car, he exchanges insurance information after asking if everyone is OK. The police are notified. The law is followed.
Person number 2 has a car accident. He keeps driving. In fact, he hits two other cars as he careens down the road, hitting a dog and two little kids as he attempts to escape. He denies that it ever happened despite the available video footage. But then he says the kids were jay walking and it wasn't his fault. And the dog was placed in the road just so he would hit it. It was all a setup by the police.
I would add that the person is driving under the influence with the intoxicating substance sitting on the passenger seat in plain site and the police stop him and only issue a warning.
If it comes to a federal trial of Trump over the Mar A Lago papers, so much would depend on the judge. Would the judge allow the whataboutism defense, or would (s)he shut it down as irrelevant, instructing jurors to ignore it?
Also: we seem to forget that a trial will be brewing in Fulton County, Georgia – a trial about Trump’s baldfaced attempt to alter the vote count. There will be no whataboutism in that trial.
The operative term is "seemingly", and is proof, if it were needed, that liberal writers can be ignorant just like conservatives sometimes are.
There are very few, if any, in the political or public media worlds who give the American people credit for enough intelligence to walk and chew gum at the same time, let alone understand "deep political issues". As Bill Alstrom points out, there are too many of us who don't meet that minimum qualification or choose not to use the brains they were given when it comes to their political beliefs.
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.
And many of those who wailed about Comey’s inappropriate revelation of an investigation just before an election are surprised by and chastising toward the Biden Administration’s decision not to disclose information that could similarly swing an election.
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.
Bill, I’ve admired many of your comments over the last 1-2 yrs. Now I have a deeper insight into why: we seem to have grown up in the ‘50s-‘60s in very similar all-white, extremely privileged (Southern?) bubbles.
As a young man from the Birmingham suburbs, for me it was reading MLK’s “Letter From the Birmingham Jail” in about 1970 that blew open the door, and allowed me to start seeing so much nasty brainwashing that was in the closet. This was in a social philosophy class and I still recall where I sat in that room as we discussed the “Letter”. Amazingly, my family’s Presbyterian minister was one of the 7 or so recipients of King’s damning letter, making it that much more powerful.
About the same year is when I became deeply disturbed by the Vietnam War, only to then end up with a low draft number. How to avoid going to Vietnam after college graduation in ‘72 became a major focus of my senior year. My answer? Medical school!
I never saw Dr. King but I did witness his (and the Movement's) enormous impact on the racist George Wallace Alabama that I’d grown up immersed in. The changes that unfolded in the 15 yrs after the fierce 1963 protests/police attacks in Birmingham were major and undeniable. Having lived through that time of rapid change is what still makes me more optimistic about today’s nasty political landscape than most of my friends are.
Convulsions eventually stop 99% of the time. I believe that’s even true for re: the 60 yr convulsion - both social AND technological - that the U.S. has been experiencing. I hope and pray that future Americans will look back on 2016-2022 as we today view 1861-1865, a very close call in which decency prevailed by the skin of its teeth.
Thank you for your kind words. I grew up in Western MA. For those unfamiliar with the area, it might as well have been it's own state. When we said "city" we meant NYC. Boston was a distant place where people talked funny, took our drinking water and taxes.
My "draft dodge" was the Army National Guard. Before the guard was pressed into real service. Let's just say there was a lot of beer and weed. I have no idea what I would have done if we were activated. Pack up the family and head for Canada?
I appreciate your perspective on "convulsions". Let's hope that these few years of anti-people upheaval are a temporary back slide as we generally make progress. After all, despite the current madness, life in this world is infinitely better for most than it was 100 years ago.
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.
Agree 100%: 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.
This is exactly why the candidacy of Barbara Lee is so out of touch. She is planning to run against Katie Porter even though she would be 78 years old when she took office. That’s a shame
I agree so whole heartedly with your assessment here. There must be an age limit to serve both as President and in Congress as well as an age restriction to begin service. Serving as President has to be the most heady yet stressful job in the world (look at how our leaders age while in office). It must be done for the greater good of our nation and protection of the individual serving because ego and self importance distort judgment.
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.
I've recently read a couple of articles regarding how much gets "classified" that should not/does not need to be. Sounds to me that it's partly a magnitude problem that needs to be addressed.
This is not an issue of whether and document should be classified or not, or at what level. This is about managing the chain of custody of our nations most important documents properly and securely.
I appreciate that thought, although this is properly an executive branch responsibility. Classification of documents is the responsibility of individual executive branch departments, which are supposed to be consulted prior to a change in classification status prior to that change or declassification. This is not a function of the legislative branch.
To be clear, although the analogy is not entirely accurate, it is certainly relevant. For many decades all public libraries have had a detailed inventory, cataloging, and check-out and check-in system for their entire collections. They know where every document or book in their collection is stored, when and who checked it out and has it, and when it is due to be returned. They also have the ability and procedures in place to follow up if it still needs to be returned and checked back in. Is it really too much to ask for the same kind of procedures and care for our nations most important national security documents? i mean, really? This is an Executive Branch responsibility and should be attended to post haste. We should not need a change of administrations or Congress to get this done and attended to.
Let me add to your fine remarks that all the measures you recommend must be accompanied by a heightened sense of responsibility on the part of all *people* who use classified documents.
I have a feeling that the proles have generally done so – they rightly fear punishment for mishandling classified documents.
But higher-ups and swelled heads seem to feel their precious time should not be wasted on rules for storing, filing, and accounting for documents. It reminds me of Leona Helmsley’s attitude toward taxes.*
Also, media reports about the classified documents have varied from slipshod to ignorant. Something must be done about that.
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.
Lily, your statement about your mother idolizing JFK resurfaced a memory, that of my dad sobbing while watching the JFK funeral procession. The difference is that my dad did not like Kennedy or the Kennedy family. But he was (rightly) overcome with the horror of a presidential assassination, and I’m sure us living in Dallas (he had just watched the motorcade near his downtown office days before) accentuated this. I can picture exactly where we were in our house when we watched that funeral.
The assassin's bullets that struck President Kennedy in 1963 hit this country like a sledge hammer. Those in my grade school class watched the breaking news reports on television. People across the country were in shock. The assassination of an American president in our lifetimes was unthinkable.
I don't know how many remember, but whatever his faults, JFK and his family brought a sense of Camelot in America to many. His youth, intelligence, energy, grace and humanity made America proud and hopeful for the future. People were attracted to his sense of humor, charming smile, seemingly vibrant health, beautiful, elegant wife, two adorable young children and habit of sailing and playing touch football with his large family.
He impressed and uplifted much of the country with his past as a World War II naval hero, his creation of the Peace Corp, his support of civil rights, his impassioned speech telling Americans to ask not what their country could do for them, but what they could do for their country and his urging for us to tackle the impossible by putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade.
The tragedy of JFK's death brought an end to "Camelot." Many of us will never forget the riderless black horse led during his funeral procession, with empty riding boots turned backwards in the stirrups. Or the heartbreak of tiny little JFK Jr. standing and saluting his father's flag-draped coffin on what happened to be little John-John's third birthday.
Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination less than four years and five months after the assassination of JFK was a trauma to America in it's own right. And it echoed a previous "unthinkable" tragedy that was still fresh in the minds and hearts of many Americans.
Those two great men who died way before their time, left lasting legacies in this country that have made us a better people. It is in their memory and the memories of all the patriots, both known and unknown, who dedicated themselves to making us a more just, inclusive and vibrant democracy, that we continue their fight today.
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.
It's way past long enough Linda but we must hold to the idea that right will, in the long run, prevail.
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.
That must have been quite a day, standing there listening.
Here's a better link to the speech:
https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm
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)
You just inspired me to join the LWV!
I've been a member of the LWV for 6 years and I love it. :-D Such inspiring people! Some of our members have been members for 50 years.
In a few months I will be moving to a very red area of Maryland. I am looking for ways to volunteer and connect with like-minded folks. LWV seems like a good way to start.
My mother joined the LWV in the 1950s and helped people vote most of her adult life. Her commitment inspired me to formally join with grassroots activists in 2021.
Robert Hubbell, this MLK Day Newsletter is so profound, inspirational --will require several rereadings plus reading the articles cited, a history course in itself.
Also, I share your Editor’s sentiment on not watching and reading news, but your analysis and the comments of readers here are a must, unmissable.
Thank you!
Thank you for your association with the League. I am a member of the Richardson, TX chapter. I am so thankful of the LWV’s opportunities for activism.
Even here is conservative red Naples and Florida, there are so many League members willing to work to educate. There is something uplifting about working for good causes.
Check out your local LWV and you will be glad that you did! BTW, men can join the LWV! Having recently transferred my membership from the LWV Orange County FL (a very large league) to the LWV Pulaski County (Little Rock, Arkansas) I can tell you there are people doing the work register voters, educate voters and advocate for democracy. The LWV is in for the "long haul"
Thank you! I definitely will do that and bring my husband along with me.
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.
Read or listen to his 1967 Christmas sermon, a reminder that the dream still lived then and still lives today. https://youtu.be/1jeyIAH3bUI
Like you, I was too caught up in being a teenager to have paid over much attention to what seemed to be just another in a series of crazy, meaningless crimes the meaning of which wouldn't become clear to me for many years.
Thanks, Dave. I don't recall listening to that one previously. I've made a point of listening to some of his inspiring speeches today. He was an amazing orator, and a man whose legacy is immeasurable. It's interesting to me how he borrowed certain phrases and themes from his other works, something I do routinely (self-plagiarism, I call it). Repetition is reinforcing, and also helps to develop an idea and expand its meaning.
I was particularly struck by his discussion about ends and means. It brought focus to something I've thought about for some time but couldn't quite figure out how to explain. I don't believe the ends justify the means; they excuse the means. I think I'd change Dr. King's analogy of the seed and the tree to the means being the tree, and the ends being their fruit. We don't allow fruit of a poisonous tree in legal proceedings, and we shouldn't accept it as untainted in a moral or other context. I wrote against "ends justify the means" in a piece on Torture and Terrorism in 2009, when some were advocating torture at Gitmo as a means to thwart terrorism. I may take another run at the concept, armed with Dr. King's words, in drawing distinctions between the means by which the political parties try to achieve their ends.
I'd forgotten that one too Bob until David French posted it in his Sunday French Press column yesterday. The other essential part of the tree analogy is that the seed must be sound in order to grow a productive tree and obtain positive fruit. We seem to have forgotten or tried to avoid remembering in this country that our past successes have been based at least in part on our principles of freedom and equality under the law for all. I'm not sure where I'd go to develop this but will keep it around for further conversation.
Bob Morgan –
Your post released my memories:
Cuban Missile Crisis:
While working on a summer job at the Johns Hopkins University Operations Research Office, I became well-versed in details of nuclear weapons effects. I had vivid nightmares. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, that information came to the front of my mind. I knew enough to be truly fearful – my fears compounded by the fact that my fiancée and I were, at the time, living a few hundred miles apart.
Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream” speech:
I was in the throng, and can say it was more thrilling than any rebroadcast I’ve been exposed to. The sound system at the Lincoln Memorial enabled King’s voice to envelop us (or so it seemed), enlarging the effect of his delivery. The booming resonance of his voice, the cadence of his delivery, and its sway on listeners blended to magnify his words and thoughts. Almost 60 years later, my mind’s eye *feels* King’s speech and the emotions it evoked.
King was unquestionably one of the greatest people of my age – perhaps *the* greatest.
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.
Obama was perceived to be a visceral threat by his opponents because he was such a fine orator and because he stood for major changes in American society. It’s reminiscent of “that man in the White House” (FDR), but with racism mixed in.
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.
I was just a young teenager when JFK, MLK, and RFK were assassinated. The memory of being told school was being let out because our President was dead is vivid in my mind. I walked home in a daze. They were amazing orators with ideals.
Isn’t it curious that Kevin and Joe, who are scourge, have the same last name?
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/
Well, many Americans ARE stupid. And many will eat up the "whataboutisms" that the MSM media feed us like meat to hungry beasts. But...
Both Von Drehle and and Whipple are so wrong as to be laughable. I read them with astonishment.
Here is an analogy:
Person number 1 has a car accident. He gets out of the car, he exchanges insurance information after asking if everyone is OK. The police are notified. The law is followed.
Person number 2 has a car accident. He keeps driving. In fact, he hits two other cars as he careens down the road, hitting a dog and two little kids as he attempts to escape. He denies that it ever happened despite the available video footage. But then he says the kids were jay walking and it wasn't his fault. And the dog was placed in the road just so he would hit it. It was all a setup by the police.
Perfect analogy Bill!
I would add that the person is driving under the influence with the intoxicating substance sitting on the passenger seat in plain site and the police stop him and only issue a warning.
If it comes to a federal trial of Trump over the Mar A Lago papers, so much would depend on the judge. Would the judge allow the whataboutism defense, or would (s)he shut it down as irrelevant, instructing jurors to ignore it?
Also: we seem to forget that a trial will be brewing in Fulton County, Georgia – a trial about Trump’s baldfaced attempt to alter the vote count. There will be no whataboutism in that trial.
The operative term is "seemingly", and is proof, if it were needed, that liberal writers can be ignorant just like conservatives sometimes are.
There are very few, if any, in the political or public media worlds who give the American people credit for enough intelligence to walk and chew gum at the same time, let alone understand "deep political issues". As Bill Alstrom points out, there are too many of us who don't meet that minimum qualification or choose not to use the brains they were given when it comes to their political beliefs.
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.
And many of those who wailed about Comey’s inappropriate revelation of an investigation just before an election are surprised by and chastising toward the Biden Administration’s decision not to disclose information that could similarly swing an election.
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.
Bill, I’ve admired many of your comments over the last 1-2 yrs. Now I have a deeper insight into why: we seem to have grown up in the ‘50s-‘60s in very similar all-white, extremely privileged (Southern?) bubbles.
As a young man from the Birmingham suburbs, for me it was reading MLK’s “Letter From the Birmingham Jail” in about 1970 that blew open the door, and allowed me to start seeing so much nasty brainwashing that was in the closet. This was in a social philosophy class and I still recall where I sat in that room as we discussed the “Letter”. Amazingly, my family’s Presbyterian minister was one of the 7 or so recipients of King’s damning letter, making it that much more powerful.
About the same year is when I became deeply disturbed by the Vietnam War, only to then end up with a low draft number. How to avoid going to Vietnam after college graduation in ‘72 became a major focus of my senior year. My answer? Medical school!
I never saw Dr. King but I did witness his (and the Movement's) enormous impact on the racist George Wallace Alabama that I’d grown up immersed in. The changes that unfolded in the 15 yrs after the fierce 1963 protests/police attacks in Birmingham were major and undeniable. Having lived through that time of rapid change is what still makes me more optimistic about today’s nasty political landscape than most of my friends are.
Convulsions eventually stop 99% of the time. I believe that’s even true for re: the 60 yr convulsion - both social AND technological - that the U.S. has been experiencing. I hope and pray that future Americans will look back on 2016-2022 as we today view 1861-1865, a very close call in which decency prevailed by the skin of its teeth.
Please keep up your wise writing!
Thank you for your kind words. I grew up in Western MA. For those unfamiliar with the area, it might as well have been it's own state. When we said "city" we meant NYC. Boston was a distant place where people talked funny, took our drinking water and taxes.
My "draft dodge" was the Army National Guard. Before the guard was pressed into real service. Let's just say there was a lot of beer and weed. I have no idea what I would have done if we were activated. Pack up the family and head for Canada?
I appreciate your perspective on "convulsions". Let's hope that these few years of anti-people upheaval are a temporary back slide as we generally make progress. After all, despite the current madness, life in this world is infinitely better for most than it was 100 years ago.
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.
Agree 100%: 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.
This is exactly why the candidacy of Barbara Lee is so out of touch. She is planning to run against Katie Porter even though she would be 78 years old when she took office. That’s a shame
Aren’t you making an “ageist” argument? Please focus on other reasons why Katie Porter is the superior candidate.
I agree so whole heartedly with your assessment here. There must be an age limit to serve both as President and in Congress as well as an age restriction to begin service. Serving as President has to be the most heady yet stressful job in the world (look at how our leaders age while in office). It must be done for the greater good of our nation and protection of the individual serving because ego and self importance distort judgment.
If you feel that way about Biden’s candidacy, then discover and articulate why the alternative candidates are superior.
But remember how many people prattled that Pelosi was “too old”.
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.
I've recently read a couple of articles regarding how much gets "classified" that should not/does not need to be. Sounds to me that it's partly a magnitude problem that needs to be addressed.
This is not an issue of whether and document should be classified or not, or at what level. This is about managing the chain of custody of our nations most important documents properly and securely.
It might take a new House starting in 2024 to initiate that, but it certainly should be done, Bruce. The current situation is untenable.
EDIT (thanks, Bruce): This is an executive branch responsibility.
I appreciate that thought, although this is properly an executive branch responsibility. Classification of documents is the responsibility of individual executive branch departments, which are supposed to be consulted prior to a change in classification status prior to that change or declassification. This is not a function of the legislative branch.
To be clear, although the analogy is not entirely accurate, it is certainly relevant. For many decades all public libraries have had a detailed inventory, cataloging, and check-out and check-in system for their entire collections. They know where every document or book in their collection is stored, when and who checked it out and has it, and when it is due to be returned. They also have the ability and procedures in place to follow up if it still needs to be returned and checked back in. Is it really too much to ask for the same kind of procedures and care for our nations most important national security documents? i mean, really? This is an Executive Branch responsibility and should be attended to post haste. We should not need a change of administrations or Congress to get this done and attended to.
Bruce,
Let me add to your fine remarks that all the measures you recommend must be accompanied by a heightened sense of responsibility on the part of all *people* who use classified documents.
I have a feeling that the proles have generally done so – they rightly fear punishment for mishandling classified documents.
But higher-ups and swelled heads seem to feel their precious time should not be wasted on rules for storing, filing, and accounting for documents. It reminds me of Leona Helmsley’s attitude toward taxes.*
Also, media reports about the classified documents have varied from slipshod to ignorant. Something must be done about that.
*Only the little people pay taxes.
Think of all these things that could be addressed if the government wasn't fighting itself all the time!
I stand corrected, and abashed.
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.
Lily, your statement about your mother idolizing JFK resurfaced a memory, that of my dad sobbing while watching the JFK funeral procession. The difference is that my dad did not like Kennedy or the Kennedy family. But he was (rightly) overcome with the horror of a presidential assassination, and I’m sure us living in Dallas (he had just watched the motorcade near his downtown office days before) accentuated this. I can picture exactly where we were in our house when we watched that funeral.
The assassin's bullets that struck President Kennedy in 1963 hit this country like a sledge hammer. Those in my grade school class watched the breaking news reports on television. People across the country were in shock. The assassination of an American president in our lifetimes was unthinkable.
I don't know how many remember, but whatever his faults, JFK and his family brought a sense of Camelot in America to many. His youth, intelligence, energy, grace and humanity made America proud and hopeful for the future. People were attracted to his sense of humor, charming smile, seemingly vibrant health, beautiful, elegant wife, two adorable young children and habit of sailing and playing touch football with his large family.
He impressed and uplifted much of the country with his past as a World War II naval hero, his creation of the Peace Corp, his support of civil rights, his impassioned speech telling Americans to ask not what their country could do for them, but what they could do for their country and his urging for us to tackle the impossible by putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade.
The tragedy of JFK's death brought an end to "Camelot." Many of us will never forget the riderless black horse led during his funeral procession, with empty riding boots turned backwards in the stirrups. Or the heartbreak of tiny little JFK Jr. standing and saluting his father's flag-draped coffin on what happened to be little John-John's third birthday.
Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination less than four years and five months after the assassination of JFK was a trauma to America in it's own right. And it echoed a previous "unthinkable" tragedy that was still fresh in the minds and hearts of many Americans.
Those two great men who died way before their time, left lasting legacies in this country that have made us a better people. It is in their memory and the memories of all the patriots, both known and unknown, who dedicated themselves to making us a more just, inclusive and vibrant democracy, that we continue their fight today.