If an entire year can be reduced to five quotes, the following – in chronological order – offer a pretty fair assessment of 1968:
“To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion.” CBS broadcaster Walter Cronkite assessed the Vietnam War following the brutal Tet offensive. Public opinion started to shift against the war, but the death toll kept mounting. When Cronkite spoke, some 20,000 Americans had died in Vietnam. Ultimately the war would take the lives of more than 58,000 U.S. personnel.
“But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop … I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land.” Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke to an overflow crowd at a Memphis church, telling the audience that there were difficult days ahead. Less than 24 hours later, King was assassinated.
“If I were a kid in Harlem, I know what I’d be thinking right now. I’d be thinking that the whites have declared open season on my people, and they’re going to pick us off one by one unless I get a gun and pick them off first.” President Lyndon Johnson, responding to the assassination of King and the urban riots and violence that devastated some 200 American cities:
“White racism is essentially responsible for the explosive mixture which has been accumulating in our cities since the end of World War II . . . What white Americans have never fully understood – but what the Black can never forget, is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.” The key finding of the Kerner Commission, appointed by President Johnson to examine the causes of the 1967 race riots.
“The American people are not going to stand by and see the security of our nation imperiled, and they’re not going to stand by and see this nation destroyed, I can assure you that.” Alabama Gov. George Wallace, at a packed Madison Square Garden rally in support of his presidential campaign, said his comments were not “about race.” He then proceeded to offer a screed loaded with veiled references to race and painting a picture of an America in decline.
I have been thinking a lot about the state of the Union in this, the summer of my 75th birthday. As I reflect on today’s contentious and divisive politics and policies, the 1960s are a useful benchmark.
The 1960s were a decade of tumult. The years weren’t as deadly as the 1860s and not as economically devastating as the 1930s. But the decade was incredibly violent, from assassinations to domestic terrorism to devastating riots. And, as if Americans weren’t punished enough by the decade’s upheaval, the parting shot was Richard Nixon.
Consider just a few examples of the anger that tore apart America:
Race riots in 1967 left more than 80 dead and destroyed entire neighborhoods in cities. One year later, the murder of MLK sparked even more violence in 200 cities around the country, causing millions of dollars in property damage, injuring an estimated 3,500 people and killing 43. In Washington, D.C., some 12,000 troops were needed to quell the violence. Machine gunners took up positions on the steps of the Capitol and the White House grounds were patrolled by soldiers, many of them having just recently been in the jungles of Vietnam.
The riots of 1967 and 1968 were followed by a wave of political terrorism. A U.S. Senate committee found that from January 1969 to April 1970 4,330 bombings in the U.S. killed 43 people and caused almost $22 million in property damage.
Crime soared during the 1960s. According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting, violent crime rose by 126% during the decade and property crime by 137%.
So it went throughout the decade. The Vietnam War. The murder of four little girls at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. And another quote, this from President John F. Kennedy in a 1962 televised interview with Eleanor Roosevelt: “We want to be sure that women are used as effectively as they can to provide a better life for our people, in addition to meeting their primary responsibility, which is in the home.”
Still, out of the violence and anger came progress. The people, policies and social changes of 1960s offered at least the hope of more opportunity for women and people of color.
Poverty became a challenge to be solved, not something to be shamed. Poverty wasn’t a moral failing or laziness, said President Johnson. “The cause may lie deeper in our failure to give our fellow citizens a fair chance to develop their own capacities, in a lack of education and training, in a lack of medical care and housing, in a lack of decent communities in which to live and bring up their children.”
Yes, the 1964 War on Poverty created too many programs and a good deal of inefficiency and waste. But it also cut the rate of poverty nearly in half. That’s not a bad record.
My 75 years have been witness to remarkable transformations. Jimmy Carter is as good a marker of the span of my adult life as any. Carter became the first candidate from the Deep South to win the presidency since before the Civil War. Newsweek hailed his election as “The New Look” of American politics. Four years later, Carter lost in an historic landslide.
Then, in what seems to be the blink of an eye, Carter, 1976’s energetic and vigorous new breed of politician, dies in 2024 at the age of 100. And here I am.
Today, President Trump and many of his policies promote a return to an era steeped in ugly myths and stereotypes – the criminal immigrant, the lazy welfare cheat, the undeserving person of color and women who can’t be trusted to make their own decisions. Bit by bit, though, sentiment is turning against these angry cliches. To cite but one example, a recent Gallup Poll found that public opinion is turning against Trump’s inhumane immigration policies. “Americans have grown markedly more positive toward immigration over the past year, with the share wanting immigration reduced dropping from 55% in 2024 to 30% today. At the same time, a record-high 79% of U.S. adults say immigration is a good thing for the country.” Among those with the biggest swing in opinion against the Administration’s approach to immigration are Republicans.
To be sure, there is a long way to go to overcome the harm Trump and Republican policies are inflicting on the country. Some of the country’s institutional assets that helped America move on from the challenges of that earlier era are in doubt today. In particular, Congress had the leadership and integrity to (mostly) do what was right and to assert the independence of the legislative branch over a rogue executive.
But here’s why Jimmy Carter is more than just a marker for much of my adult life. His values are hope for the future. Carter left the White House under a cloud of unpopularity. He left the world as one of the most respected people of our time. In between, Carter didn’t give in to bitterness. He lived a life of integrity and service, a life of American values.
Jimmy Carter wasn’t a great President, but he was a great person. He devoted his life to making his community and his country better. Carter gave of himself to serve his fellow person – here and abroad – through non-profit and community-based organizations. Unlike so many in the public eye today, Carter and his wife Rosalynn were unabashedly in love with each other. They didn’t wear their devotion to their faith or to each other on their sleeves, something to be used for political gain. At a time when the wife of the hypocritical attorney general of Texas is seeking a “biblical divorce,” the Carters lived biblical lives of love and service.
The policies of Trump will fail because they are poorly designed solutions. Yes, immigration needs to be reformed. But Trump only seeks to punish those here without documents. Yes, government spends too much and too often does not get the best outcomes. But Trump seeks to spend even more in the service of the already-wealthy. Yes, the U.S. too often gets entangled in foreign affairs where it has no business and no advantage. But Trump seeks an America that responds to those foreign leaders who flatter him or offer a gold-plated prize while too often ignoring the vital global economic and security interests of the United States.
America will rebuild what Trump is trying to destroy. We will start just like the Carters did in their goal of providing stability and opportunity for people – house by house, community by community. It may take a long time and some of Trump’s damage may never be repaired.
Still, my 75 years have given me an innate sense of optimism. It more often than not has been rewarded. In this, my Diamond Anniversary year, I choose to see America in the values and service of Jimmy Carter, not the vengeance and pettiness of Donald Trump.
P.S. The 1960s had this: The best music of all time.
