In a letter to his brother dated December 12, 1963, my father wrote:
[T]he assassination of President Kennedy . . . was not only a deep personal loss, for I felt very strongly that President Kennedy was “my type of person”, but it is a tremendous institutional loss to this country. It clearly represents the climax of a period in which almost every individual in this nation without exception has felt free when it served his only selfish end to disregard the law and to disregard the fact that the only thing which separates a civilized society from a jungle is rule by law and the willingness of most individuals in the society to voluntarily obey that law. His death — whether it was by a right-wing extremist, a left-wing extremist, or a demented individual — can be laid squarely at the door of the Governor of Mississippi and the Governor of Alabama who thought that law could be [flouted]. It can also be laid at the door of every butcher who ever put his finger on the scales or every taxpayer who ever cheated on his taxes. This nation did not wake up to where it was going when one Negro leader was killed, it did not wake up when four little girls were brutally slain. Let us hope that the death of the President will cause some awakening before it is in fact too late.
I was struck by the resonance with our current political scene, in which the lawlessness and cruelty at the top has clearly opened the door to rampant lawlessness and cruelty in society, especially the right-wing side. But also read with sadness that he believed this was “the climax” of this trend, when in fact it simply went underground — or maybe not underground but out of fashion — long enough to pass the civil rights and fair housing acts — but was in fact just waiting for Trump to unlock the gates of hell.
