Sam Smith – As I experience my 87th year on this planet, I am occasionally struck how insignificant much of that time period seems to journalists, historians, and ordinary folk. A search of this issue online found history being designated as starting from 40 to 75 years ago. The time since then is sometimes called prehistory. It was also a major portion of my life.
It is interesting to me not just as an old guy but as a journalist because we often seem obsessed with what happened today or yesterday and then lose concern about earlier matters until historians feel it’s old enough to include them in their inquiry.
This came to mind to me again because of the Trump administration, which is devoted in part to destroying elements of progress achieved in our prehistory. The modern civil rights movement, for example, started in no small part seven decades ago. The Montgomery bus boycott was in 1955.
Maybe it’s time to give prehistory a bit more respect and attention.
1 comment:
I match your 87 years and regard yesterday is history if we fail to act on those events. Sadly we are too contentr to wait and see. Perhaps that is where we a!e today as a country waiting for someone else tomove first
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