Robert F. Kennedy had barely launched his presidential campaign when Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated on April 4, 1968. Upon hearing the news, Kennedy delivered remarks in Indianapolis, Ind., discussing the difficulty of racial division in America, a division that was rupturing the nation even at a time of great hope and opportunity. Shockingly, Kennedy was shot and killed just two months later, after speaking to supporters in Los Angeles, Calif.
Sadly, his words still carry the same import, and the message still remains to be said, nearly 50 years later.
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. …
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. …
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’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.
See Kennedy’s remarks here.
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