1963

As we find ourselves in this year commemorating the 50th anniversary of one momentous event after another, it grows increasingly clear just how transformative the year 1963 turned out to be. We know a lot was going on during the late 50s and early 60s, especially with regard to civil rights, but until we look very closely at the year 1963 itself, we can lose sight of how blinding the rate of change was in that one remarkable year. For one thing, it begins with George Wallace's inauguration speech as the governor of Alabama when he defiantly declares: "Segregation now, Segregation tomorrow, Segregation forever." It ends in a haze of tragedy and mourning with the assassination of  President John F. Kennedy. In between these two horrifying bookends, sadness and tragedy abound, even as great leaps forward also occur.

For instance, April of 1963 marks the imprisonment of Dr. Martin Luther King in a Birmingham, Alabama jail, even as this very imprisonment helps to make possible Dr. King's great contribution to world literature - his Letter from a Birmingham Jail. That letter, as much as any document he ever produced, persuaded skeptics and so-called moderates alike that justice delayed when it comes to civil rights is ultimately justice denied and that true justice demanded a new push for full racial integration.

Only two months later, President Kennedy delivered his greatest and most ambitious civil rights speech. In it, he said, "We are primarily confronted with a moral issue...It is as old as the scriptures and as clear as the American constitution. One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs...are not fully free. They are not free from the bonds of injustice and this nation will not be fully free until all its citizens are free." He proposed strong legislation that finally passed under the guiding hand of President Johnson, not long after President Kennedy's assassination. 

I turned 13 in 1963 and had virtually no clue of the turmoil of that year. For me, it was all about baseball - both playing and following. But, like so many of my contemporaries, I have distinct memories of President Kennedy's death and all the ways in which that death broke the country's heart and yet, at the same time, helped it mature into something wiser, less sentimental and more genuinely caring as well.