Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired

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"We didn't come all this way for no two seats 'cause all of us is tired."

Fannie Lou Hamer
Aug. 22, 1964

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I really must apologize. I intended to write about this on the actual anniversary, which was yesterday, but it was an unusually busy day for me. Even so, I didn't want the anniversary — the 50th — to pass without observation. I want to tell the story. Because it is a good story, one that should be remembered.

It's the story of Fannie Lou Hamer.

I didn't hear of Fannie Lou Hamer until well after the fact. I think my mother was the one who told me about her, but that isn't really important. She was a civil rights activist from Mississippi who was in the national headlines for a little while in the summer of 1964, then largely disappeared from national view.

She was involved in the planning of 1964's Freedom Summer, when blacks in Mississippi were being taught how to register to vote. It was an effort that went on throughout the South during the 1960s, actually, but it was far more dramatic in Mississippi, where blacks and whites had lived separately under a social and legal system that had been in place for generations. Other places in the South were integrated — to varying degrees — but Mississippi had earned a reputation for being a "closed society."

I've only seen film of her, but Fannie Lou Hamer has always reminded me of the black women I knew when I was a child in central Arkansas — and, I suppose, she was about the same age as they were, too. I never could tell how old they were. (Guess I'm not much better at guessing people's ages today than I was then.) I knew what I needed to know, I suppose. They were always friends of my mother — at least, I always met them through her — and they were older than she was. I knew that much.

I didn't know until later the extent of Fannie Lou Hamer's suffering in Mississippi, which was much more overtly racist than Arkansas in those days — still is, to a degree, I guess. She was sterilized without her consent — by a white doctor as part of a state–sponsored plan to reduce the number of poor blacks. In the summer of 1963, she and a group of activists were arrested on a false charge and beaten so badly in police custody that it took weeks to recover.

I could understand if such experiences made her angry, distrustful and bitter. But Fannie Lou Hamer looked and sounded like the women I knew in my hometown long after her moment in the spotlight. However unpleasant their experiences had been, they were unfailingly positive. They spoke of faith and "the movement" and registering blacks to vote. So did she.

Fannie Lou Hamer sometimes seemed sad, but she had a profound faith in God and what Martin Luther King called "the promised land" — even though I don't think that King used that expression until the famous speech he gave the night before his assassination.

I guess you could call her a realistic optimist — she believed a change was gonna come, but she doubted she would live to see it.

In the summer of 1964, she was 46 years old and regarded as something of a maternal figure by the primarily young people who had been recruited and trained in the North to challenge segregation in the South.

Fannie Lou Hamer participated in the civil rights movement in Mississippi. She was there — and, as a journalist, I reserve most of my admiration for people who were there, wherever there happened to be. That commands far more respect from me than those who report on events from afar — even though, for many, it is the only way they can report or comment on most events.

Fannie Lou Hamer was there.

(It's funny, but, for some reason, I can't seem to refer to her as "Hamer" on second reference, which would be in keeping with the AP Style that has influenced my writing since college. I simply have to use her full name.)

Fifty years ago, the Democrats were preparing to hold their national convention. They would nominate President Lyndon Johnson for a full term in office. They would nominate Hubert Humphrey to be his running mate. They would hear a brief speech from Robert F. Kennedy introducing a film about the recently assassinated John F. Kennedy. The delegates would hear a lot about domestic policy, about civil rights.

Fannie Lou Hamer and the Freedom Democratic Party of Mississippi gave the national Democratic Party an opportunity to do more than talk in the days leading up to the Democrats' national convention. The Freedom Democrats challenged the legitimacy of Mississippi's then–all–white Democratic Party, demanding to be seated.

The Freedom Democrats were careful to do all the things the national party required in order to send a slate of delegates to the national convention, including hold a statewide convention to select 68 delegates. That slate included four whites. Then the Freedom Democrats sent their delegates — by bus — to Atlantic City.

Read the words of historian Theodore White, who also was there.

"It is difficult to compress the emotion that the Freedom Democratic Party aroused at Atlantic City into the narrow proportions of importance it holds in the story of the convention," wrote White. "There was no moment when the convention machinery ... might not have imposed a solution. But the intensity of the emotion was so deep, and all other proceedings were so dull, that for three days the convention paused to consider its only excitement.

"One gets the flavor best," White continued, "not by considering the issues raised but by considering and listening to a voice. On Saturday afternoon, as the Convention Credentials Committee moved to consider the situation in Mississippi, a robust Negress rose to testify. She gave her name as Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer of ... Ruleville, Mississippi [in Sunflower County, northwestern Mississippi] ... Then she proceeded to tell her effort to register to vote, legally, going back as far as 1962; and as her fine, mellow voice rose, it began to chant with the grief and the sobbing that are the source of all the blues in the world. The hot, muggy room was electrified as she concluded her narrative of a Mississippi Negro's life when one attempts to register."

At that point, most accounts I have read indicated that the majority of delegates would have voted to seat the Freedom Democrats, but other Southern delegations were threatening to walk out if that happened — and Lyndon Johnson, already fearful of the reaction in the South to the passage of the Civil Rights Act earlier that summer, did not want to lose additional Southern support.

So Johnson, with the assistance of his soon–to–be vice–presidential nominee and Humphrey's fellow Minnesotan Walter Mondale, worked out what was charitably called a "compromise" — two of the Freedom Democrats would be given at–large (and non–voting) seats.

The compromise was ludicrous, and the Freedom Democrats knew it. They rejected it, and Fannie Lou Hamer, who is probably best known for her statement that "I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired"), summed things up beautifully.

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"We didn't come all this way for no two seats 'cause all of us is tired."

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By the way, Johnson's "compromise" didn't help him. He lost five Southern states and nearly lost a sixth. In the 50 years since, Jimmy Carter (in 1976) has been the only Democrat who carried more Southern states than he lost.

We Hold These Truths to be Self-Evident

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I know some people who believe — mistakenly — that the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination of just about any kind, was passed in response to the murders of three young civil rights workers in Mississippi in June 1964.

That would be a nice story — inspiring, even — but that's all it is, a story.

Drawing up a bill and successfully leaping through all the committee hoops to pass both chambers of Congress in less than a couple of weeks — which is what it would have taken for the president to be signing it on this day in 1964 as he did — would have been achieved in record–shattering time — especially at that time in American history.

Congress is a deliberative body. It simply does not do things that quickly — not now, not then. Not ever.

The bill was originally proposed a year earlier by President John F. Kennedy. Shortly after Lyndon Johnson succeeded Kennedy in November 1963, he began speaking of passing the bill as a tribute to the fallen president and made it clear that he was making the bill's passage a priority of his administration.

In fact, Johnson had all but promised the bill's prompt passage when he addressed Congress for the first time as president on Nov. 27, 1963. "No memorial oration or eulogy could more eloquently honor President Kennedy's memory than the earliest possible passage of the civil rights bill for which he fought so long," Johnson said. (American Rhetoric ranked his speech 96th among the 100 best speeches of the 20th century.)

By the time of his death, Kennedy had managed to guide the Civil Rights Act through the House Judiciary Committee to the House Rules Committee, but one has to wonder how far a Northern politician could have taken it from there. The chairman of the Rules Committee was Virginian Howard W. Smith, a staunch segregationist who had pledged to keep the bill bottled up. It was languishing there when Kennedy was shot in Dallas.

At Johnson's bidding, Judiciary Committee chairman Emanuel Celler filed a discharge petition to force the bill out of the Rules Committee and onto the House floor. A successful discharge petition is embarrassing to members of congressional leadership because it circumvents their authority. When the discharge petition appeared likely to get the signatures it needed to succeed (the history of discharge petitions is that they frequently don't succeed), Smith chose to avoid the expected humiliation and permitted the bill to pass the Rules Committee.

Things went better than expected in the House, which approved the bill by a 2–to–1 margin. But the House was a walk on the beach compared to the Senate.

At the time of his death, Kennedy's approval rating, as measured by Gallup, was at its lowest of his presidency. He still enjoyed majority support, but it was much lower than it had been through most of his presidency. So much of what happened politically in 1964 was an emotional byproduct of his assassination. If that had not happened, though, could he have done what had to be done to break the stalemate in the Senate?

My guess, as a student of American history, is it probably took a Southerner like Lyndon Johnson to take it the rest of the way — much like it took a fervent anti–communist like Richard Nixon to make historic ice–breaking trips to China and Russia.

The irony of that, though, is that Johnson, even with his legislative experience, didn't accomplish it alone.

"From the start," wrote historian Arthur Schlesinger, "the new president had left no doubt about his vigorous support of the civil rights bill," and he had given Bobby Kennedy's Department of Justice authority over its passage.

"[New York Times columnist] Anthony Lewis later asked how Kennedy explained Johnson's blank check," Schlesinger wrote. "Johnson, Kennedy replied, did not see how the bill could pass the Senate. ... And, if the bill failed, Johnson, Kennedy thought, did not want sole responsibility."

There was always a political angle in the Johnson equations.

Within 12 weeks of assuming the presidency, Johnson pushed the legislation through the House, using the skills he had polished as the Senate's majority leader — and his newly acquired bully pulpit.

According to procedure, such a bill, after passage in the House, would be referred to the Senate's Judiciary Committee, which was chaired at that time by Democrat James Eastland of Mississippi, and he was opposed to it. The expectation was that, if it went to Eastland's committee, it would never be referred to the whole Senate.

But Majority Leader Mike Mansfield had a creative parliamentary tactic to bypass the Judiciary Committee.

Earlier, he had waived a second reading of the bill immediately after the first reading, which would have sent it to the Judiciary Committee automatically; Mansfield gave it a second reading at a later date and then, because there was no precedent for procedure when a second reading did not immediately follow the first, proposed that the bill be sent directly to the Senate floor.

When the Civil Rights Act arrived on the Senate floor in late March 1964, the so–called "Southern bloc" of 18 Democrats and one Republican launched a filibuster that lasted for about 2½ months. They managed to hold the floor by working in three tag teams — while one team held the floor, the other two would rest and prepare for their shifts. It was a very organized opposition.

In May 1964, Senate leaders from both parties worked out a watered–down substitute bill that they hoped would draw the support of enough swing–vote senators to end the filibuster.

I say it was watered down because it was weaker than the original legislation regarding the government's power to regulate the management of private business, but the substitution was not weak enough to require the House to reconsider it. Not if a House–Senate conference committee agreed.

And that seemed all but assured.

"The morality and need of the bill were so clearly inescapable that no man of good conscience or good sense could oppose it," historian Theodore White wrote. But there were issues that had yet to be resolved.

"[W]hat would it do?" asked White. "What could it solve? How much could an act of Congress do to make the two races of America accept each other as friendly citizens? Whose demands did it satisfy? What other demands lay behind Martin Luther King's simple insistence on dignity and equality of opportunity? And what were all the communities of America, both North and South, ready to concede in compliance with the new law?"

We're still wrestling with some of those issues today. "Away from Congress," White wrote, "nothing was clear." It seldom is.

Majority Whip Hubert Humphrey believed he had enough votes to end the filibuster, and, as it turned out, he did — four more than necessary, as a matter of fact.

A 71–29 vote on June 10 ended the filibuster, and, on June 19, two days before the civil rights workers disappeared in Mississippi, the compromise bill passed the Senate by a 73–27 vote.

More than 82% of Republican senators voted for it; just under 70% of Democrats did.

Ralph Yarborough of Johnson's home state of Texas was the only Southern Democrat (out of 21) to support the bill. Robert Byrd of West Virginia — a member of the coalition that conducted the filibuster — was the only Northern Democrat to vote against it.

As is required when there are disagreements between bills that pass the House and Senate, a House–Senate conference committee met to discuss the differences between the two bills and quickly endorsed the Senate's version.

Once a bill has the approval of a conference committee, it is sent to the House and Senate floors for one more vote, this time with no amendments allowed. Ultimately, of course, both chambers must approve the same version of a bill before it can be sent to the Oval Office for the president's signature.

This can be a long, drawn–out process. Not this time.

Johnson signed the bill into law 50 years ago tomorrow.

Tomorrow's anniversary is, indeed, a "milestone," as the Miami Herald says. But it is also true, as the Youngstown (Ohio) Vindicator observes, that it is a work in progress.

The Day Nixon Won the Presidency

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There haven't been many cliffhangers in presidential politics, and one of the most interesting, from the perspective of an historian, has to be the one that occurred 45 years ago today.

It was the last truly paper–thin popular vote margin in a presidential election in the 20th century, and it was the last time for nearly 40 years that voter turnout in a national election exceeded 60% — in spite of the fact that the voting age was lowered to 18 before the next presidential election.

And, if the outcome had been different, the nation might have been spared the Watergate scandal that consumed the Richard Nixon presidency.

But the Democrats' nominee, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, had to win the grudging acceptance of those who had supported antiwar candidate Gene McCarthy in the primaries. The war influenced most voters that year, either directly or indirectly, and McCarthy's supporters didn't completely trust Humphrey because of his role in the Johnson administration.

Gradually, Humphrey had been winning them over that fall; Democrats who had supported McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy earlier in the year apparently began to realize that, like it or not, the choice was between Humphrey and Nixon, the man they had been demonizing for a couple of decades. About two weeks before the election, when Humphrey announced in Salt Lake City that he would pull the plug on the bombing in southeast Asia as "an acceptable risk for peace," the momentum was on his side.

"Up until Salt Lake City," wrote historian Theodore White, "the position of the Democrats had been that any bombing halt in Vietnam must be coupled with reciprocity on the part of the enemy. Now, in a three–point program, Humphrey declared that he would risk a complete bombing halt in the interests of peace, and then see what response might develop, reserving the right to resume bombing if no such response was clear."

The impact on the polls was immediate. Gallup reported that Humphrey had cut Nixon's lead in half.

Then, less than a week before the election, McCarthy ("who had been pouting on the Riviera" since losing the nomination to Humphrey, wrote historian William Manchester) announced his support for Humphrey — and, at that point, wrote Manchester, "Humphrey was at the top of his form; Nixon had begun to sound uncannily like Thomas E. Dewey."

The late Humphrey surge would have changed the outcome, many people argued, if the campaign had gone on for a day or two more — and, in fact, the Democrats had no one but themselves to blame for that. The Democratic National Committee decided to postpone the Chicago convention until the end of August to coincide with the birthday of President Lyndon Johnson.

At the time, it was the latest start for a national convention since the Civil War more than a century earlier — and the change cost Democrats valuable campaign time that could have altered the outcome of the general election.

(It is worth noting that LBJ was much more popular when that decision was made than he was when the convention was held.)

In hindsight, the whole election really hinged on the outcomes in three states — California, Illinois and Ohio. Nixon carried them all by relatively close margins. If Humphrey had carried all three, he would have been elected president.

And if Humphrey had carried any two of those three — or California alone — the independent candidacy of George Wallace would have accomplished its objective of forcing the election into the House of Representatives — where Wallace, who had been fading in the polls that autumn and must have been aware that he could not possibly win, could play the role of kingmaker.

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Nixon, a native Californian, never really seemed likely to lose his home state (although the Republican ticket did lose the home state of the vice presidential nominee, Spiro Agnew). Oh, sure, some major party presidential nominees had lost their home states over the years — Democrat Adlai Stevenson even managed to do it twice — and, if that had happened in 1968, Nixon would not have won in the Electoral College (and, given his final popular vote margins in both California and the nation as a whole, he might not have won the popular vote, either).

But, contrary to what modern political observers may think of California's electoral tendencies, the fact was that, in 1968, the state had voted Republican in three of the previous four presidential elections, and it had never rejected Nixon in a national campaign.

Realistically, California was off the table.

But if Humphrey could have won about 67,000 votes from Nixon in Illinois and about 45,000 votes from Nixon in Ohio, he could have prevented Nixon from receiving enough electoral votes to be elected. And if he had carried both of those states, along with California, he would have won the election outright.

That kind of scenario (or something like it) seemed like a real possibility on this day in 1968 — even moreso after midnight, when all three states (along with Missouri and, for a time, Texas) remained too close to call.

Humphrey and Nixon were even with each other in the polls heading into Election Day, and many states remained too close to call well into that evening — and the early morning hours of the next day. In fact, it was not until the next morning that the TV networks called the election for Nixon — and, even after they did that, some states stayed too close to call for awhile.

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My memory of those days is vague, owing primarily to my youth. But one memory stands out.

As I have written here before, I grew up within 350 miles of my grandparents. It wasn't all interstate in 1968, but my family still managed to visit my grandparents frequently. My father taught at a local college, which did not have summer sessions in those days, and my mother stayed at home until she re–entered the workforce in the mid–'70s so my family typically made two, even three trips to visit the grandparents in the summers — in addition to trips we usually made at Christmas and sometimes at Thanksgiving or during spring break.

I loved my grandparents and wanted to please them, and I'm sure I must have heard them talking about the election that summer. My mother's parents, with whom we always stayed when we visited Dallas, were Nixon supporters. My father's mother was a Democrat, and I am sure she supported Humphrey, but my maternal grandparents spent more time with me and had more influence on me.

Anyway, I must have heard them speaking of Nixon that summer. My grandfather could be — shall we say? — loquacious on certain topics, one of which was politics. My best guess is that I must have boldly asserted, at some point, that Nixon would win — and, then, as children will, I forgot about the conversation.

Until a day or two after the election.

It was then that I received the first telegram I had received in my then–brief life. It was from my grandparents and a couple of their friends (who must have been there when I made my prediction) congratulating me.

I wish I could say I still have that telegram, but I don't. As nearly as I can remember, it said something like this: "Congratulations on your prediction! We're all proud of you!"

At that point in my life, I knew nothing about politics, but I guess my grandparents' praise made me feel like I was some sort of prodigy, that I was destined to be some kind of political historian.

Maybe I was. After all, I still enjoy analyzing election returns, and I still like to make predictions.

I must confess, however, that those predictions involve considerably more thought and research than the one I made in 1968.

The Quest for a 'New Day for America'

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"[M]ay we ... just quietly and silently — each in our own way — pray for our country? And may we just share for a moment a few of those immortal words of the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi — words which I think may help heal the wounds and lift our hearts? Listen to this immortal saint: 'Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light.' Those are the words of a saint. And may those of us of less purity listen to them well. And may America tonight resolve that never, never again shall we see what we have seen."

Vice President Hubert Humphrey
Chicago, Aug. 29, 1968

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Hubert Humphrey faced a difficult task 45 years ago tonight. In hindsight, it was probably an impossible one.

By nature a man of peace, the vice president had to deliver his speech accepting the Democratic Party's presidential nomination against the backdrop of chaos in the streets of the host city, Chicago, and the broader backdrops of a war in Vietnam that was growing increasingly unpopular and a crime–plagued nation.

"After its days of turbulence and excitement," wrote historian Theodore H. White, "no speech could have pulled the Democratic convention together except a masterpiece ..."

Humphrey, White observed, tried to do the impossible — rewrite his speech (which had been crafted in the weeks and months leading up to the convention) in the days and hours before he was scheduled to deliver it. The "Happy Warrior" wanted to offer a message of healing and unity, not merely rehashes of old talking points.

But even before the turbulence of Chicago, that was something that was easier said than done, given the fact that, as the vice president, Humphrey was expected to be supportive of the administration — even though he disagreed with the administration on several aspects of the conduct of the war. So, too, did many of the delegates — and millions of Americans watching on TV.

After the clashes between demonstrators and the Chicago police earlier that week, the task became even more daunting, but Humphrey knew that both the delegates in the convention hall and Americans watching on TV would expect to hear him speak about peace in a context that encompassed not only the war but deteriorating relations between and respect for fellow Americans.

"A man of more native eloquence than any of his advisers," White wrote, "Humphrey might, had he had time, have created the required masterpiece. But he had no time."

Ah, yes, time. It was running out on the Democrats. And Humphrey did not produce the necessary masterpiece.

In August 1968, Gallup reported for the first — but not the last — time that the share of Americans who responded "no" when asked if the United States had made a mistake sending troops to Vietnam was less than 40%.

Three years earlier, the share of Americans who said "no" to that question was 61%. The pro–war administration of which Humphrey had been a part for more than 3½ years was losing ground on war and peace — and that issue, more than anything else, would decide who won the election.

It was the growing opposition to the war that had sparked the riots in the first place. One can only wonder how much worse they would have been if Lyndon Johnson had been in town to accept the nomination. But he had withdrawn from the campaign in March, making it necessary to nominate someone else, and the logical someone else was Johnson's second in command.

But Humphrey's convention was being tarnished by violence in the streets. Was there anything he could say to erase that image from the voters' memories?

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Humphrey had chosen as his second in command Ed Muskie, senator from Maine, and Muskie did his best to energize the delegates.

But Humphrey, who called for a "new day for America" in his speech, awoke the next day to more of the same.

"Whatever hope there was ... rested on the belief that words can soothe, that words can heal, that words carry a message," White wrote.

Actions speak louder than words, my mother told me when I was small, and the actions in Chicago spoke louder than any words Humphrey could speak.

At some point in the predawn hours of the final night of the convention, something apparently was thrown from one of the floors of the hotel where Eugene McCarthy's campaign operation was based — which led to an inevitable clash between the students who made up most of McCarthy's staff and the Chicago police, who were understandably weary from a week of confrontations and, apparently, acted independently of any chain of command.

What America saw on its TV screens was more of the same — young people being beaten by police — and America's voters would decide that they wanted a change.

"[W]hen Humphrey's campaign began with a sickening lurch," wrote historian William Manchester, "his admirers despaired."

Perhaps they knew what was coming.

A Force of a Different Color

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"It is hereby declared to be the policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion or national origin. This policy shall be put into effect as rapidly as possible, having due regard to the time required to effectuate any necessary changes without impairing efficiency or morale."

Executive Order 9981
Issued by President Harry Truman
July 26, 1948

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Harry Truman desegregated the U.S. armed forces on this day in 1948.

Some people cite this as an example of true presidential courage. Truman was running for re–election in a nation that was only starting to deal with its racial problems. His electoral prospects had been regarded as dim for months — ever since Gallup reported his approval rating was 36%. The New Deal wing of the Democratic Party had been trying to persuade Dwight Eisenhower to run as a Democrat, but he declined, and Truman was nominated by his party in mid–July.

Not quite two weeks later, he signed an executive order desegregating the military — and ushered in the modern civil rights movement.

The civil rights movement existed before Truman signed that executive order. While some may assign a different starting point, I have long believed that the Supreme Court's Plessy v. Ferguson decision in 1896, which upheld segregation under the "separate but equal" doctrine, is when the civil rights movement became more than a series of isolated acts. It was in the years following that decision that the NAACP was formed and the efforts for racial equality became more coordinated.

It is often implied, if not suggested outright, that segregation only existed in the South, but it was a national fact of life, and attempts to change that were largely symbolic until Truman desegregated the troops 65 years ago today.

Skeptics may observe — and with justification — that Truman's order was mostly symbolic as well, given the fact that it was not treated as seriously as it should have been for years. And, as I say, there also are those who believe it was an act of genuine presidential courage. It may have been.

But I wouldn't necessarily label it a completely altruistic act. In the context of the times, I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss political influences.

At the Democrats' convention in Philadelphia earlier that month, the progressive mayor of Minneapolis, Hubert Humphrey, gave a stirring speech that prompted the delegates to adopt a stronger stance on civil rights. Truman unhesitatingly endorsed the plank, but delegates from Mississippi and Alabama walked out in protest.

Prior to this date in 1948, there was a certain amount of concern among Democrats about the prospects for their national ticket — as well as rumors (which proved to be true) of a schism that might lead to a split in the form of a third–party challenge. In fact, from what I have read, the only Democrat who thought Truman had a chance to win was ... Truman himself.

In fact, there were two challenges to Truman in 1948 — aside from the challenge from Republican nominee Tom Dewey, who had lost to Franklin Roosevelt four years earlier. The challenge from the right came from South Carolina's Strom Thurmond. The challenge from the left came from Henry Wallace, Truman's predecessor in the vice presidency.

Recent Gallup polls still had Truman's approval lingering in the 30s. He may have felt he had little to lose — other than members of his base who might otherwise choose to stay home in November. That may have been at least part of his motivation for issuing the order.

He may also have felt that the current of history was moving in the direction of desegregation.

In many ways, it was a symbolic gesture. Although the order called for its provisions to be "put into effect as rapidly as possible," there was foot dragging in its implementation.

Because of that, many modern historians will say the modern civil rights movement began with 1954's unanimous Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling.

I suppose that is hard to dispute. Segregation had been the virtually unchallenged law of the land since Plessy v. Ferguson, but Truman's order was the first real crack in segregation, and it set things up for Brown v. Board of Education to wedge it wide open — and, in the process, set up the ripple effect that transformed America from a segregated society to an integrated one.

That is the history of the American civil rights movement. I am often inclined to think that American segregation was destined to fall — like the Berlin wall.

But transformations of this magnitude are not historically inevitable, and even when the wheels are set in motion, they can be exceedingly slow to turn.

Truman got the wheels turning on this day in 1948.

The Shooting of Robert Kennedy

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Five years ago, just a few days before the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, I wrote of my memories of that time.

Today is the 45th anniversary of that event, and I have no new revelations about it to share. Neither, it seems, does anyone else, although I have been fascinated by the articles I have found on the subject.

Five years ago in Newsweek, for example, Evan Thomas wrote about the looming "what if" from 1968: What if Kennedy had not been killed? Would he have spared the nation the agony of Watergate?

Thomas never really answered that question. He wrote of the pros and cons of Kennedy's personality and candidacy — and he did point out some inconvenient historical truths. For example, Americans in the 21st century are conditioned to believe that presidential candidates win their party's nominations via the primary route, and Kennedy won many primaries in the spring of 1968 — but choosing delegates in primaries is a fairly recent political phenomenon.

In 1968, most convention delegates were still selected by party bosses, and Vice President Hubert Humphrey was the choice of the Democratic Party's establishment. It is by no means certain that Kennedy would have prevailed at the party's convention later that summer in Chicago.

To me, though, the fact that Thomas' question was even asked in 2008 seems to be proof of what Theodore H. White wrote in "The Making of the President 1968":

"The gash that Robert F. Kennedy tore in the story of 1968 aches still — aches in personal memory, but more in history itself. Of all the men who challenged for the presidency, he alone, by the assassin's bullets, was deprived of the final judgment of his party and people."

Clearly, the "gash," as White put it, still ached after four decades.

A year earlier, in The Independent, Liz Hoggard recounted the event as Emilio Estevez's movie "Bobby" was in theaters. That was interesting, but it really added nothing to what was known about the shooting.

Last year, Michael Martinez and Brad Johnson of CNN reported that a witness had told them there was a second shooter in the pantry that night.

To date, nothing seems to have come from that assertion.

An interesting addition to the story came from CBS recently. CBS reported the story of a black doctor who did what he could to save Kennedy's life.

That is interesting, as I say, but it really adds nothing to the tale. The doctor wasn't successful, and it provides no evidence of who else might have been involved.

A few days ago, Gina Logue of the Murfreesboro (Tenn.) Post wrote that Kennedy's assassination was the end of our national innocence.

I'm not so sure I buy that one, but I will agree that it was a traumatic event for the country.

A lot of things have been described as the end of our national innocence, but I'm inclined to think that there is some event like that for every generation.

I really began to think that five years ago. At the time, I was working for an online study guide. Two young women in their 20s were working with me. We wrote history and civics questions and lessons for students in subscribing school districts to use.

Around this time, I recall hearing one of them ask sort of general questions about Bobby Kennedy that told me she knew nothing about him — other than the fact that he had the same last name as the president who was killed here in Dallas nearly 50 years ago.

She had been affected more by Princess Diana's untimely death 10 years earlier. That was probably the major innocence–robbing event for her generation — at least until 9–11.

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Folks in that age group really can't understand how different it was for my generation, who had only three TV networks (and no internet) — nor can my generation truly understand what it was like for our parents, who grew up with the radio and nothing else, not even a landline phone, in many homes.

There's no question that the shooting of Bobby Kennedy, like the shooting of Martin Luther King a couple of months earlier, had a profound effect on everyone. But, in a culture that had been rocked by the killing of a president, the murders of civil rights activists in Mississippi, race riots, a seemingly never–ending war, the fiery launching–pad deaths of three astronauts and King's shooting within the previous five years, it's hard to justify regarding it as a generational flash point.

More like one in a series of flash points.