The Answer To, "Where Were You?" Is Still Crystal Clear
"Where were you on November 22nd?" Anyone who was old enough in 1963 to be cognizant still knows the answer to that question. Forty-five years ago President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed and, for a few days that November, the earth stood still.
I was an E-1 in the midst of Advanced Individual Training (AIT) at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma. Sportscasters like to joke about the "frozen tundra" of Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin but they haven't seen anything until they have been to Ft. Sill in the winter. There were times when we marched on solid ice on the parade grounds. This recollection is not to be confused with old-timers who recall walking to school in the snow; uphill both ways. No, Ft. Sill was the real deal.
To this day, that day is crystal clear in my memory. We were out on artillery field exercises when a sergeant came around and told us that our Commander In Chief had been shot. At that point there were no details. We only knew that Kennedy had been rushed to a hospital. Our exercises were immediately cancelled and we loaded up our equipment and got ready to ride back to base. When we got there the flag was flying at half-mast and there was a sense that the Army was on stand-by in case there was a foreign government involved with the assassination.
As it turned out, however, we wound up with the next few days off and most of us hung out in the recreation room where there was a TV set. We watched, stunned, as the events unfolded. The scenes from the motorcade and the clip of Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald were replayed incessantly and we were mesmerized by the images. We had a hard time believing that what we were seeing was real.
Yet there it was. The crown prince of Camelot was dead.
While my three year Army service was just beginning in 1963, I had been home for quite a while and was working as a staff writer for The Fresno Guide in California when Martin Luther King was killed. A short time later when Robert Kennedy was gunned down a lot of us wondered aloud at what our world was turning into. The names Martin, Bobby and John became a hit song and it seemed to us at the time that we were in the midst of a chaotic fall into anarchy.
Now in retrospect I realize that in the short span of five years America had lost its innocence. The drawbridge leading to Camelot had been rolled up and the wonderful life that it had promised had been shunted into exile, not only surrounded by a formidable moat but by an overgrowth of briars and brambles as well.
Lyndon Johnson tried to keep things on path but the times and his ability to respond to them were just not the right combination. We were hopelessly mired in Vietnam and Johnson was pulled into the quicksand against his will. Johnson had also alienated Southern Democrats with his push for Civil Rights legislation.
Richard M. Nixon, along with his Republican cronies, took advantage of the falling out along racial lines in his subsequent claiming of the presidency. When the evils of Nixon produced the Jimmy Carter Administration, Republicans knew it was only a temporary setback.
Ronald Reagan revitalized the Southern Democrats with his code words and convinced them that it was important that they vote against their own financial interests in order to save their social standing. Then, with voodoo economics in full force, Reagan looted the Social Security system in order to obscure a mind-blowing deficit that lived on into the first George Bush Administration and has been further amplified over the past eight years under the second George Bush Administration.
In the forum section of the May 2008 edition of Playboy Magazine, Eric Alterman presented some fascinating information. Since 1960 the federal deficit has averaged $131 billion under Republican presidents, while Democrats have kept it at about $30 billion; on average a Republican year sees the deficit grow by $36 billion, while under Democrats it shrinks by $25 billion. National debt has increased more than $200 billion a year under Republican presidents and less than $100 billion a year under Democrats.
The top 0.1 percent of Americans, who earn more than $10 million a year, pay a lesser share of their income in taxes than those who make between $100,000 and $200,000. Meanwhile, the average CEO of a 500 company took home $13.5 million in total compensation in 2005, a year in which the top one percent of Americans earned nearly 22 percent of all income.
Republicans, like the bad guys in Nottingham, steal from the poor and give to the rich. While they claim to hold dear the concept of smaller government they invariably make the government bigger and less responsive to the vast majority of Americans.
But now here we are, 45 years after Kennedy's death, entering another era of hope and inspiration. The briars and brambles are being cleared away. A majority of Americans have stopped listening to the tales of petty, artificial, divisiveness. The majority of voters have finally figured out that what a mother in the hood and a redneck in a southern mountain town have in common is that neither one of them owns stock in Halliburton and neither one has health insurance for their children.
It is time, once again, to enter the castle using the drawbridge of hope.
Your description of those days, that weekend, gives me the chills. The world stood still, indeed.
Everything was slow motion, as if the air itself was a thick water, a transparent molasses.
November 21, 2008 11:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
I was a junior in a New Orleans Catholic high school. It happened in Dallas over the lunch hour, and the first we heard was when it was announced over the PA in the period right after lunch. It was American History for me. Our teacher, was so grief stricken that he was crying almost uncontrollably. We were all cryiing too. They dismissed us early from school.
It was a cool November day, and I recall walking home alone in a light drizzle. Rich
November 21, 2008 1:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
I was in 10th grade, in French class, when it was announced over the PA . . .
The kid behind me muttered, "Damn!" and his foot reflexively hit the lower back edge of my seat . . .
I'd already heard The Beatles the prior month . . .
The calendar lies that all that happened longer ago than yesterday . . .
November 21, 2008 1:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
My father was the Democratic mayor of a town in northern NJ in the late '50s/early '60s. I was in the third row during an electrifying campaign appearance at a packed armory there, in October, 1960, when JFK stirred the kind of frenzy that wasn't going to be seen again until a certain British Invasion, several years later. Even to a nine year old that kind of charisma was unmistakeable. Like him or not, he had it, like no president since has (except the guy coming up to bat). During summers in that era we went to Osterville on Cape Cod, and a path through a woods near our place led to a horse farm where the Kennedys would ride. My sisters and I were regular stalkers. JFK never showed up, but Jackie and lots of kids would (some presumably Bobby's). My parents actually got to know the guy who ran the farm, and he was pretty blase about our coming around. In what was, in retrospect, an outlandishly casual approach to security at the time, personnel at Otis Air Force Base actually permitted my slick-talking father, with his dumb mayor-of-a-town badge, to get us right to the tarmac of an Air Force One landing, one summer Friday afternoon in August, 1963. I still have my mother's super-8 film (now digitized) of the occasion. No photo or film I've ever seen actually captured the guy's hair color - it was actually kind of reddish, and people would comment on it, startled, seeing him in person. On November 22nd I reeled the same way everybody else did...but I also recalled a guy I'd actually gotten to see a couple of times, and that made matters worse.
November 21, 2008 1:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
How sure are you that you remember where you were?
November 21, 2008 2:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't know anything about "flashbulb memories." I remember the moment because I was in 5th grade. It was before lunch (PST) when over the loud speaker system, the principal announced that the president had been shot. Mr. Bernard began to cry and I became frightened. This was an era when we practiced at school what to do in case of a nuclear attack. It was only later that I fully understood the huge loss humanity suffered on that day.
November 21, 2008 2:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
I was in DC. Freshman in College. It was announced that he'd been shot during a noon assembly (for something else). Someone came around to each classroom in the afternoon to report on his death and the cancellation of classes. I was in philosophy class. A few of us took the bus downtown. There were policemen on every corner. People on the bus were completely silent. We walked over to the Capital Building. Around to the back. And stood there, looking across the Mall, till the sun went down.
I think no one was able to study. That Sunday afternoon, determined to stand in line and pass before JFK's coffin, I stood for hours in the cold November. As we were standing in line, someone with a portable TV went nuts! Ruby had just shot Oswald! We all gathered around that tiny TV watching it replay over and over. Then more waiting - for the historic chance to walk in slow silence before the casket.
TV. TV. TV. Over and and over and over. I think we were stunned. We were kids really. The world had crashed. Or felt like it.
Went back downtown for the funeral cortege. You couldn't see as well as on TV - but we had to do it! I recall the drums. The horses. The slow procession. The sense of numbness and emptiness.
It's 45 years now. It's like it was yesterday.
November 21, 2008 2:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
TV. TV. TV. Over and and over and over. I think we were stunned. We were kids really. The world had crashed. Or felt like it.
_____
After Eisenhower -- pasty white man with pasty white hair and pasty white eyes without irises -- the JFK administration was vivid with color, youth, energy.
JFK's favorite word was "vigor" -- "viguh!"
The assassination drained all the color out. Reality became like black-and-white TV.
November 21, 2008 2:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
It was honestly hard to go through that far from home, just at college a couple of months, not yet having made fast friends, and feeling, as you say, as if the color had drained away.
November 21, 2008 5:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ah, yes. Ike, the soldier -- who warned us of the military-industrial complex, who didn't want the space program to become a very expensive PR race, and who, by the way, kept one of the most complex coalitions together to win WWII.
Compared to Kennedy, who used the space program as a pure PR stunt (telling Jack Web in May 1963 that once we got to the Moon, NASAs budget would be severely cut), who was willing to sit through the fiction of a shadow ghostwriter and yet take credit for the work, and who may have had his PT boat cut in two through his own negligence.
History has already shown that Ike was rather shrewd at dealing with the Soviets -- and he continues to look better. Of course, your reading of history is simply predicated on looks (literally if you read your post).
What a narrow read of history. But as long as you want to play it that way, remember that we now know that JFK was pumped up on drugs for his back and other ailments. Therefore all that "youth" was artificial.
November 22, 2008 4:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
I had "experienced" two presidents before JFK. Truman meant nothing -- I was in early single-digits when he was president.
I was born into a military family, so in addition to parents was surrounded by veterans of WW II and their relatives, including several aunts who were Gold Star mothers.
The "military-industrial complex" was not an issue of note during that era (Eisenhower didn't warn against that which existed; he warned against the potential for it). It is doubtful even adults took in the implications of what he said because it was still an era of unquestioned support for the military.
All of those facts would make it exceedingly difficult, later, to "break" with that history in order to oppose US involvement in Vietnam.
I was 12-years-old when JFK was elected. I was 15 when he was murdered. I am speaking accuractely from the perception of that time, for one of my age. In other words, I don't "do" the presentism of "hindsight".
Your groundless -- and smug -- animus is showing again.
November 23, 2008 5:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
I was still over 10 years away from being delivered in 1963. But I've seen and read so much about that day that I could've served on the Warren Commission.
I do enjoy reading first-person narratives about major events. They bring so much color and depth to what you can get from scratchy film and bad audio. Yours is particularly well executed. Rec'd.
November 21, 2008 2:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you. Incidentally, I'm aware that there are people who have attached the significance of the "Where Were You?" question to 9/11, and rightfully so; it was a horrible day in America. For the majority of my generation though, the one that takes the cake is the Kennedy Assassination. Not only for the heinous act itself but for what it led us into as well. After all, if Kennedy had lived he would most likely have been elected for a second term as President and American History would no doubt be different today.
November 21, 2008 3:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
The JFK assassination was the very first in a series of major events for our generation. There has been, for me, a dark cloud over the country ever since that murder. It may now, finally, be lifting, though, after the awful dark of the last 8 years, and the paradigm shift of the election of Obama.
Otherwise, since that day there has been a rush to attach the "Where were you when?" question to every event of significance.
The Beatles coming to the US.
Murder of MLK, Jr.
Murder of Bobby Kennedy.
Murder of John Lennon.
OK City bombing.
9/11.
And, often attached to such events is the assertion that it was "a more innocent time" when the event occurred, or that the event was "the death of innocence". How many times must "innocence" "die," or be murdered, before that inherently absurd assertion is no longer made?
November 21, 2008 8:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Only the Boomers wallow in questions like this continually. (Interestingly your list neglects other major historical points like Malcom X's assassination, Apollo 11 moon landing, Nixon resignation, Reagan/Pope getting shot, Challenger blowing up... and a host of other events that aren't on the canonical nostalgic 60s tour.)
As a point of note, I don't remember lots of people making a big deal in the 80s about Dec 7, which was roughly 45 years after Pearl Harbor. You can apply all the same statements "loss of innocence", "changed America forever", just as easily to that event.
Something to think about.
November 22, 2008 5:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
Maybe something to do with collectively all growing up watching the same 2 tv stations?
November 22, 2008 11:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
Only the Boomers wallow in questions like this continually.
_____
Bullshit. In fact, I've seen subsequent generations, in keeping with a peculiar form of jealousy, seeking for a major event to which to apply the "Where were you when?" "cache" in effort to "compete" with those of the "Boomer" generation. I assure you the JFK assassination trauma suffered by those who experienced it is no more some sort of "cache" or "privilege" than was the devastating assassination of John Lennon.
That peculiar jealousy is analagous to false rejections of The Beatles in effort to equate some later musical aggregation to them. I saw the same thing in the generation before me when The Beatles first came to the US: they loved Chubby Checker's "Hooka-Tooka" and hated The Beatles for blowing that crap off the radio.
To this day they can't come up with a relevant or rational explanation for their hatred of The Beatles. Drugs? -- Elvis was a druggy while still a truck driver. Politics? -- rock and roll isn't about conforming and shutting up. Etc.
_____
(Interestingly your list neglects other major historical points like Malcom X's assassination,
_____
When I was a kid nearly everything was segregated. One rarely encountered blacks in real life. (In the military housing/neighborhood in which I lived there was one black family; I was probably 3-4 years old at the time, and I called them "chocolate people" -- but that wasn't hostile, it was warm: I knew Hershey bars. And the neighborhood's school buses were also Hershey bar-wrapper color, so I called those "chocolate buses".)
It wasn't until circa 1858, with the cross-overs of Fats Domino's "Blueberry Hill" and several Chuck Berry recordings, that the strict segregation of radio into black stations and white stations began to be broken down.
Where was Malcolm X in 1958? Where was he, for that matter, in 1960? Or in 1963? Suffice to say that he wasn't making appearances, let alone speeches, on whites-only TV. (We didn't replace icebox -- do you know what an icebox is? -- with refrigerator until I was 12. We didn't have TV until I was 12.)
It's a bit absurd to attack me for not having heard of Malcolm X -- most who did hear of him didn't hear of him, in fact, until late 1960s, at
earliest. And he had to be assassinated for that to happen.
_____
Apollo 11 moon landing, Nixon resignation, Reagan/Pope getting shot, Challenger blowing up... and a host of other events that aren't on the canonical nostalgic 60s tour.)
_____
This is a thread about the assassination of JFK. But thank you for affirming my statement about the jealousy of your generation of the "Boomer" generation for having all the "good" horrific events so that your generation must make do with the second-rate.
_____
As a point of note, I don't remember lots of people making a big deal in the 80s about Dec 7, which was roughly 45 years after Pearl Harbor.
_____
I was born in 1948 into a military family. I grew up with all of that -- before it was "nostalgia". It was constant and never questioned as to rightness. It was parades every veterans day. It was visiting the graves of relatives who were killed during the war. It was visiting relatives, veterans and Gold Start mothers. Most of that is probably foreign to you.
All of that took a radical turn to the sour with Vietnam: my generation had to deal with deep emotional ties and anguished rendings of those, transformations in received/accepted values in unexplored territory -- which was opposed due to distrust and because unknown -- disruptions in lifelong relationships in coming to terms with opposing, then opposing, US involvement in Vietnam. Some of the hostility came from smug members of my generation who "knew better" -- but, as it turns, didn't, and were wrong.
It wasn't a time of innocence; it was a time of changing from unquestioning acceptance to shock and trauma. And alienation from that which had always been the known and certain.
_____
You can apply all the same statements "loss of innocence", "changed America forever", just as easily to that event.
_____
I already said that.
It is interesting that you dare be flip with your elders. We of the "Boomer" generation were not allowed that -- it took enormous personal, subjective struggle to free ourselves of that and other prohibitions. Perhaps you can thank us for your freedom to pop off, and in doing so reveal your lack of accurate knowledge about the "Boomer" generation, and your lack of insight.
_____
Something to think about.
_____
You're welcome to begin doing so. Many of my generation have been thinking about it for at least 40 years. And many of that many grieve.
"May you live in interesting times" is a Chinese CURSE. May you not live in interesting times.
November 23, 2008 6:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
circa 1858
_____
circa 1958.
November 23, 2008 6:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
There is much provably wrong in your comments.
As a simple example, here is Malcolm X articulating points on "white only" TV in Chicago from 1963:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENHP89mLWOY
Here's Malcolm being interviewed at Berkeley in 1963:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7f5NTLgtEA&feature=related
He was heard from. Enough that he was invited to Oxford University in England.
November 23, 2008 6:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
He wasn't on national TV.
Now go look up the "Nat King Cole Show" -- the year it was on NATIONAL TV, and who the sponsors of it were.
November 23, 2008 6:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
I was not yet born when JFK was killed. But I can remember exactly what happened 09/11. Since I am norwegian, it was toward the end of the working day in the software company where I work. A colleague read aloud from an online newspaper that "a plane had hit one of the twin towers". He and some others laughed a bit about it, it sounded absurd that someone should be so amateurish with a plane as to hit the tallest building around. Then the story updated. The second plane. I met my colleague's eye. No one laughed.
November 21, 2008 5:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
All have described, very well, the very heavy atmosphere of that Friday and the weekend that followed. In Toledo Ohio, on that Friday, I had just returned to the lab from my lunch hour pastime of that era, bridge with associates and a sack lunch. Little work was accomplished that afternoon as concentration was impossible. Friday evening was the company bowling league night. I did not skip bowling that night but delayed so that I could see LBJ sworn in aboard Air Force One on the tarmac at Dallas. I felt assured that our country was in the strong hands of Lyndon Johnson at what was a critical time in our history.
Charlie
November 21, 2008 6:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Here's a bit of context for the day:
11/22/63: At 12:30 p.m., while riding in motorcade to Dallas World Trade Center and scheduled speech, President Kennedy is shot. TX Gov. John B. Connally, in same car, is seriously wounded. Secret Service rush JFK to Parkland
Hospital, where he is declared dead at 1:00 p.m.
Because Mrs. Kennedy will not leave Dallas without JFK's body, and because VP Lyndon Johnson will not leave Mrs. Kennedy, the body is removed from Parkland Hospital before autopsy is performed.
VP Lyndon B. Johnson is sworn in as 36th US president by Fed. Judge Sarah Tilghman Hughes (1896-1985), first woman to swear in US President (LBJ), who worked her way through law school as Washington, DC policewoman. In 1930s she served two terms in TX House of Representatives and sponsored bill whereby women were finally allowed to serve as TX jurors.
Within hour a suspect, Lee Harvey Oswald, admitted Marxist who lived in USSR from 1959 to 1962, is captured in movie theater and arrested as suspect in murder of Dallas Patrolman J. D. Tippitt.
"With The Beatles" (LP) (Parlophone PCM 3045)--The Beatles (UK)
"A Christmas Gift for You" (LP) (Philles). Producer Phil Spector intends it as perfect end to year of major hits for acts he produces. Instead, everything is put on hold by JFK assassination.
"Ready Steady Go!" #16 (UK): The Rolling Stones, "I Wanna be Your Man," Gerry & The Pacemakers, "You'll Never Walk Alone," Freddie & The Dreamers, "You Were Made for Me," Kathy Kirby, "Secret Love," Kenny Lynch, Mitch Murray.
LA, CA: Author Aldous L. Huxley dies at 69, allegedly on LSD.
Author C. S. (Clive Staples) Lewis (Hamilton) dies at 64.
November 21, 2008 9:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
CT, I think you're undervaluing the effort and its successes. Sure, the NASA budget dropped after we reached to the moon. But that was the goal Kennedy quite publicly set, and we did reach it, with a huge boost for national pride and quite a bit of interesting technological advances along the way.
I actually agree with your larger point, that JFK was far more sizzle than steak. And indeed you could also have mentioned the Bay of Pigs fiasco, escalation of U.S. presence in Vietnam, and the recklessness of playing nuclear chicken with Kruschev during the Cuban missile crisis as other questionable decisions of his presidency.
But I do give him props for challenging us to go to the Moon, which is quite a significant achievement.
November 22, 2008 6:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
As a student of NASA's history, may I suggest you read the very well researched book, THE MAN WHO RAN THE MOON which is a political history of NASA's early years. In particular, look at pages 88-89, where JFK clearly states:
The space program was ramped up from the Eisenhower years solely to show we could beat the Russians at something. Had techies at the time advised JFK that we could orbit the moon first, that's what the goal would have been. Had techies thought that the Russians could land and return humans first, we would have been up the creek. It became the stunt that Ike wanted to avoid... and that is one of the reasons that it is now rudderless. Have no fear, assuming humans will still want to waste (now more precious) oil on a return trip, the Chinese or the Indians or the Japanese or the Europeans or the Russians... or even us... won't be able to do much more than the 1st time. There are very interesting scientific things you can do by studying the moon, but the socio-political things like colonies, etc. will never happen, because there is no economic value to it (no natural resources there to exploit that justifies a return on investment). (It's like when we talk about running out of water, what we mean is running out of fresh water, because we do know we can desalinate water -- but then the cost of the water isn't worth it.)
There is a lot of romanticism of this age. As a scientist/engineer -- who has been a VIP at Shuttle launches -- I can tell you it's all an incredible tour de force. In fact, I believe engineers appreciated even more than the general public on what was accomplished. But from a political standpoint, you have to remember that after Apollo 11, the public interest waned precipitously -- just as Ike and JFK knew it would.
By the way, I think there were accomplishments by JFK and my original post was merely to point out how narrow and ignorant it is to cast Ike as "an old, white man." I think one of the main highlights of the JFK administration is a speech that gets surprisingly little airplay. It's when he addressed the nation on Civil Rights. You can see the behind-the-scenes goings on, including the speech, on this DVD.
November 22, 2008 1:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for the recommendation! I'll check it out.
November 22, 2008 6:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
point out how narrow and ignorant it is to cast Ike as "an old, white man."
_____
You're still not going to get anywhere with your smug effort to cast a child as narrow and ignorant who -- as an adult -- accurately and honestly states that which he, as a child, saw.
You remind me of the friend who assumed The Beatles got their long hair from the "Hippies". I had to lay out the facts, in pedestrian fashion, for him to finally get it:
1. With Elvis, during the later 1950s, long hair became a symbol of "rebellion" -- and pissed off adults. So much so that they made a big deal of not only his long hair, but also another big -- triumphant -- deal when he was drafted and the media made a big deal, including with photographs, of the army cutting his hair.
2. The Beatles were from Liverpool, in England.
3. Their haircuts were originally the same as that of early "rockers": "DA" or "Duck's Ass". Like that of Elvis.
Their unique haircut wasn't a gimmick; it was got in Hamburg, Germany, during 1961-62, essentially from a shorter German college-kids haircut.
4. The Beatles' first official record release occured in 1962, in London, England.
5. The Beatles first came, from London, England, to the US, in February, 1964.
6. Millions of US boys cut their hair (I'd had a "DA") like that of The Beatles because of The Beatles (I cut mine immediately after their first appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show").
7. The Beatles released their LP "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" in June, 1967.
8. The "Summer of Love" -- the "Hippy" movement -in San Francisco -- occurred in 1967; their long hair was originated with The Beatles, during and after 1964, and they adopted "Sgt. Pepper," not the reverse.
November 23, 2008 6:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
". . . actually agree with your larger point, that JFK was far more sizzle than steak."
He was assassinated before he finished his first term.
_____
And indeed you could also have mentioned the Bay of Pigs fiasco,
_____
"Bay of Pigs" was inherited from the Eisenhower-Nixon administration.
_____
escalation of U.S. presence in Vietnam,
_____
Gee, I guess he wasn't all that "liberal" after all.
_____
and the recklessness of playing nuclear chicken with Kruschev during the Cuban missile crisis
_____
That's all it was? Recklessness? You mean there wasn't really a threat?
_____
as other questionable decisions of his presidency
_____
Such as?
November 23, 2008 6:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
My parents, thoroughly traumatized by the Cuban Missile Crisis, promptly shipped us off to a remote boarding school hundreds of miles from the Washington suburbs where we were then living. So it was at school -- during a mid-day Study Hall, in a dorm room with too little heat -- that I heard the news that Kennedy had been shot.
I remember that sensation of time standing still, of sound muting, of a forever silent Munch scream welling up within... and then the adolescent mind recalled itself to focus on an immediate quandary: because I had heard the news on a forbidden radio, should I share the news and get demerits, or bide my time until somebody made an announcement? And so I waited... and nothing happened. The bell rang. Other students who had heard the news on their own forbidden radios began to whisper to each other, ashen-faced, hurrying to their next class. What did it mean? What would happen? The immediate answer: apparently nothing. The daily class schedule resumed, concluded; clothes were changed and sports ensued.
By late afternoon students were openly weeping. Not seeing the bigger picture, we were, nonetheless, afraid, as we were devastated for our handsome president, and his beautiful wife and their lovely children; we were so sad that Camelot (the soundtrack of which was playing on every stereo) was ending. We had questions and fears but still no answers -- faculty shook their heads when we approached them, apparently having been told to say nothing. No illuminating announcement was made at dinner, nor during evening study hall, even though every radio was on full blast and no one objected. And so, at 9:30pm, the single dorm phone had a queue of students lining up down the corridor, waiting to call or be called by parents. Would we stay put, or be sent home, our parents wanted to know? No one knew.
One can imagine that the administrator's phones were ringing off their hooks at this point. But it was not until breakfast the next morning that a brief, dry announcement was made to the student body: the president was dead, school would continue as scheduled, and parents were in the process of being so notified if they had not been called already. The only concession to this catastrophic event? We would be allowed to watch the funeral on the single TV in each dorm when it occurred.
Those of us who felt compelled to know more responded by playing the only card girls had that could not be argued with: we developed "severe cramps" so that we could go to the infirmary to watch unfolding events on TV with the nurse.
This point of my personal story is that this was my second life experience -- the first being the Cuban Missile Crisis -- when it was absolutely clear to me and to my peers that the grown-ups, in the immediacy of the moment, did not have a clue what to do. And so, to this day, I associate the image of the riderless horse with backwards boots as a far more powerful depiction of an adult-free world that that described in Lord of the Flies.
November 22, 2008 10:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
What a strange response to that situation! I can only imagine the sense of helplessness (and unreaity) that must have engendered - to think the adults had no idea what to do, so went on pretending nothing had happened.
Your recollections send me back to my senior year of high school, spent in boarding school as my parents were in Europe and the family would be moving back to the states in the middle of the school (my senior year), so they agreed it made sense for me to at least be in one school only while applying to colleges. (And yes, for someone above, my dad, who worked on the Apollo program later called it a "political stunt.")
So I was there for the Cuban missile crisis in that boarding school - in Tampa, Fla. The adults (mostly nuns) decided on a plan to save us all. We'd huddle in the school basement - if and when the need arose. And some, myself included, were deputized as marshals to "watch over" others down there in the basement - like some kind of refugees in London during the bombing. My roommate from Nicaragua was called home - and never returned. Other things got back to normal pretty quickly.
Nuns can at least come up with a plan! And put it into action pretty quickly. I guess that's the moral of the story.
But I think there's a deeper moral. The events of the 60's were at least surrounded with the sense that you go on coping. And you don't panic. And that, I think, was a palpable difference from the reaction to 9/11 - especially on the part of the government. Too quickly the Patriot Act etc. I realize the circumstances were different - but I still see the aftermath of 9/11 as over-reacting (compare to the London bombings and the Madrid bombings, for example).
November 22, 2008 10:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
first sentence - "unreality" - sorry.
November 22, 2008 10:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
TheraP, you are romanticizing the past. You state:
And yet you seem to forget that the Warren Report was the thing that turned everyone suspicious of the government. Coping? People don't panic? People thought the government buried things with the sloppy autopsy, etc. People today cry "conspiracy" as the drop of a hat in a good part because of the handling of the Kennedy assassination.
I'm not a fan of the Patriot Act at all, but despite it all, the government is far more open today than days of yore -- even though most people still don't really see behind the scenes and there is much secrecy still. That's why you get much more up front action, the citizens are more aggressive about holding government accountable.
November 22, 2008 1:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Please stop cyberstalking me. I have no interest in responding to your incessant attacks. Or I will use the button!
November 22, 2008 1:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
TheraP: It's not cyberstalking when I respond to posts you make on threads I read. There is nothing disrespectful to you personally in my comments to your ideas.
November 22, 2008 1:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Last warning.
TPM's policy for users includes, #8, your agreement not to:
I have advised management via email of these concerns, a link to my first warning, and a link to another user who has voiced similar concerns.
You are advised to comment no further. Full Stop.
November 22, 2008 2:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm shocked you would threaten to cut off mere disagree with you by mischaracterizing my posts as personal stalking. You post a lot here. I don't respond to every one of your posts -- but it's not surprising I respond to some given the volume. Simple statistics. Even on this thread, I've only responded to one of your several postings -- and I had a specific set of points to make. I have not harassed you personally and therefore your comments are an unfair characterization.
November 22, 2008 2:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
And yet you seem to forget that the Warren Report was the thing that turned everyone suspicious of the government.
_____
No, it was not. It was Mark Lane's "defense brief," published as Rush to Judgment, that raised questions about the Warren Commission report conclusions.
What he DIDN'T explain, and readers of it even today don't understand, was that he was acting as "defense attorney" for Oswald; and that briefs in lawsuits are NOT OBJECTIVE. Ethically, the "defense" theory he propounded had only to account for all the evidence, and raise questions whether founded or not.
As for the Warren Report: 99.99 per cent of those who attack it haven't read it.
November 23, 2008 6:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
government is far more open today than days of yore -- even though most people still don't really see behind the scenes and there is much secrecy still.
_____
No, it is not. Watergate and Nixon resulted in FOIA. That resulted in a brief transparency. Then Reagan got elected, and those in his administration who were pro-Nixon, such as Cheney, began working to eliminate FOIA and transparency.
And during the last 8 years Bushit criminal enterprise has been making every effort to vitiate, ignore, get around, and negate FOIA -- as aggressively as they've been subverting FISA -- and THAT is why the following: the rolling back of access --
_____
That's why you get much more up front action, the citizens are more aggressive about holding government accountable.
_____
Otherwise utter bullshit. Chicago 1968 was aggressive effort to hold the gov't accountable. Name one instance since then in which citizens were anywhere near that aggressive -- and you are welcome to name Kent State, in which the gov't won and continues to win against accountability.
The absurdity is that you are defending a gov't which wasn't challenged by the generation/s before the "Boomer" generation because the belief was that the gov't could be trusted. It was the JFK assassination -- not the Warren Commission report, and not the cottage industry of conspirabunkers -- which shook the foundations and began the distrust of gov't: How was it that he wasn't protected?
And all that was eclipsed by US involvement in Vietnam and the shifting rationales for that, and the promises to withdraw but never seeming to get around to doing so.
There was a "counterculture" precisely because that was where the challenges were relegated by the established order. And smug punks such as you engage in undifferentiated bashings of the "Boomer" generation, on all isdes, including the "counterculture". Meanwhile, that you defend was indefensible during the 1960s, and is indefensible now.
November 23, 2008 7:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Coming up with a plan and coming up with a plan that would have been considered effective with even the simplest of critical thought are two different things.
I'm sure their plan had the real intended effect: to calm down the student body. It was about maintaining order in the here and now. That plan, however, was useless as it didn't involve gathering of water to at least try to protect it from radioactivity, etc.
This is very similar to the screening in airports post 9/11. Much of it was made to make the public "feel safe" even though a goodly number of government officials knew it was money wasted that could have been spent on technology which would have done a better job and been cheaper in the long run.
This is the problem with setting up policies and plans targeting "feelings" rather than "thought". That would be a true moral for you story.
November 22, 2008 1:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
You're an ass.
Conformity was the norm -- and it wasn't the fault of the "Boomer" generation: they were the children being "controlled".
As for wise plans? Tell us about 9/11 and how your adults in the White House were asleep at the switch, which turned out to provide handy excuse to fulfill their ambition to invade Iraq.
November 23, 2008 7:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Here's what I'll tell you about 9/11:
Clinton and George W. Bush were the Presidents from the Boomer generation.
Thanks for emphasizing the point -- and where we are now, and who is led us here.
November 24, 2008 1:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
I felt the same nettling sense of unease -- especially during the missile crisis.
November 23, 2008 7:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
The linking of Camelot and the JFK years came after he was gone. It was another clever image crafting for the media that the JFK administration excelled in.
This too, then, is another part of the flash-bulb memory thing.
November 22, 2008 1:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
CT: You're probably right that the Camelot tie-in to the the Kennedy administration came later than I remember it being. But, if so, part of that hindsight conflation was easy to make -- Camelot, the play, opened in New York a year or so before Kennedy was shot, and most people who went to the play also bought the original recording, which became a dorm mainstay among starry-eyed pre-teens, prior to the Beatles' arrival. So I may remember correctly that Camelot was playing that day, but not remember that, at the time, it had nothing to do with the Kennedys... except that from that day forward, it's part of the freeze-frame experience that is etched in our minds.
November 23, 2008 12:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
The Kennedy-Camelot myth comes from a Life Magazine interview that Jackie gave -- after the assassination. To this day, people think that Sorenson was involved in the article.
The Kennedy Administration was masterful in the presentation of his funeral as spectacle and symbol. Though several other presidents had been assassinated since Lincoln, the Administration (stories say Jackie, but who knows at this point?) used the Lincoln funeral as a template.
You may want to take a look at
http://www.robertfulford.com/2004-06-05-kennedy.html
As for the freeze-frame experience: why do I consider this dangerous? Because it numbs the mind on the true details -- and makes comparisons and judgements that follow suspect.
I, for one, am hoping that (except for Vietnam) Obama is far more like LBJ than JFK. It's ironic that most of what left-leaning TPMers like about this country was initiated and pushed by LBJ not JFK. In comparision, JFK did relatively little in terms of domestic policy. Both presidents had disastrous foreign policies (crisis management excluded).
November 23, 2008 6:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
As for the freeze-frame experience: why do I consider this dangerous? Because it numbs the mind on the true details -- and makes comparisons and judgements that follow suspect.
______
Your effort to portray "Boomers" as stupid about their own experiences is offensive. And predictably arrogtant.
Take your tearings-down of left-of-cetner back to freerepublic where they're welcome.
November 23, 2008 7:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
I was only 15 and attended a school surrounded by such miserable poverty that most modern Americans can only try to imagine it. Wooden two room "houses" with dirt or plank floors and newspapers stuffed in the walls to keep the wind out. Dirt yards with no grass but lots of broken glass. Almost no cars, everyone walked.
But still even in that grim setting Kennedy had shone like a light of hope that better times were ahead and at our school, many were crying, teachers included. My eyes were dry. I was in a hoodlum-wanna-be phase then, but I remember feeling like some great discontinuity had occured-something I couldn't find words for but that was deeply disquieting and intimidating both.
But my 15 year old self didn't allow anything to repress its exuberance for long and life soon returned to normal, except that odd sense that the rhythm of life and progress was no longer as invincible as before.
November 22, 2008 1:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
That has a ring like Copernican revolution. It should be a catchphrase.
Brilliant!
November 22, 2008 2:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
There was that odd sense. And it continues somewhat.
(It would be two years before I became a class-clown/hoodlum wannabe.)
November 23, 2008 7:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
I can understand the frustration of younger generations when baby boomers seem to obsess over times and events that seem so long ago and irrelevant to them, while frequently glossing over more recent events of greater meaning and importance to younger folks. I have born witness to much contempt from my younger friends about something that seems so "I have heard it a million times before, blah! blah! blah!"
But if I may be an apologist for a moment, people who did not live through the 50's and 60's tend to miss the foundation of this obsession. After WWII, the defining historical moment of the boomers preceding generation, the Atomic Age changed our sense of well being over night. You had a sudden influx of science fiction movies that were dealing with one sort or another apocalyptic scenario. You had the emergence of a beat be-bop social rebellion at the same time as committee hearings on Un-american activities and black lists. You had the start of the Birmingham Bus Boycott. This was a new situation, the threat of nuclear holocaust, coupled with the rise of television as a mass communication medium, and the emergence of radical social lifestyle rebellion, from Hugh Hefner to Allen Ginsberg--that set the stage for the Nixon/Kennedy face off.
One of the central issues of the 60' campaign had to do with the myth of the 'missile gap'. In October, 1960, Khrushchev repeatedly disrupted the UN, at one point pounding his fist on the table and shouting "We will bury you!" Later he resorted to taking off his right shoe and pounding it on the table, shouting in Russian.
So Kennedy took office and we had crisis upon crisis, first the Bay of Pigs, then the Cuban Missile Crisis. This was scary, scary stuff. Then, a year later, James Meredith tries to enroll at the University of Mississippi, and riots break out--Kennedy sends in the Army. To a kid, this is all difficult to assimilate. The baby boom suffered post traumatic stress disorder BEFORE Kennedy was shot. Then came the assassination, and nobody knew what this meant. The next year, Chaney, Schwermer, and Goodman went to Mississippi in the summer to register voters and disappeared without a trace. A year later the March on Selma was televised on national television--replete with dogs and firehoses--right after the murder of Malcolm X. The next summer we watched the Watts riots explode. And in 1964, a new wave of social rebellion broke on the streets of Phoenix AZ, during the 64 presidential race, when a band of screaming dayglo crazies drove a multi colored bus backwards up main street with a sign on the side saying: "A vote for Barry is a vote for fun!" Then in June 66 we heard Frank Zappa chanting over and over that "It can't happen here'.
The world had been tossed into a blender, and it never saw anything like it, again. The 70's 80's,90's, and the current decade have been relatively stable and consistent in terms of social transformation, almost glacial, and the disruption of the status quo by new emerging technologies. Yes, the personal computer and the internet have caused information management to get re-engineered--but it has been decades since we have seen modern cargo cults in the streets of San Francisco, And people building fallout shelters in their back yards. It's been a long time since Dr Strangelove taught us to stop worrying and love the Bomb. So forgive us Boomers if we keeping returning to the scene of the crime. We were shell shocked by the explosion. We never fully recovered.
November 22, 2008 1:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
I get where you are coming from. But understand that it's not just about looking at more recent events. Older generations haven't obsessed about their events in quite the same way either. There is a reason why the Boomers have been characterized as self-indulgent, constantly introspecting and expecting everyone to accommodate them.
I would point out that the present culture wars, the Clintons and the Bushes, the rightward movement of the country -- all of it -- came at a time as the Boomers flexed their enormous political influence. In other words, the country -- with all it's messes -- is a result of the Boomer influence. Hardly the "peace and love" panacea that this group tends to like to associate themselves with.
The Civil Rights movement -- and even the gay and feminist movements -- were a result of the generation before the peak Boomer era.
Boomers have it good beyond measure -- at pointed out in OUTLIERS the generation that came behind have had to wait in line as the system is already crammed with Boomers.
You are welcomed to return to the scene of the crime. Just understand that other generations -- including your parents -- didn't build their lives around it.
November 22, 2008 2:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sure, I don't credit the Boomers with the civil rights movement, although, the older boomers were part of sncc and the sit ins. The peace/love tribe of the Boomers was actually a pretty small tribe. To associate ALL Boomers with this is to paint too wide a swath by far. Peace, love, and understanding have never been very popular or even trustworthy, in this country. And yes, Boomers have steered the country over the edge of the Abyss, but NOT because, as children, we were worried about nuclear holocaust and the assassination of our leaders. The problem is far more complex and modern than that of ancient childhood psychological scars.
November 22, 2008 3:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Most sociologists or other researchers studying the Boomer generation tend to divide it into two cohorts, the first being born between 45 and 54-57, and the second, up until 64. Obviously, someone born in 45 will have vastly different experiences than someone born in 64.
But there's nothing unusual about moments defining generations, as it happened with generations before the Boomers as well as those after. Common experiences, whether they are political, social, or economic events always shape a generation's values, attitudes, and behavior. History and memory are intricately tied together, for better and for worse. And generally, the events that shape a generation take place in their most politically formative years, from about 16 to 22 or so, although there is debate about those ages as well.
That first Boomer cohort most certainly did have roots in the Civil Rights movement, was shaped by the assassinations of JFK, RFK, and MLK, landing on the moon, and feminism, among other things. The second cohort, not so much, would have been more influenced by Watergate, the Cold War, and so on.
From an anthropoligical/sociological standpoint, what's interesting about the Boomers and the culture wars are that the arguably most influential common event, Vietnam, is what divided the boomers, creating a deep split in the country as to which direction America should head. In other generations, we've seen events that unified the generation, despite political differences. Some have drawn comparisons to the polarization of the country during Lincoln's time, although the parallels are of course, not perfect.
There's a really excellent book about the cultural impact of Pearl Harbor, but I can't remember the name of it for the life of me right now. Brokaw's Greatest Generation, also called the Veterans, and really the generational cohort after as well, came of age during the Roaring Twenties and the Stock Market Crash and the later cohort was significantly impacted by Pearl Harbor, the New Deal, WWII, the Korean War.
Generation X, affected by the economy of the 70s, the Challenger explosion, AIDS, MTV, the Berlin Wall, Reagan, and so on.
Look at who's dying in Iraq now. Casualties of all ages, but more people under 22 than any other age group.
November 22, 2008 4:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Born in '45 here, checking in. Yes, civil rights - Big issue. Thanks for clarifying this from an anthropological/sociological perspective. You well describe my own experience. The "flower power" stuff was never part of it. Lots of political engagement - for civil rights, against the war, that's what influenced me heavily. Like an ocean you were immersed in. Regardless of what you studied in classes. It was all around you - in conversations. In the news. Meetings. Marches.
November 22, 2008 4:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
For many of the 2nd cohort, the deaths of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King hit them the way JFK's death hit the older members. It was different of course, but I remember it was like being woken into life... bang, I was conscious. And with an incredible sense of confusion, contrasts, forces pulling two ways at once. The things the teenagers and young people I looked up to... shot down. Dead in the dust. And them... crushed. Then angry.
November 22, 2008 4:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
My first political awakening -- aside from the heavy hand of the WW II generation -- was learning of Abraham Lincoln in elementary school. His "everybody equal before the law" hit me between the eyes (I was the youngest/shit comes down the ladder, and there is no appeal from it). Shortly thereafter I became a civil rights advocate in response to racist attacks on Cassius Clay. (He would later change his name to Muhammad Ali.)
My second political awakening was the campaigning and election of JFK. The difficulty there is the frozen grief -- he was there, then suddenly there was a hole in the air where he'd been. And there were no last words.
It didn't stop for me there. I became a feminist on my 16th birthday -- five years before 99 per cent of women got wind of the issue. I began speaking out against US involvement in Vietnam shortly after I turned 17. The following Winter my pacifism crystalized.
I was eligible for the draft on the day I was graduated from high school. I got around that and became full-time active against US involvement in Vietnam. I was numb with the poundings that position -- and the awareness that the troops should have been brought back yesterday -- took by the time MLK and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated.
My political activism, including civil right, women's rights, human rights, antiwar, affordable housing and health care, has never stopped -- from 8-9 years old to date. That's why it pisses me off to no end when young -- smug -- jerks such as "clearthinker," based upon his swallowings of Limbaugh/FOX hate-swill, bash my generation as "self-indulgent" and the like. These are the assholes who point their fingers at others and name-call in effort to distract from the self-centerings they impute to others. And it is those rationalizations -- that my generation was "self-indulgent" -- which are such jerks' excuse for being: self-indulgent.
You'll note that this post was a rememberance of JFK, and the assassination of JFK. And what has "clearthinker" endeavored to do here? Jealously bash "Boomers," attack their experiences and memories about which he knows nothing but flatters himself he knows more than those who had and have them, and insulting "Boomers" based essentially and only on jealousy: his generation doesn't get the "credit" that the "Boomers" apparently grant themselves because -- well, what wars has his generation stopped? What has he contributed anywhere other than tearings down of that he doesn't "get"? What does he do but insult a generation on the grounds that, unlike he, that generation is rude?
What I don't need is lectures about my experiences from a punk who wasn't there and didn't have them. When you end a war instead of attacking those who have, "clearthinker," you'll be near deserving respect. Until then you're a vacuous clown.
November 23, 2008 8:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Your point about things not being uniform for the Boomer generation is valid, obviously, which is why I was careful in my post to identify the peak Boomer years when discussing things in terms of historical events. Indeed, the term Generation Jones has been coined for those that used to be in the Boomer generation but whose experiences are quite different. (Obama is a Joneser.) Generation Jones was, in part, forming attitudes based on the fact that they were last in line after the Boomers filled up jobs, etc. In OUTLIERS you can read how 1963 was the unlikiest year to be born in the US for this reason.
It still is important, however, not to romanticize the past, or mistake an individual experience for that of the masses.
Let's examine a Boomer born in 1946 (oldest you can get in the standard generational definition) and project that life onto historical events:
1955 -- Montgomery Bus Boycott. Our Boomer is a mere 9 years old.
1963 -- March on Washington. Our Boomer is only 17 years old.
In other words, before our imaginary boomer even hits college -- and this is the older boomer possible -- the Civil Rights movement in the country is at a peak. (Things wane after the 1964-65 Legislation.)
1964 -- Berkeley Free Speech Movement. Only the oldest Boomers will experience this directly. While it's true that Berkeley remained a center point for protest during the 60s, what is commonly thought of as the student protest over Vietnam comes later. For example, in 1966, Gallup shows that fully 59% of the population -- and an astounding 71% of those 21-29 -- believe that the US did not make a mistake by going into Vietnam. In May 1970, 48% of this latter group 21-29 still did not believe that the US made a mistake. In 1970, this group was born between 1941-1949 -- the earliest of the Boomers. Remarkably, this is after the divisive 1968 presidential election where Vietnam was the defining issue!
It is interesting to note that it was the older voters in both cases who outnumbered the younger ones thinking it was a mistake to go into Vietnam.
Protests against Vietnam grew especially after deferments for college started going away -- at last the Middle Class was being hit with the reality of the war and they didn't like it. It's one of the prime reasons that there is no draft at present in the US despite men are required to register. A true draft would being the foreign policies of the country into everyone's living rooms.
I'm not going to argue that some people were precocious and plugged into politics, etc. at a very early age. I will argue, however, that most people won't really get involved in the larger society until they have hit high school graduation.
There have been studies that have shown a great many more people claim to have been at Woodstock than were actually there, for example.
There is an amazing book called GENERATIONS that describes, with surprising detail, the ebb and flow of political generations in this country. The country tending to the right as a result of Boomers wanting to protect their children and a tend to become more religious later in life. Much of the mood in the country today was predicted by this book years ago.
November 22, 2008 6:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Generational studies have always fascinated me. One interesting aspect of it is that whatever the counterculture of one generation is, it tends to have some continuity with that of the next. We can see that with the beatniks and the hippies, for example.
With regards to the support for the Vietnam (your link is broken, P.S.!), I'm not claiming that older voters were more in favor of the war. And I would expect more people would have been in favor of it in 65. Just that for younger people, it was more likely to be a heavily influential event on their political and cultural views. Many of the protests were on campuses, by students. That's something that stays with you, whether it was the experience of the masses or not. And as we see in the 1970 poll, the generation was literally divided down the middle on the war. That's the polarization that I'm talking about, that has had lasting effects into today.
I haven't read the Generations book. Thanks for the rec though! It sounds like they were heavily influenced by the idea of the Ages of Man. Part of what I love about looking at generations is that it's something that has intrigued thinkers for thousands of years. Karl Mannheim suggested his theory of the sociology of generations in 1952, which is really tied into his theory of knowledge. But in any event, he believed that generational location was a defining aspect of values, behaviors, feelings, and thoughts for generations. The formative experiences during youth are what defined generations. (Which is interesting, as we are much more rigid in defining them in terms of years, when it makes more sense to define them in terms of their common experiences. But I digress.) He believed their participation in the events made a different in their sociocultural development, not just the potential for involvement by being the right age, or living in the right place, etc.
Now this is an interesting conversation starter.History is a people's memory, and without memory man is demoted to the lower animals. -Malcolm X
First I would say, the relationship between truth and history is a fragile one. But we can't expect people to separate their memory of history. A person who was in Selma or Mississippi during Freedom Summer is going to conceptualize the time very differently than someone who lived in an isolated rural area at the time. It's why the study and teaching of history should always include various perspectives. History is always being revised. Sometimes, because we have new information. Sometimes, because people can deny, misremember, or distort events and facts. And it is always full of bias, perceptional differences, morality judgments, Someone who was alive when JFK was shot is going to have a very different understanding of it than someone my age. Just as I have a very different understanding of 9/11 than my son likely will.
Theories of memory and knowledge would also be interesting to pull in here, but I think I've written a comment of Quinnesque proportions here, so I'll stop with this: History is really just an evolving collective memory.
November 22, 2008 9:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hilary, Here is the link that was broken (I hate when that happens!)
http://people-press.org/commentary/?analysisid=57
November 23, 2008 5:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
There's a chunk I think you are leaving out in your walk through of the 45 Boomer. Sure they would have been 17 the year James Meredith enrolled at Old Miss, but I was only 10, and MAN it was a very big deal with me--I was living in Monterey, CA, but my dad was an alumnus of Old Miss, had Faulkner as a teacher, and was profoundly ashamed of the behavior exhibited towards Meredith. That was the first time I heard about the struggle for racial equality. The next year, when Bob Dylan's second album, the Freewheeling Bob Dylan came out, and he had a song called Oxford Town, and I knew what he was singing about. And I knew it was relevant. And that was the moment I fell in love with Bob Dylan, and of course I was wide open to anything, and everything else that he did, after that. I recognized him as my tribal Chieftan. All because of Oxford Town. So historical events shape children, and the child is the father of the man. When I grew older, and had friends who were 25 in '62, the whole thing was a blip on the screen for them. They never even began to pay attention to the Beatles until Sgt Peppers. The Python of history had digested them much earlier. It was one thing for a 25 year old to hear Frank Zappa in 1966, and it was something else for a 13 year old. For a 13 year old, this stuff was like the black monolith in 2001, during the Dawn of Man sequence. But maybe not so much to an older generation...
November 22, 2008 11:56 PM | Reply | Permalink