April is the Cruelest Month

Lincoln Memorial - interior - statue closeup - 2011
(Image by Tim Evanson from flickr)   Details   DMCA

"April is the cruelest month," that phrase is from "The Wasteland" by the poet, T.S. Eliot.

Besides understanding that the transition from winter to spring can be harsh and full of disappointments and false starts, it also happens to be the month filled with deaths, in this nation, of those who promised new starts to a more democratic and humane nation.

The first was Abraham Lincoln on April 15^th, 1865, after the Civil War had ended and the planned reconstruction was beginning to allow an inclusive place for the former slaves as well as to heal the union. Some, who wanted to prevent that kind of reconstruction to occur, ended those hopes with the assassination of Lincoln. It was a time of great sadness and mourning not only for the death of a president, but also for the death of the ideals he represented.

The next significant death was that of FDR, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, on April 12^th, 1945, after his New Deal had wrested power from the dominant business interests and instituted something resembling democracy with the inclusive policies of the Depression years and the years of WWII. Again, there was universal grief and national mourning following his demise. After his death the nation watched as the economic elite began to regroup to eventually rise to dominance once again.

And finally, the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4^th, 1968, who had been trying to finish the work begun by Lincoln to bring Black citizens into the arms of democracy. And again, racism raised its ugly head and stopped his leadership in its tracks.

All three of these deaths in April, the supposed beginning of spring and rebirth, thwarted the hopes for an America of inclusiveness and democracy.

At a season of hopefulness and fresh starts those deaths allowed us to retreat into the same regressive patterns of our perennial problems and inequalities and allowing the new growth of democracy and American ideals to be nipped in the bud.

A time that should have been full of the hope of fresh beginnings, turned into a time of grief and mourning of our national loss of possibilities.

In these cases, "April (was) the cruelest month".