History is weighing on me tonight

A Facebook friend of mine whose sister was one of the students killed at Kent State on May 4, 1970, posted a video this afternoon. Students at Kent State were protesting the invasion of Cambodia, which President Richard Nixon had announced on April 30. The Ohio National Guard fired 67 rounds in 13 seconds into the crowd, killing four unarmed young people and wounding nine. Some who were shot were not even participating in the protest, but just happened to be nearby.

As if that weren't heavy enough, the video she posted was Dion singing "Abraham, Martin, and John," live on the Smothers' Brothers Comedy Hour, a show I loved. I listened to it, and then went to You Tube and found a video of the original recording of the song, which I still cannot hear without tearing up. This video was all photographs of each man as his verse came by. In Lincoln's eyes, you could see the pain of his migraines, depression, and the weight of war. I think he is our greatest president. I'm not one of those Southerners who sees honor in the Confederate flag. The fight was treason, an act of war by traitors against the United States of America, not the action of patriots and heroes, and the only states' right they cared about was the right to own African human beings as slaves. Lincoln gave everything to save the Union.

ABRAHAM
Lincoln spoke at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery on Thursday, November 13, 1863. His words say all that needs to be said about why that war was fought and show all that needs to be shown about why he was a great man:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Yet this great man was shot as he and his wife watched a play at Ford's theater in Washington on April 14, 1865, five days after Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox. The assassin was John Wilkes Booth, and Booth did not act alone. Lewis Powell was to assassinate Secretary of State William H. Seward that same night, but only wounded him. George Atzerodt was to be the assassin of Vice President Andrew Johnson, but he chickened out and ran away. The men were part of a plot to prevent the South from accepting the surrender. President Lincoln died the next day, a tragedy for everyone, for history.

MARTIN
We just celebrated Martin Luther King, Jr.'s, eighty-second birthday this past January 15th, and we will commemorate his passing, his murder, his brutal assassination in Memphis on April 4, 1968, in just a few days. MLK's teachings of nonviolent protest and nonviolent civil disobedience, following the model of Mahatma Gandhi, were sorely missed in the years after his loss. Our country was wounded, nearly mortally, and some stupid people didn't even know it. How many people remember that MLK received the Nobel Peace Prize for his work? He will live on in his deeds and in his words, especially the "I have a dream" speech, given to a crowd of over 200,000 on the Washington, DC, mall -- from the steps of the Lincoln memorial --  on August 28, 1963, and his "Letter from Birmingham Jail," also from 1963.

King began his speech on the mall by referring back to Lincoln's signing of the the Emancipation Proclamation "five score" years ago. His rhetorical style was much like that of the Baptist minister that he was. And then he said

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."

This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.

JOHN
As Dion sings, the first picture you see of President John F. Kennedy is one of him and his daughter Caroline. You can tell he was a hands-on father, a real father. I've seen pictures of Caroline crawling all over him. You can't fake a close and comfortable relationship with a child. His children loved him, and he loved them. Of course there are words I remember him by, his definition of a liberal, his first inaugural exhortation to us all:  "Ask not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can do for your country."

Here is his part of his definition of a liberal, given as a presidential candidate in September, 1960:

But if by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people -- their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties -- someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal," then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal."

I remember well the Cuban missile crisis, the Berlin Wall, Jacqueline Kennedy's grace and beauty, the birth of Patrick in 1963, who lived only two days, and Camelot. I was in the ninth grade when Kennedy was killed. Our principal announced the news of his death over the school's intercom. Many of the students in my class burst into applause, and our class became infamous for that, as they acted out the hatred they had learned from their parents. I didn't understand it then, and I don't understand it now. It makes me ashamed of my school, my town, my classmates. My best friend Susan and I idolized Jackie Kennedy, her noble bearing throughout the assassination and funeral.

I was 50 when JFK, Jr., left us in the summer of 1999. His plane left New York for the Cape on a Friday evening in July. By Saturday morning, everyone knew the plane was missing. I went out to dinner that night at at very nice restaurant in Washington, DC, where I lived at the time, Nora's I believe it was. I know the Clintons had eaten there with Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen. I ordered soft-shelled crab but could not eat, I was so troubled. My friend and I talked about the Kennedys, the tragedies, so many plane crashes, so many losses, about how John's mother had made him promise not to take up flying, she feared so for his safety. He was such a handsome young man, the most handsome of all his family. It was as though President Kennedy didn't really fully die until JFK Jr. died. And then he was totally gone. I shed many a tear over that young man's death and felt the horror of Dallas in 1963 all over again. The finality of death hit hard. The death of dreams and hopes, too, that Camelot might live again.

BOBBY
Bobby Kennedy was my favorite Kennedy brother. Robert Francis Kennedy was born in 1925,  the year my mother was born, and he became a civil rights activist, Attorney General during his brother's presidency, and for nine months Johnson's, a Senator from New York and a presidential candidate.  As Attorney General he was tough on organized crime and was his brother's closest advisor. He was easily the most powerful attorney general we have had. He worked hard to enforce civil rights. He represented what he called the disaffected, the impoverished, the excluded. As a candidate, he met with Cesar Chavez. He opposed the war in Viet Nam. When he declared his candidacy for the presidency he said,

I do not run for the Presidency merely to oppose any man, but to propose new policies. I run because I am convinced that this country is on a perilous course and because I have such strong feelings about what must be done, and I feel that I'm obliged to do all I can.

Robert F. Kennedy said, quoting George Bernard Shaw, "Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not."

I can still remember the morning my mother came in to wake me and told me that RFK had been shot the night before just past midnight on June 5, 1968, after winning the California primary. Shot by Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian immigrant, Bobby died early in the morning of June 6. I remember receiving a letter from a college friend, her name was Joy. She was devastated. She said she could hardly bear to live in a world where a human being could do such a thing as had been done. And it came too soon after Martin and John for us to handle.

The heroes of a song, the heroes of a kid of the Sixties, the heroes of a senior citizen of the 2010's. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Dion and Aaron Neville sing Abraham, Martin, and John