The media love anniversaries and the year 1969 has proved to be a goldmine. This year marks 50 years since the first moon landing by Neil Armstrong .It is also 50 years since Woodstock music festival. We are currently revisiting the murderous events on 8 -9 August 1969 at Cielo Drive. Members of the Manson Family murdered actress Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring and others,including Tate’s unborn child. The murders provide the backdrop for Quentin Tarantino’s new film.

The anniversary that seems to have been completely overlooked is the death of Mary Jo Kopechne. She died on 18 July 1969 when the car she was travelling in overturned a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island. Miss Kopechne was one of two people in the car .The other passenger was Senator Edward Kennedy, brother of John and Robert, both assassinated in 1963 and 1968 respectively. Senator Kennedy swam to safety, leaving Mary Jo to drown. He failed to save her and he failed to call for help.

The medical examination revealed that there was an air pocket in the car. Had Kennedy reported the accident sooner, Kopechne could have been saved. He did not report the accident until the following day.

Edward Kennedy should have been charged with manslaughter and gone on trial. However, in 1969 the Kennedy name still cast a spell over America. He was seen as the surviving brother who would pick up the Camelot “torch” following his two brothers. That is the power of a myth. In reality he was a privileged white man who used all his power and contacts to protect himself and his career. The degree of freedom that Kennedy was allowed even after the incident, showed that he was granted special treatment that an “ordinary” man would never get.

A dead woman was seen as a crisis to be managed, and not a case for justice. Anyone else would have been prosecuted and sent to jail. Whoever said that white male privilege was a myth? Anyone with an ounce of a conscience would have step down from the Senate and retired from public life. However, the late1960s was still the era of Don Draper and men that looked like him.

Mary Jo Kopechne has been all but forgotten, a footnote in history. Had she lived, she may have married and had children. Edward Kennedy carried on in the Senate. He ran for President in 1980, losing the battle for nomination to Jimmy Carter. In 2008, he endorsed a young man running for President called Barack Obama. Kennedy died in 2009. Hopefully, Mary Jo’s ghost haunted him for the rest of his life.