In May 1963, I was eight years old. My parents took me and my sister to Nashville to Dudley Stadium at Vanderbilt in Nashville to see and hear President Kennedy. (I had to look up the date on the Internet. We were in our Sunday best. We parked some distance from the stadium and rode the commuter bus to the stadium. I don’t remember anything particular about the seating or the people on the bus. I don’t remember where we sat but the podium was far away. I could hear, but not see very much. I was too young to understand what I was hearing. Parts of President Kennedy’s speech is set forth below (in italics):
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If there is one unchanging theme that runs throughout these separate stories, it is that everything changes but change itself. We live in an age of movement and change, both evolutionary and revolutionary, both good and evil–and in such an age a university has a special obligation to hold fast to the best of the past and move fast to the best of the future.
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This State, this city, this campus, have stood long for both human rights and human enlightenment–and let that forever be true. This Nation is now engaged in a continuing debate about the rights of a portion of its citizens. That will go on, and those rights will expand until the standard first forged by the Nation’s founders has been reached, and all Americans enjoy equal opportunity and liberty under law.
The essence of Vanderbilt is still learning, the essence of its outlook is still liberty, and liberty and learning will be and must be the touchstones of Vanderbilt University and of any free university in this country or the world. I say two touchstones, yet they are almost inseparable, inseparable if not indistinguishable, for liberty without learning is always in peril, and learning without liberty is always in vain.
But this Nation was not founded solely on the principle of citizens’ rights. Equally important, though too often not discussed, is the citizen’s responsibility. For our privileges can be no greater than our obligations. The protection of our rights can endure no longer than the performance of our responsibilities. Each can be neglected only at the peril of the other. I speak to you today, therefore, not of your rights as Americans, but of your responsibilities. They are many in number and different in nature. They do not rest with equal weight upon the shoulders of all. Equality of opportunity does not mean equality of responsibility. All Americans must be responsible citizens, but some must be more responsible than others, by virtue of their public or their private position, their role in the family or community, their prospects for the future, or their legacy from the past.
Increased responsibility goes with increased ability, for “of those to whom much is given, much is required.”
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You have responsibilities, in short, to use your talents for the benefit of the society which helped develop those talents. You must decide, as Goethe put it, whether you will be an anvil or a hammer, whether you will give to the world in which you were reared and educated the broadest possible benefits of that education. Of the many special obligations incumbent upon an educated citizen, I would cite three as outstanding: your obligation to the pursuit of learning, your obligation to serve the public, your obligation to uphold the law.
If the pursuit of learning is not defended by the educated citizen, it will not be defended at all. For there will always be those who scoff at intellectuals, who cry out against research, who seek to limit our educational system. Modern cynics and skeptics see no more reason for landing a man on the moon, which we shall do, than the cynics and skeptics of half a millennium ago saw for the discovery of this country. They see no harm in paying those to whom they entrust the minds of their children a smaller wage than is paid to those to whom they entrust the care of their plumbing.
But the educated citizen knows how much more there is to know. He knows that “knowledge is power,” more so today than ever before. He knows that only an educated and informed people will be a free people, that the ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all, and that if we can, as Jefferson put it, “enlighten the people generally … tyranny and the oppressions of mind and body will vanish, like evil spirits at the dawn of day.” And, therefore, the educated citizen has a special obligation to encourage the pursuit of learning, to promote exploration of the unknown, to preserve the freedom of inquiry, to support the advancement of research, and to assist at every level of government the improvement of education for all Americans, from grade school to graduate school.
Secondly, the educated citizen has an obligation to serve the public. He may be a precinct worker or President. He may give his talents at the courthouse, the State house, the White House. He may be a civil servant or a Senator, a candidate or a campaign worker, a winner or a loser. But he must be a participant and not a spectator.
“At the Olympic games,” Aristotle wrote, “it is not the finest and strongest men who are crowned, but they who enter the lists-for out of these the prize-men are elected. So, too, in life, of the honorable and the good, it is they who act who rightly win the prizes.”
I urge all of you today, especially those who are students, to act, to enter the lists of public service and rightly win or lose the prize. For we can have only one form of aristocracy in this country, as Jefferson wrote long ago in rejecting John Adams’ suggestion of an artificial aristocracy of wealth and birth. It is, he wrote, the natural aristocracy of character and talent, and the best form of government, he added, was that which selected these men for positions of responsibility.
I would hope that all educated citizens would fulfill this obligation–in politics, in Government, here in Nashville, here in this State, in the Peace Corps, in the Foreign Service, in the Government Service, in the Tennessee Valley, in the world. You will find the pressures greater than the pay. You may endure more public attacks than support. But you will have the unequaled satisfaction of knowing that your character and talent are contributing to the direction and success of this free society.
Third, and finally, the educated citizen has an obligation to uphold the law. This is the obligation of every citizen in a free and peaceful society–but the educated citizen has a special responsibility by the virtue of his greater understanding. For whether he has ever studied history or current events, ethics or civics, the rules of a profession or the tools of a trade, he knows that only a respect for the law makes it possible for free men to dwell together in peace and progress.
He knows that law is the adhesive force in the cement of society, creating order out of chaos and coherence in place of anarchy. He knows that for one man to defy a law or court order he does not like is to invite others to defy those which they do not like, leading to a breakdown of all justice and all order. He knows, too, that every fellowman is entitled to be regarded with decency and treated with dignity. Any educated citizen who seeks to subvert the law, to suppress freedom, or to subject other human beings to acts that are less than human, degrades his heritage, ignores his learning, and betrays his obligation.
Certain other societies may respect the rule of force–we respect the rule of law.
The Nation, indeed the whole world, has watched recent events in the United States with alarm and dismay. No one can deny the complexity of the problems involved in assuring to all of our citizens their full fights as Americans. But no one can gainsay the fact that the determination to secure these rights is in the highest traditions of American freedom.
In these moments of tragic disorder, a special burden rests on the educated men and women of our country to reject the temptations of prejudice and violence, and to reaffirm the values of freedom and law on which our free society depends.
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In August 1963, Martin Luther King gave the I Have A Dream Speech. Today, his words about character have been so misused and abused by the White Supremacists that the words have become a cliche, a meaningless cliche. I hope when you read this you will understand why I do not set forth his speech. I will say this about his speech. The words he spoke so movingly about all men being created equal…the founders…the ones who wrote those words…were only thinking of themselves…white, protestant, English, male landowners. With amendments, those words came to have meaning for us who do not fit into the above category. I use the singular deliberately for all the blocks had to be checked for you to be considered “equal” in the minds of the writer of those words and the signers thereof. MLK’s words about character are now being used to gaslight us into thinking a mindset has changed.
It is 2023 and I set forth President Kennedy’s speech to show how far we have devolved from the ideas of statesmanship, personal and public character, intellectual rigor, justice…freedom. There was an expectation, short-lived, that politicians would act on behalf of all their constituents. And, the ones who understood democracy and wanted democracy to succeed, knew that an ignorant population could not sustain a democracy. I hope when you read this, the pendulum has swung from the depths of ignorance, fear, and greed in which this country is mired to the pursuit of pushing intellectual boundaries, pursuing curiosity for the sake of curiosity, the courage to meet a stranger, knowing that the benefit of the doubt is not a death sentence.
When I was eight, the bell of hope clanged loudly and incessantly. Now, I am a pragmatist. At one time, before the politicalization of the word, I would have called myself a conservative. but, today, that word is synonymous with “evil” in my mind. Conservative values…a person favoring free enterprise, private ownership, and socially traditional ideas…I really don’t have a problem with. I know…that is a tame definition. But the means that people use to further their idea of conservatism…the means do matter and their means do not justify their end, which if they were truthful is not true conservatism, but a personal, vindictive, homicidal vendetta against anyone they consider other.
I warned you that this will be stream of consciousness blog. During this time, I also, saw the Staple Singers at Cobb Elementary School. I’m sure the program was sponsored by a local church. They sang gospel, so it was before they turned secular.
45s and 33s were the records we listened to. My mother liked Mitch Miller and we had a two record set of tunes that he conducted. We also had all the Motown singles. No albums, just singles. No Stax, but Chess…looked it up. Fontella Bass was signed by Chess Records and that’s why I remember the label. We played her record a lot. We also got to stay up late on Saturday night and watch Night Train. That’s where I first saw James Brown perform.
We also had an album by Dave “Baby” Cortez that we played a lot. He was an organist. I think there was an album by Dinah Washington. In school, third or fourth grade?, the eighth graders taught us the Bunny Hop, which from a quick lookup on the Internet was a 1950’s party dance.
There was a television in Mrs. G’s room. I learned of President Kennedy’s assassination when some of the girls in Mrs. G’s room could be heard crying and our teacher told us why they were crying. I had been to see him, but I don’t remember feeling sad. That was something that was happening far far away. I remember the newspaper headlines and pictures. Dad saved the newspapers for years under the cushions on the sofa. I don’t think he threw the newspapers away until he bought a new sofa and that was in the late seventies. The school had no telephone. Mrs. G lived next to the school and she would go home to use the telephone.
We also had plays. I have no idea what they were about, even though I know I was in one that I remember. In the one I remember, I was a one girl Greek Chorus. I was reading something while the others acted out different scenes. That’s all I remember about that production.
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