Syl Jones: 4.4.68: The day — the year — that innocence was lost.

Don Hogan Charles, Associated Press

April 9, 1968: Mourners during funeral services for Dr. Martin Luther King, in Atlanta.

By SYL JONES

Last update: April 3, 2008 - 6:23 PM

My junior year in high school, I skipped prom. See, prom smacked of The Establishment and reeked of aristocratic nonsense. At least, that's what some of us thought in 1968.

We debated such ideas ad infinitum. The John Birch Society, bra-burnings, the Vietcong and bell-bottoms. The Beatles, Yippies, Afros and the Pill. These were a few of our favorite and least-favorite things. As children on the threshold of choices that would forever seal our fate -- or so we were told -- we were confronted with a multitude of contradictions. For example, while we prepared diligently for college, the specter of the draft hung over many of us like an iron cloud.

I'd decided in 1967 to go to jail rather than to war for religious reasons. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had articulated my position when he spoke out against the Vietnam War, saying:

"Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation: The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours."

When I read those words in the newspaper, I wept.

On Sunday evening, March 31, President Lyndon B. Johnson announced: "I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president." I broke into spontaneous applause. Finally, after years of protracted warfare, peace seemed to be within reach. Candidates like Bobby Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy were running for the Democratic nomination. How could they lose? After all, who would ever again vote for a man like Richard Nixon?

On Monday, April 1, after LBJ's announcement, hope hung in the air like the scent of spring hydrangeas. On Tuesday, I had a change of heart about prom: Perhaps I would go, even if I had to wear a tux. Perhaps I could find one that was tie-dyed and double-breasted! On Wednesday, I argued with my English teacher over the symbolism in the Divine Comedy, ran 20 laps after baseball practice and finally dragged myself home a little past 7 p.m.

I found my mother standing in front of the TV, hands on hips, slowly shaking her head. Something about her body language betrayed shock and revulsion.

"What is it?" I asked. An anonymous CBS booth announcer said -- over a file photo of Martin Luther King Jr. -- that the Nobel Prize winner had been assassinated in Memphis. We stood together, numb, incredulous. How could something so wrong have happened so often in the space of half a decade? JFK, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X -- and now Dr. King, too?

Rioting broke out in a hundred cities. The looting, the armed occupations, the ugliness of the act of murdering an apostle of nonviolence all took their toll on us. Hope became like the pool of blood dripping from the balcony outside the Lorraine Motel, slowly going down the drain. The dream was over. The nightmare was just beginning.

Shockingly, on June 5, Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles.

The Democratic Convention that August became a joke, as the Chicago police engaged in what a report later called a "police riot" in and around Lincoln Park, injuring hundreds of antiwar demonstrators. Hubert Humphrey won a brokered Democratic nomination, alienating many young people. Richard Nixon promised to restore "law and order" and was somehow elected president. Spiro Agnew became vice president. It's hard to believe even after all these years, and it's also hard to know where to stop.

Needless to say, I didn't go to prom that year, and I would argue that none of us would ever go to prom again. The narrative of this country changed forever in 1968. We lost our innocence as children and as a nation, and once lost, a fragile thing like innocence can never be restored.

Syl Jones, of Minnetonka, is a journalist, playwright and communications consultant.

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