As a historian I often wonder whether individuals knew at the time something occurred that it was momentous, a historic turning point in the flow of events and their lives.

*Did President Herbert Hoover know in late-October 1929 following the crash of the stock market that the Great Depression would begin shortly afterwards and last over a decade. And he would be blamed for it?

*Did Rosa Parks know when she refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on that Montgomery (AL) bus that she would become the icon for the bus boycott in that city and for spurring a civil rights movement?

*Did Milo Cutter, one of the St. Paul (MN) veteran teachers who founded the first charter school in the nation, know in 1992 that City Academy would be in the vanguard of a movement that nearly three decades later would have over 7,000 schools enrolling over three million students?

*Does a college-educated, unemployed Millennial saddled with debt in the midst of the 2020 pandemic know that her odds of getting a decent-paying job, accumulating as much wealth as her parents and grandparents did are against her and that she may end up poorer than both?

The answer to the four questions is...

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