It was on this date in 1968 that Robert F. Kennedy was declared dead, the victim of an assassin's bullets fired the night before in a Los Angeles hotel room where RFK had gone to celebrate his victory in California's Democratic presidential primary.
Kennedy's eldest son and namesake is currently running for president, which may be generating more interest in his father's killing than would otherwise be the case. Make no mistake, however: Bobby Kennedy's assassination was a tragic hinge point in history. A deranged and bitter gunman had altered the course of U.S. history, the third time such a thing had happened in that decade. For Americans alive at the time, these appalling events were searing and unsettling. John F. Kennedy had been killed after only a thousand days in office. RFK had spoken touchingly about his brother's death, as he did when Martin Luther King Jr. was cut down by hate in April 1968.
RFK was campaigning for the Democratic president nomination on April 4, 1968, when the world's most prominent civil rights leader was killed in Memphis. No speechwriter penned his words to a stricken mixed-raced crowd in Indianapolis. These words came from the heart. It was a short speech, as these things go, 556 words, every one of them a call to social justice, racial healing, and national unity.
He began by breaking the awful news to the crowd, many of whom had not heard it. The gasps and cries from the audience are audible. Kennedy noted that Martin Luther King had devoted his life "to love and to justice" -- and he had been killed for this effort.
"In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it is perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in," Kennedy said. "For those of you who are black -- considering the evidence there evidently is that there were white people who were responsible -- you can be filled with bitterness, with hatred, and a desire for revenge. We can move in that direction as a country, in great polarization -- black people amongst black, white people amongst white, filled with hatred toward one another."
"Or," he continued, "we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and to replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand with compassion and love."
Carl M. Cannon is the Washington bureau chief for RealClearPolitics. Reach him on Twitter @CarlCannon
