RFK assassination: 40 years today

Robert F. Kennedy was killed 40 years ago today, on the day he had won the California primary.

On April 4, 1968 — the day of the assassination of Martin Luther King — he made an extemporaneous speech in a poor, black district of Indianapolis. In it he said,

For those of you who are black and are tempted to 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 these rather difficult times.

My favorite poet was Aeschylus. 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.

Max Kennedy was three years old when his father died. Here he is interviewed on Fresh Air by Terry Gross about his book Make Gentle The Life of this World: The Vision of Robert F. Kennedy.

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