On the day that President John Kennedy was shot in November of 1963 I was teaching English in a segregated junior high school in an industrial section of Birmingham, Alabama. I think it was just after lunch period as I returned to my classroom that I heard several students applauding and cheering loudly. When I asked what had happened they gleefully yelled that President Kennedy had been shot...
I still don't know which was the bigger shock to me, the actuality of the president of our country being assassinated or the raw hatred and prejudice I experienced in the faces and voices of those young people in my classroom.
Having grown up in a small southern Alabama town in the 40s and 50s, I had, of course, been exposed to expressions of racial, social and religious prejudice in varying degrees. But I really can't say I ever personally experienced from my family and friends a sense of hatred or fear for those who were different from "us." "They" may have had a different skin shade, gone to a different church or no church at all, had bigger or smaller houses, but we were all part of the same community and were familiar to each other, not usually fearful of each other.
After high school I moved from my small town to the big city of Birmingham where I attended a private Baptist College. When John Kennedy ran for president the year I graduated, I recall there was much controversy and disapproval about the possibility of having a Catholic president. After all, "we" had never had one before. I voted for him because he represented progress and hope and probably because he was so charismatic. And besides, I had a Catholic aunt whom I loved and I wasn't afraid of Catholics.
Thinking back now, forty six years later, to that November I can still vividly recall the sickening, shocking feelings I felt as a result of the reality of someone killing the president of our country and some of my young students being so happy about it.
Not many months ago I voted for the new president of our country because I thought he truly was the best candidate, and because I did think that he, like Kennedy, represented positive change and hope for our country. But he is also "different." The world has changed a lot for the better since 1963, but when I read and listen to comments in the media about the fears, bigotry and hatred that the president of our country seems to illicit it brings back the memories of those classroom voices of so many years ago. And that scares me. I hope and pray times have changed.
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