FULL SPEECH TEXT | KENNEDY KING MEMORIAL INITIATIVE | APRIL 4, 1968
PHOTO OF KENNEDY’S SPEECH IN INDIANAPOLIS, SPEECH AUDIO, AND
ARTICLE CONTENT CAPTURED FROM WIKIPEDIA.ORG | JULY 14, 2024
On April 4, 1968, United States Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York delivered an improvised speech several hours after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Kennedy, who was campaigning to earn the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, made his remarks while in Indianapolis, Indiana, after speaking at two Indiana universities earlier in the day. Before boarding a plane to attend campaign rallies in Indianapolis, he learned that King had been shot in Memphis, Tennessee. Upon arrival, Kennedy was informed that King had died. His own brother, John Fitzgerald Kennedy had been assassinated on November 22, 1963. Robert F. Kennedy would be also assassinated two months after this speech, while campaigning for presidential nomination at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California.
Despite fears of riots and concerns for his safety, Kennedy went ahead with plans to attend a rally at 17th and Broadway in the heart of Indianapolis’s African-American ghetto. That evening he addressed the crowd, many of whom had not heard about King’s assassination. Instead of the rousing campaign speech they expected, Kennedy offered brief, impassioned remarks for peace that are considered to be one of the great public addresses of the modern era.
Full text of speech:
Ladies and Gentlemen,
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 hatred and mistrust 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 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, but we 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’s 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.
And let’s 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.
Notes
Preparing his notes without reference books, recalling the quote from memory, Kennedy slightly misquoted a passage from Edith Hamilton’s translation of Aeschylus’s Agamemnon. Professor Christopher S. Morrissey wrote that it is unknown “whether he misquoted deliberately, fortuitously, or infelicitously”.
Kennedy himself was assassinated two months later on June 5, 1968.
Legacy
The speech itself has been listed as one of the greatest in American history, ranked 17th by communications scholars in a survey of 20th century American speeches. Former U.S. Congressman and media host Joe Scarborough said that it was Kennedy’s greatest speech and was what prompted Scarborough to enter public service. Journalist Joe Klein has called it “politics in its grandest form and highest purpose” and said that it “marked the end of an era” before American political life was taken over by consultants and pollsters. It is also recounted in the prologue of his book, Politics Lost.
Duration: 5 minutes and 54 seconds.
LINK TO FULL TEXT OF SPEECH AT THE KENNEDY KING MEMORIAL INITIATIVE
Downloadable copy of the speech from the Real KBrett Stack of Stuff archive:
LINK TO ROBERT F. KENNEDY’S SPEECH ON THE ASSASSINATION OF MLK
Downloadable copy of the full Wikipedia article from the Real KBrett Stack of Stuff archive:
For RFK’s prepared, formal response to the assassination, see On the Mindless Menace of Violence.
Last Updated on July 14, 2024 by Real KBrett