May 4,1970

KSU

See thread below.

http://www.bobcatattack.com/messageboard/topic.asp?FromPa...

As I recall, there was a Jeopardy question about the Kent shootings the other night and nobody got the answer. They were all 30ish. For those of us from that era, it's a chapter in our history. For those born in the last 30 years, I'm not sure it's even a paragraph. Time does that. Hard to imagine that people who were born in that year can join AARP.

This thought reminds me of an experience I had when I was teaching at Murray State. This was about 1977. In one class I made some references to the Kennedy assassination. I don't remember the context. What I do remember was the response of some of the students. They said things like, we were in kindergarten or early grade school at that time (only 14 years earlier), and we don't really remember anything about it. They acted like I was teaching an ancient history class. I was quite stunned by those statements. To me this was something that seemed like it had happened in a contemporary timeframe. Now, however, this kind of thing doesn't surprise me at all. In my study of my family's genealogy I find it all the time. One generation totally forgets what the previous generation learned. Myths replace facts and are passed down to the next generation. I call this "generational amnesia." I'm not surprised, therefore, if current students have either never heard of the Kent State shootings, or only have the vaguest memory of having heard some older person -- maybe a teacher or relative -- speak about it.

I'll leave you with a little bit of related trivia. If you had ancestors in the North after the Civil War, do you know what they meant if in the spring of the year they would refer to remembering the recent "Black Easter"? To them that term was probably even more poignant than when we refer among ourselves to the 4th of May 1970. [Hint: Black Easter was not a rock band or a cheap fantasy novel.]