That day in May was such a pivotal moment for me and [View all]

[moniss]

I cried then and still do and the tears are always just below the surface. If I try to speak to people about it my voice quickly wavers and chokes. I remember the lies and excuses all down through the years afterwards. I am proud that I cried then and still do today.

Several years ago I spoke to a faculty member at Kent State who was doing remembrance of the event etc. I told her that it is critically important that we not let our young students just do history by way of computer. She asked me what I meant and I said history must be passed down on a personal and oral level. I encouraged her to bring students in to sit informally in various sessions with people who went through the '50's Red Scare, through the long ongoing march for civil rights, through being Freedom Riders, through the Vietnam/Draft protests, through the Ban The Bomb movement, through the killings at Kent State and Jackson State etc. and let these students listen to the oral history from the people who lived through it.

Not necessarily anybody well known but just ordinary people trying to make a difference and how and why they got involved and how it began for them, how it progressed and how it has affected them.

I don't know whatever became of my suggestion but I will always believe in the oral tradition. The computer cannot inspire your compassion as effectively as being face to face with living history and hearing it told and asking questions. So many of us here on DU are that living history