Professor of history Wesley Arden Dick and First-Year Seminar students recently visited Washington, D.C., to recognize Albion College students who served and died in "The Great War," which eventually became known as World War I and which ended with the Armistice on November 11, 1918. The group also recognized those from Albion and Albion College who made the ultimate sacrifice in World War II and Vietnam.
"I pulled The Liberator when I was in Philadelphia, the most well-known abolition newspaper published from 1831-1865, and seeing the old worn-out pages is something I will never forget," said Nathan Kellum, '19, who along with Shane Mills, '19, pored over books and documents earlier this summer deep within the archives of libraries in Boston and Philadelphia.
"With America divided in 1968, many pinned their hopes on Robert Kennedy as the presidential candidate who could end the war in Vietnam, revive the war on poverty, and unify Americans across racial lines," writes Wes Dick, Albion College professor of history. "His promise remains 'what might have been.' ... Among his legacies are his children, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. packed Goodrich Chapel in 2000 as the keynote speaker for a symposium on environmental activism."
It has been 50 years since the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed on a hotel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee. But in that time of continued racial strife and turbulence, one thing remains clear: Albion's story continues to be America's story.
