Great images there, a sad story, taken as a whole. The events of generations, still reverberating today. Each generation at the time experienced it in a different perspective. The "whole world was watching," or living it.
I think he ended the song on an uplifting note though, "they caught the last train for The Coast..." and you're free to think of what happened after that. An open-ended story.
Kanye West wishes he was that popular, or had such influence on what got into the popular media, and became history. Well he does have a famous athlete father-in-law(?), Caitlyn.