It Was 52 Years Ago Today-June 5, 1968

I've always loved history and there are certain moments in time that forever change the future. I've often wondered, what if that moment never happened? One of those obvious moments was on November 22, 1963 when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, but it was today in Los Angeles, California, that another moment changed history significantly.

Senator Robert F. Kennedy, President Kennedy's younger brother and his attorney general, was shot after winning the Democratic Primary in California as he ran for President of the United States.  His final words in his acceptance speech were, "now it's on to Chicago," and he was shot walking through a cheering crowd at The Ambassador Hotel.  He died early the next morning at the age of 42.

I recently watched a terrific special on Netflix about his life.  He was a very unique man and a very unusual politician.  He was one of nine children and the father of eleven children. He had a connection to people that few other politicians have ever had. It is believed he would have won the Democratic nomination and faced Richard Nixon in the fall if he hadn't been shot. If he had been elected President of the United States there would not have been a Watergate and there's a good chance that the Vietnam War would have ended sooner.

With the events this past week it is easy to say that maybe the greatest moment in his life came on another tragic day in our history, April 4, 1968. One hour after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated,  he was scheduled to make a campaign stop in a black neighborhood in Indianapolis, Indiana.  Over the next few days there would be riots in 76 cities across the country with forty-six people dying, 2,500 people injured and 28,000 people jailed, but in Indianapolis there would be no riots.

That night his remarks lasted only five minutes.  He was unprotected; there was no police or secret service and he was warned not to go into the area to speak, because he could not be protected from the crowd.  He spoke without notes from his heart at a podium on the back on a pickup truck to a crowd of less than a thousand people who did not know that Martin Luther King Jr. had been killed.  Below are some excerpts from his speech:

"Ladies and gentleman, I'm only going to speak to you for one or two minutes tonight because I have sad news. I have sad news for you, for all of our fellow citizens and for people who love peace all over the world- and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and killed tonight in Memphis, Tennessee. He dedicated his life to love and to justice between fellow human beings and he died in the cause of that effort."

"For those of you who are black-considering the evidence, evidently 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 blacks, and white amongst whites, filled with hatred toward one another.  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."

"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 for those who will suffer within our country, whether they be white of whether they be black."

"So I ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King-yes, that's true-but more importantly, to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love, a prayer for understanding 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. 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 is not the end of disorder."

"But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in the country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings who abide in our land. Let us 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."

At his funeral, his younger brother, Senator Ted Kennedy said his brother was, "a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it."