Saturday, November 23, 2013

JOHN F. KENNEDY'S LEGACY

A friend of mine, who is a gifted writer and poet, used the memory of the Kennedy assassination being to her tantamount to the loss of her "emotional virginity."I was struck by her metaphor, and told her so on that post below. Others affirmed her sentiment comparing her metaphor to innocence. Now, however, I have another, slightly different view of the Kennedy's and the assassination through study. Rather than "innocence," I would suggest "naiveté" as more apt, Peggy Love. That the last President assassinated before John F. Kennedy was James A. Garfield, whose background was little known to us, some 80 years prior, had lulled us into lowering our guard, to subconsciously reducing our vigilance. Although, we fully expected black people to be killed, in 1963, as happened with the Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church bombing; or that of Mississippi NAACP leader, Medgar Evers; or that husband and wife team in Florida, Harry T. Moore, et ux., NAACP leaders and teachers who were bombed while asleep in bed in 1951, somehow, we did not expect it to obtrude upon the beauty, the purity, the promise of our "Camelot." These were rich, powerful white folks and national leaders, not poor black folks, seeking "freedom." Texas, after all, was not Mississippi or Alabama; it was more "West" than "South," so, no that bad! Camelot was an illusion, it now turns out, with its share of scandal and skulduggery, albeit suppressed by the press, who were participants in the fabrication of the facade, that it foists upon us even now, as the theme of "innocence" or the loss of "emotional virginity" surreptitiously connotes.