Democratic Convention Recalls 1963

The last night of the Democratic convention was historic for all kinds of reasons. The most obvious was of course the nomination of the first black candidate as presidential nominee, but in an interesting column, James Carroll in the Boston Globe suggests that night takes us back to 1963

It is not just baby boomers who take their bearings along a course set in 1963. Obama himself, and the legion of his young supporters, understand themselves in the language of just that time. And the music: Stevie Wonder was Obama's warm-up. 1963 was the year of his first hit (coming in an album entitled "12 year old genius"). It was in 1963 that American rhythms began swinging between the Beatles and Bob Dylan, and they still do. But the songs were only anthems of a deeper stirring in the national imagination, an overturning that would leave nothing untouched.

In 1963, a presidential commission condemned the vast inequities between the sexes, but women took the matter into their own hands with that year's manifesto, "The Feminine Mystique" by Betty Friedan. In 1963 "second-wave" feminism was launched, a movement Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama have ridden so deftly, with countless sisters.

The column is well worth a read and a good ponder about where we are today in relation to that era.