1968: 50 Years Later

After reading the January-February 1968 Smithsonian, I realized that year held more significance than Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination by James Earl Ray. 1968 was a detrimental year for "Baby Boomers" and generations to follow, it even effected the way todays world was shaped socially, politically, and economically. Vietnam, RFK, Memphis sanitation strike, space, Miss America, technology, a lot of significant events that have helped shape today. A story of the young Frankie Lymon, dying from heroin, an epidemic that ran rampant in those days, incomparable to crisis we face today. Society has it's way of teaching us through heartache and pain, white or black, democrat or republican, liberal or conservative. After reading some of the articles, I've come to the conclusion that the truth presented to the masses isn't always thorough and is never given in a way for us to get an opinion from those affected negative or positive. Events, stories, situations are at times presented in a fashion where the point of view is to be sympathized. Those civilians, innocent woman, men, children; unarmed and afraid weren't sympathized for as they gunned down by the CharlieCompany in MyLai. The sanitation workers in Memphis who worked for $1 an hour, with no raise weren't sympathized for, especially the protestors who were tear gassed and beaten, who sympathized for RFK and his views in his political place, the other young and old people like Frankie Lymon who struggled with heroin addiction; in his case since the naive age of 15. Who sympathized for those young and old, who led protests across the world during the year of 1968 and today. Some of the fights of yesterday are still current today diversity, socio-economics, government corruption and so on. 1968 should be a year taught and spoken of for the rest of mankind. From January to December during that year the good, the bad, and the ugly showed us what the world had to offer. Our first black woman in the House of Representatives, Shirley Chisholm, Yale University admitting their first female undergrads; the 747 jumbo jet from Boeing; events of the DNC in Chicago; the actions of two lone men John Carlos and Tommie Smith at the Olympics; student protests high school and college home and abroad; terror of the Vietnam and the loss of MLK and RFK. Take time to be aware of yesterday, that today is reshaped in a better mold so tomorrow a lesson can be delivered, shown, and experienced for a better of mankind as a whole.