englandsdreaming:On April 4, 1968, presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was scheduled to stop in

englandsdreaming:On April 4, 1968, presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was scheduled to stop in Indianapolis just days before the Indiana primary. In an effort to increase voter registration among black Hoosiers, a prominently black inner-city neighborhood was chosen as the location for the campaign stop. Shortly before his speech, Kennedy learned that Martin Luther King Jr. had died from an assassin’s bullet.Many, including the mayor of Indianapolis and the police, urged Kennedy to cancel his speech fearing a race riot. But Kennedy insisted that he and his people go on and go alone, without police. Before the crowd of about 2500 people, Kennedy broke the news of MLK’s death.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 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…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, 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.Following MLK’s murder, rioting broke out in more than 100 cities, resulting in the death of 39 people and more than 2000 people injured. No rioting occured in Indianapolis. Robert Kennedy went on to win the Indiana Democratic primary. He was assassinated two months later in California. -- source link

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