Thursday, August 28, 2008

Convention

It was amazing tonight to watch an African American accept his parties nomination for President on the same day as Dr.Kings I Have a Dream speech.I was thinking back to 1968 when I was 13 and watched everything of that summers Democratic convention where the party was torn apart by the passions of the time.Even at 13 I realised the months leading up to it were some of the most intense in American History.The death of Dr. King in April and Bobby Kennedy coming on TV that night from Ind I believe and appealing for calm which helped a bit.But the next day we were off from Rochester to Florida with our camper and my father decided we should see what D.C. looked like that afternoon.As we approached the city the smoke rising was visible for miles and we entered a gridlocked Washington with our ford wagon and pop-top camper.Seeing crowds roaming in the govt bldg area I thought a few times we were going to be attacked from the angry look on faces but we got out of the city and I watched the smoke as we headed south shaken to the core.A few months later Bobby Kennedy himself falling to a gunman in Los Angeles just after his biggest triumph and probable nomination. The coverage of his funeral with brother Teddy's stirring and sad eulogy and the network coverage of his funeral train from New York to D.C. with over a million folks lining the tracks in between is something I'll never forget and oddly enough I saw only once again when some networks showed it on their full day coverage the day after JFK juniors plane went missing.It was strange seeing that footage after all those years and it was still just as emotional to me.The thing I noticed and I had not in 1968 was at some places along the tracks there were Whites and Blacks standing together.Then the convention itself with the riots in the streets and in the hall in Chicago and the warring factions of the party itself.All of that raw emotion of 1968 seems to have come to fruition tonight and I can't helpbut feeling some of the emotion the old civil rights warriors are feeling tonight.

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