Our Moment
In May 31, 1969, a young student body president named Hillary Rodham delivered her commencement address at Wellesley College. In her speech she eloquently captured the hopes and frustrations of a generation coming to terms with the "gap between expectation and realities." The civil rights movement had lost steam, 1968 had been rife with turmoil and assassinations, Americans were dying in Vietnam and Richard Nixon sat in the Oval Office. But as she said, the difference between expectations and realities "wasn't a discouraging gap, and it didn't turn us into cynical, bitter old women at the age of 18. It just inspired us to do something about that gap."