The Murder of Hope

 

So many of my fellow writers here are much younger than I.  Some terrific essays have been posted in the past few days, but most of the true memories of the day John F. Kennedy was slain have been from those of you who were in elementary school or even younger.

I was two weeks past my 19th birthday.  It was the second year of my college education in a place that, in retrospect, was probably as unlikely as it could have been at the time.  Politics were important to me then, but not important enough to have it influence my choice of schools. 

I learned in my first year that I had signed up to attend a small, liberal arts college in the prairies of Wisconsin in a town that distinguished itself as being the birthplace of the Republican Party.

Not only was I the only “Negro” woman enrolled there; I was also a part of a very small coterie of young Democrats.

At 12:30 p.m. Central Standard Time on Friday, November 22, 1963, I was walking alone toward the Commons, hoping I hadn’t missed out completely on lunch.  My head was swirling with chemical formulas, exhausted from a brutal mid-term exam in chemistry.

Two guys I knew – the school was only 800 students strong, so I knew just about everybody by then – were walking toward me laughing.

“Did you hear, L?”

“Hear what?” I responded, smiling.

“Somebody killed Kennedy.”

Again, they smirked and chuckled.

“Yeah, right.  You two are such lunch buckets.”  That’s one of the many stupid things we called each other back then.  It meant they were “out to lunch” or idiots. I thought it applied particularly well for classmates who claimed to be Republicans.

They passed and I kept walking. 

But they were not joking.  It was true. I heard it from a fellow liberal who approached on that same stretch of sidewalk.  I heard it, but couldn’t process it.  It couldn’t happen in this country.  Not here.  Not now.

I changed my direction and headed for the dorm.  My appetite vanished as quickly as the President’s future.  I needed to talk to my mother.  Now.  I was confused, angry,  and scared. 

The election of President Kennedy had meant to my young mind that things were getting much, much better.  He won, despite being a Catholic.  That was huge for me because I shared that “stigma” with him, although I didn’t  understand why it was such a big issue in the scheme of things.  He talked about what a nation should be and what he was saying sounded very much like he agreed that people like me should have a fair shake.  Maybe I wouldn’t have to be so mindful of my race anymore.  Maybe I could just be another college coed.  Maybe the turmoil that was going on the the Deep South at the time would come to a halt and things would change.

By the time I reached my mother on the hall telephone in the dorm, my hope was DOA.