Echos from the past

My parents were in town recently, and as I think most people do, I took them to do anything I could think of since sitting in a room for 12+ hours a day together is not on my bingo card. One of the activities I picked was to go to the 6th Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza.

This is one of my favorite museums. There are so many things to love...

• The branding is so smart and used amazingly throughout the museum.
• The flow of the museum is great
• They start with setting you in the time — the years 1959-1963 — so you better understand the different factors at play that lead up to Kennedy's assassination
• The information is grouped in logical chunks that allows for the visitor to experience the museum as they best see fit
• The artifacts are detailed and approachable
• They use multiple mediums to keep you engaged through the whole space

If you are ever in Dallas and have time to go to a museum, I highly recommend making this one of your must-sees. (The Perot Science Center is another one, and the Cowgirl Hall of Fame in Ft Worth is great, as is t he Ft Worth Zoo)

This was my 3rd or 4th visit to the museum, and every time it feels powerful. I take something different away with each visit.

This time all of the content around the country's internal divide over racial justice and equality was so pertinent given the attacks to DEIA (let's please start recognizing all the attacks to accessibility along with diversity, equity, and inclusion), LGBTQIA+ rights, reproductive rights, freedom of press, freedom of/from religion, etc.

Lets be honest: JFK fumbled the ball at first. He didn't start strong — the early approach was very much "lets not rock the boat too much" and it wasn't until 1963 that he really started making the establishment uncomfortable and pushing for change.

But he got there.

Seeing photos of people being attacked with dogs and fire hoses, lines of people screaming at students with the gall to want to be treated equally, the need for military presence to ensure the safety of people just wanted to live... And knowing that while we hadn't fixed everything, we had at least made some progress over the past 60 years but it is all now poised to backslide... It left me really overwhelmed with emotion.

There's no grand unifying point to all this. I'm just scared that we are sliding back to times that were bad for lots of people. I'm scared it will become ever more acceptable to harm people just because they had the nerve to be born with a different skin color, or gender, or sexual identity. I'm scared that there are a lot of people that want that to come to pass.

I'm scared that history will continue to be changed and erased to make people comfortable in their horribleness instead of letting them sit in their discomfort to help spur change.

I hope that every American, regardless of where he lives, will stop and examine his conscience about this and other related incidents. This nation was founded by men of many nations and backgrounds. It was founded on the principle that all men are created equal, and that the rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened. ~ JFK, 11 June 1963