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Todd GitlinI was lying in bed alone in Ann Arbor, Mich., disconsolate from the breakup of a doomed love affair. The phone rang. A friend from SDS -- Students for a Democratic Society, of which I was then president -- asked, "Where are you?" I said, "What are you talking about?" He said, "Haven't you heard?" "Heard what?" "Kennedy's been shot. Get over here."
I spent the next 48 hours at my friends' house -- they owned the sole TV set in our crowd. A dozen or two-dozen others gathered. We stared at the tube, aghast, shattered. We had been ambivalent about Kennedy's presidency, but still, our future was broken and we were distraught. When we weren't staring, we were debating: What would this mean for a country busy being reborn in the civil rights struggle? Was there a right-wing conspiracy? Was it a case of the unpredictable loner, the history-changing desperado whom no theory could account for? Would there be a crackdown? No one knew anything. One of our number, who had grown up in Dallas, spoke to her parents and heard the fear in their voices. All we knew was that the nation was incomprehensible and we were derailed. Todd Gitlin is a professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University and author of "Letters to a Young Activist." © Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.
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