We got a notice a couple of weeks ago asking if we or anyone we knew was in the crowd 51 years ago, on the night Bobby Kennedy stopped in Indianapolis during his presidential campaign.
It was the night of April 4th, 1968 and Martin Luther King, Jr. had been shot and killed in Memphis earlier that day. Despite fears of riots and concerns for his safety, he went ahead with plans to attend a rally at 17th and Broadway in the heart of Indianapolis’s black community. There he spoke of the threat of disillusion and divisiveness at King’s death and reminded the audience of King’s efforts to “replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand with compassion and love.”
He acknowledged that many in the audience would be filled with anger, especially since the assassin was believed to be a white man, and empathized with the audience by speaking publicly for the first time of the assassination of his brother, President John F. Kennedy.
But what most magnificently applied a balm to the broken hearts in attendance was this truth: ”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 or lawlessness, but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice towards those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.”
Near the end of his speech, he spoke to the mixed race crowd, encouraging them to pray for “our country and our people,” to which they exploded in applause and dispersed quietly.
While riots broke out in many cities around the country that night, the people of Indianapolis mourned in peaceful reverence for the man who said “Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
In an ironic twist of fate, Robert Kennedy was mortally wounded only two months later on June 5th, 1968 as he continued his presidential campaign in Los Angeles.
Jim and I were not there on April 4th, 1968, but we have visited the Kennedy King Memorial many times since. The place still resonates with the power of those two men who made so great an impact on our lives and whose words still provide a path to achieving the unity that we at UNITE INDY work toward every day.
Blessings,
Nancy
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