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Robert F. Kennedy:
On The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

delivered
4 April 1968,
Indianapolis,
IN

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Text
version below
transcribed
directly
from
audio

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I'm only going to talk to
you just for a minute or so this evening, because I have some 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.

Transcription by
Michael
E. Eidenmuller. Property
of AmericanRhetoric.com. . Copyright 2006. All rights reserved.
Page
1

AmericanRhetoric.com

For those of you who are black and are tempted to fill with
be
filled 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 poem, my 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.

Transcription by
Michael
E. Eidenmuller. Property
of AmericanRhetoric.com. . Copyright 2006. All rights reserved.
Page
2