Forty-five years ago, on Sat., June 8, 1968, Robert F Kennedy’s Funeral train made a long journey from New York City to Washington, DC. As it passed through Cecil County, thousands of people lined the tracks, and when the train rolled through North East, 15-year-old Michael Scott was there with his mother.
His father elected a couple of years earlier as the first president of the Cecil County Branch of the NAACP, couldn’t be there as he was a track supervisor for the railroad. He had to make sure the special train got safely through this section. It had already encountered trouble in North Jersey as an approaching locomotive had struck mourners lining the tracks as the two engines neared each other and those waiting to pay their respects failed to notice the freight coming in the other direction.
That awful year, with so much sadness in the nation, isn’t something that people who lived through the period will ever forget, and the Washington Post has a feature about that troubling time 45 years ago. The paper has interviewed people who recalled that day. In Cecil County, they talked with Michael Scott about his recollections and the things that were happening with Civil Rights in Cecil County as the times were changing in the 1960s.
Click here to check out the article on the Kennedy Funeral Train.
