The Generation Gap
When I was a teen back in the turbulent 60s, there was always talk about the “generation gap.” The generation gap was a reference to differences between people of the younger generation and their elders, especially between a child and his or her parent’s generation.The gap was a result of some rapid cultural change especially when it came to music, fashion, and politics. This was probably made more pronounced by the unusually large size of the young generation during the 1960s.
Just because we g-g-get around
Things they do look awful c-c-cold
I hope I die before I get old
Talkin’ ’bout my generation
I saw a reference on TV to the Kent State shootings that occurred at Kent State University in Ohio and was surprised to realize that this year marks 40 years since that event.
It involved the shooting of unarmed college students by members of the Ohio National Guard on Monday, May 4, 1970. The guardsmen fired 67 rounds over a period of 13 seconds, killing four students and wounding nine others, one of whom suffered permanent paralysis.
Some of those students had been involved in a protest against the American invasion of Cambodia, which President Richard Nixon had announced April 30. But other students who were shot had merely been walking nearby or observing the protest from a distance.
I was finishing my junior year in high school. There was a national reaction to Kent State amongst students at high schools and college, including a student strike that involved four million students. It made the gap even wider concerning the role of the United States in the Vietnam War.
I had to fill in my draft information that year. College students were burning draft cards on TV and I was filling in the paperwork to make myself eligible. I felt a year or two distanced from everything that was going on. I had no idea what was coming in the next few years – college or Vietnam?
Yesterday, I was looking through a copy of Time magazine that I hadn’t had a chance to read, and there was an article on all this.
The author, Nancy Gibbs, not only writes about Kent State, but my other thoughts about whether there is still a gap today.
Come back with me 40 years to the rabid spring of 1970. President Nixon announced the invasion of Cambodia, and campuses exploded. Kids who had never picked up a rock in their lives were occupying the classrooms they used to study in. When National Guardsmen shot four unarmed students at Kent State, virtually the entire system of higher education shuddered and stopped. The fabric of the country seemed to be tearing; everything about the older generation was
contaminated, corrupt. Asked in a Gallup poll if there was a generation gap, 74% of the young people of that era said yes.
The photo that brings that time back for me is the one by student John Paul Filo taken that day at Kent State. Filo's Pulitzer Prize-winning photo shows Mary Ann Vecchio beside the body of a student, Jeffrey Miller, at Kent State University. Filo was a journalism student at Kent State University at the time. The song that brings it all back for me is Neil Young’s “Ohio” that was recorded by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young 40 years ago.
From Wikipedia, I learned that Young wrote the lyrics after seeing the photos of the incident in Life Magazine. CSNY went into a studio in Los Angeles and recorded it live in just a few takes. They also recorded the single’s b-side, Stephen Stills’ bare and haunting song for the war’s causalities, “Find the Cost of Freedom.” The single was mastered, rush-released by Atlantic and heard on the radio with only a few weeks delay.
I recall playing that 45 RPM single over and over and wondering what was ahead.
John Filo photo via http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings
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