Charles H Milby High School - Buffalo Yearbook (Houston, TX)

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Milby High School 1964 Buffalo Houston, Texas Volume 30

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Much madness is divinest sense To a discerning eye; Much sense the starkest madness. 'Tis the majority In this, as all, prevails. Assent, and you are sane; Demur, you're straightway dangerous. And handled with a chain. Emily Dickinson The Dangers of Being Different A cup of hemlock silenced Socrates in 399 BC, an ax ended Thomas More's opposition to Henry VIII in 1535, fire consumed Savonarola in 1498 and Joan of Arc in 1431. Galileo recanted his scientific findings in 1663 under the threat of torture, Gandhi was shot in 1948, Lincoln was assassinated in 1865 and Thomas a Becket in 1170. In 1963 a modern nation and world were horrified by the murder of John F. Kennedy. If any generalization can be made about these victims of wrath and ignorance, it is that they were punished for their nonconformity, their re- fusal to adhere to established patterns, their un- deviating individualism. Every new opinion, at its starting, is precisely in a minority of one. If the idea is really revolutionary, its proponent is im- mediately attacked by those who feel that their own beliefs have been challenged. Charles Dar- win's theories of evolution were denounced by some as a negation of the Bible. Billy Mitchell was vilified until the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor proved his predictions about air power correct. Negro leaders of the Twentieth Century are threatened, bombed, shot, or lynched for daring to suggest complete equality of op- portunity. In no period of time in any country has it ever been easy or safe to be different. Although his- torians have chosen to record these examples, the world's history has also been made by thousands of nameless people who have suffered death, unemployment, confiscation of property, and so- cial and economic ostracism for the sake of their ideals. Thomas Carlisle 3