A speech *everyone* should listen to
RFK, April 1968.
On Thursday, I was driving my son to soccer practice. And, as is my habit, I was listening to “The Rest is History” podcast.
The latest series is on 1968 in America — a critical year in the history of our Republic. The second episode is dedicated to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in the spring of that year. In it, one of the hosts — Tom Holland — begins by reading a speech that Robert F. Kennedy gave in Indianapolis on the night that King was killed.
The speech, which RFK delivered extemporaneously(!), is remarkable in its acknowledgment of the country’s divisions and in its appeal to our better angels. (That Kennedy would be dead from as assassin’s bullet two months after this address makes it all the more poignant in retrospect.)
Kennedy’s words made me think about the election we just had — and the anger and resentment coursing through the country over the past, well, decade.
Obviously, it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison. RFK was speaking about the racial divisions in the U.S.. While those still exist, our current rancor seems more built around party identity than anything else.
But there is a universal truth in Kennedy’s words. Truth that applies to that moment — and to this one. These lines, in particular, struck me:
What we need in the United States is not division. What we need in the United States is not hatred. What we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love and wisdom and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country
Below I’ve pasted a YouTube video of the entire speech. (It’s only 5 minutes long.) And below that, a transcript of the speech. Watch it. Read it. Or do both.
We’d all do well to remember the lessons contained therein.
TRANSCRIPT
Ladies and Gentleman: I’m only going to talk to you just for a minute or so this evening because I have some very sad news for all of you. Could you lower those signs, please? I have some very sad news for all of you and, I think, sad news for all of our fellow citizens and people who love peace all over the world, and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight in Memphis, Tennessee.
Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice between fellow human beings. He died in the cause of that effort.
In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it’s perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black–considering the evidence evidently is that there were white people who were responsible–you can be filled with bitterness and with hatred and a desire for revenge.
We can move in that direction as a country, in greater polarization–black people amongst blacks, and white amongst whites, filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, compassion, and love.
For those of you who are black and are tempted to fill with–be filled with–hatred and distrust of the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I would only say that I can also feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man. But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to get beyond or go beyond these rather difficult times.
My favorite poem–my favorite poet–was Aeschylus, and he once wrote: “Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”
What we need in the United States is not division. What we need in the United States is not hatred. What we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love and wisdom and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black. So I ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King. Yeah, it’s true, but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love–a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke.
We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times. We’ve had difficult times in the past. And we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; and it is not the end of disorder. But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings that abide in our land.
Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.
Thank you very much.
There remain those of us who heard the speech as it was given. For many of us Bobby Kennedy was a great hero and, perhaps, our last great opportunity to bring unity from so much division. It should be remembered that we had the racial divisions but America was also in the throes of the Vietnam War when Dr. King and Senator Kennedy were assassinated.
The divisions among us had improved marginally, but visibly, in the years since then. And then came Trump. In the four days since the election those of us who believe in goodness and decency are being told that the election loss was our fault and, gee, we have to "learn" from this. No! No, it wasn't our fault. We aren't the haters. We are not the liars. We are not the people who will sacrifice the brave people of Ukraine so Trump can appease his pal, Putin. We are good and decent and intelligent people who supported a good and decent ticket. Goodness and decency lost the election but many of us are determined that we will not ultimately lose the battle for the soul of America. I always return to the great quote from Senator Ted Kennedy that seems so very appropriate this week: "For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
I was a senior at the University of California Riverside when I heard that speech as the country burned. I remembered it two months later when Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. I watched the infamous Chicago convention from the library school at UCLA where I was getting my masters degree. A year later I was in Vietnam as a civilian Army librarian running libraries for the soldiers—morale and recreation. Worst years ever!! Winston Churchill said in 1948 “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it” and here we are.