““The older generation scratched their heads, long comfortable in misery or ignorance now, they’d lost their need to rock the boat. Rocking the boat got you drowned, plain and simple. Unionists out and out accused the emergent civil rights movement of merely being Republican foot soldiers in camouflage. The government dismissed them as rabble-rousers, agitators seeking their fifteen minutes of fame. The students with the wisdom of youth ignored all imprecations and sallied forth under ban, under the blow of rock and baton, coming up repeatedly against the hard, ugly face of hatred. They were the flame that would be put to the tinder of sectarianism and old hatreds, caught in the headiness of that year, of that dying, burning decade, they did not see that regardless of who sets the fire all who touch it will be burned and bear the scars for it.””
