My family talked about politics a lot. My earliest political memory is watching the Watergate hearings while my father yelled obscene things at the TV. It was very exciting to hear that much cursing in the house. My family also had a celebratory watching of Nixon’s resignation speech, and I remember feeling something important and good was happening. Nixon was the bogey man of my childhood. My other proto-political memory was our station wagon– we had a Eugene McCarthy for president bumper sticker on it and I thought our car was named McCarthy because of it. McCarthy ran in 1968 and I was born in 1966 so I must have been very young when I named the car.
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Last autumn we ran an experimental online public engagement series called 'earliest political memories'. We collected a total of 68 memories that were generously contributed by members of the public. You can read all the contributions here. The series caught the attention of our colleague Rachel O'Connell in the School of English who…
In "earliest political memories"
I was born in 1967 and as a small child I was on my father's shoulders in anti-Vietnam War rallies in which the (U.S.) National Guard was brought out. I don't remember that (or better, any memories I might have had are thoroughly blurred with what I later heard about…
In "earliest political memories"
My earliest political memory is hearing that JFK had been shot on our old radio and running to tell my mom. I was 5 at the time.
In "earliest political memories"