History Today

One of the things that I've found fascinating with my different History classes is how you can see the influence of history on current events - or how there have been some things from the Ancient Civilizations that still continue on today (seriously - dogs have been humans companions since 50,000 BC in Greece and Rome). I'm especially seeing that this week with my New Left/New Right (history of politics from 1960s to 1980s) class. We just got done reading an autobiography from a Student Nonviolence Coordinating Committee member during the Civil Rights Movement, so it's interesting to see those things especially since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was Monday. How would the people of the '60s felt about Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton as the two main Democratic presidential candidates? Would groups like SNCC and SCLC (Dr. King's movement group) be supporting Obama and the groups of the Women's Rights Movement be supporting Clinton? I think that would probably be the case (SNCC for being all equal rights for blacks thought the men were superior to women - which is interesting all in itself though). It's also hard to answer that question especially since the issues that were relevant to groups like SNCC and SCLC then aren't as much of an issue today (I won't say the issues have been solved completely because that's probably not the case). But it's interesting to see the affect that one decade is still having on us today. I mean, hello? Writer's Strike, anyone? The early 60s really emphasized the whole nonviolence aspect of resistance and using nonviolence as a way to make change happen. And it's also interesting to see how long it's taken us to get to the point where we can actually have a black person and a woman as main candidates in a presidential election and people don't say "OK, well if I want to vote Democrat I'll just have to go with John Edwards in the primary or I could go vote Republican or Independent..."

Just one of the many awesome aspects of history for me.