The speech Bobby Kennedy gave in Indianapolis the day Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated

http://www.time.com/time/columnist/klein/article/0,9565,1181593,00.html

Pssst! Who's behind the decline of politics? (Consultants.)
Sunday, Apr. 09, 2006

On the evening of april 4, 1968, about an hour after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, Robert F. Kennedy responded with a powerfully simple speech, which he delivered spontaneously in a black neighborhood of Indianapolis. Nearly 40 years later, Kennedy's words stand as an example of the substance and music of politics in its grandest form and highest purpose—to heal, to educate, to lead. Sadly, his speech also marked the end of an era: the last moments before American public life was overwhelmed by marketing professionals, consultants and pollsters who, with the flaccid acquiescence of the politicians, have robbed public life of much of its romance and vigor.

Kennedy, who was running for the Democratic presidential nomination, had a dangerous job that night. His audience was unaware of King's assassination. He had no police or Secret Service protection. His aides were worried that the crowd would explode as soon as it learned the news; there were already reports of riots in other cities. His speechwriters Adam Walinsky and Frank Mankiewicz had drafted remarks for the occasion, but Kennedy rejected them. He had scribbled a few notes of his own. "Ladies and gentlemen," he began, rather formally, respectfully. "I'm only going to talk to you just for a minute or so this evening because I have some very sad news ..." His voice caught, and he turned it into a slight cough, a throat clearing, "and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight in Memphis, Tennessee."

There were screams, wailing—just the rawest, most visceral sounds of pain that human voices can summon. As the screams died, Kennedy resumed, slowly, pausing frequently, measuring his words: "Martin Luther King ... dedicated his life ... to love ... and to justice between fellow human beings, and he died in the cause of that effort." There was near total silence now. One senses, listening to the tape years later, the audience's trust in the man on the podium, a man who didn't merely feel the crowd's pain but shared it. And Kennedy reciprocated: he laid himself bare for them, speaking of the death of his brother—something he'd never done publicly and rarely privately—and then he said, "My favorite poem, my favorite poet was Aeschylus. He once wrote, 'Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart,'" he paused, his voice quivering slightly as he caressed every word. The silence had deepened, somehow; the moment was stunning. "'Until ... in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.'"

Listen to Kennedy's Indianapolis speech and there is a quality of respect for the audience that simply is not present in modern American politics. It isn't merely that he quotes Aeschylus to the destitute and uneducated, although that is remarkable enough. Kennedy's respect for the crowd is not only innate and scrupulous, it is also structural, born of technological innocence: he doesn't know who they are--not scientifically, the way post-modern politicians do. The audience hasn't been sliced and diced by his pollsters, their prejudices and policy priorities cross-tabbed, their favorite words discovered by carefully targeted focus groups. He hasn't been told what not to say to them: Aeschylus would never survive a focus group. Kennedy knows certain things, to be sure: they are poor, they are black, they are aggrieved and quite possibly furious. But he doesn't know too much. He is therefore less constrained than subsequent generations of politicians, freer to share his extravagant humanity with them.


----------------------------


Little piece of history here that is probably worth remembering. I highly recommend listening to Bobby's speech at the link if you have never heard it.

K&R