Maybe it’s the toxic quality of politics today, or a general sense of unease about the future, but my thoughts – and the thoughts of many others - have been returning to another time of anger and division - and the ways that history affects us. History is a story we all participate in, but we each participate in our own way. That’s certainly the case for 1968, when the political, historical and personal were woven together in a braid unique to each of us.
I was a junior in college, and here is a summary of the big events. There were the primary elections that forced Lyndon Johnson to bow out of the race. My roommates and I leaped for joy at the announcement.
Then came the assassination of Martin Luther King and the massive march that followed in the city where I lived, thousands marching ten abreast, arm in arm, down the center of the street, the sound of “We Shall Overcome” washing over the entire parade.
Then there was the assassination of Robert Kennedy, whom I had seen at a rally two months earlier. My roommate burst into tears. For me something broke, and I kind of gave up — on what, I’m still not sure.
At the same time, I was 20 years old, and this was one of my happiest years. I had good roommates. There was a significant romance. In California it was a glorious spring. It was within that frame that events began to paint a picture of anger and despair.
More history happened that year — the convention in Chicago, for example — though the aforementioned romance had begun to divert my attention. And then, the election of Richard Nixon promised to lead the nation toward continuing war and the criminality of Watergate.
Those paying attention all shared this history, even if we each experienced it differently. I became so alienated from what was happening I joined the Peace Corps and spent much of Nixon’s first term overseas.
Fifty years later we’re in the middle of a different drama, and we don’t know how it’s going to turn out. It’s the large story of our times, and we’re all experiencing it in our own way. And when the story is told 50 years from now, you can bet there will be astonishment at what happened.
