“I have some very sad news for … all of you. And I think, uh, sad news for all of our fellow citizens and people who love peace all over the world. And that is that Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight in Memphis, Tennessee.”

This is how Robert Francis Kennedy, a former United States Navy sailor during World War II and then a New York senator, told a stunned crowd of people in Indianapolis, Indiana on April 4, 1968 that the foremost civil rights leader in the history of America had been gunned down by escaped convict James Earl Ray at the Lorraine Motel, a day after he had given his celebrated “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech at Mason Temple.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6mxL2cqxrA

“My favorite poet was Aeschylus, and 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 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.”

Somehow, after he finished his speech, the crowd — once positioned to break out in anger and violence — left without conflict, and scattered from the site gently and quietly. Riots in other cities were widespread and prominent, and unrest ruled the day in places like Chicago, New York, Boston, Detroit, Oakland, Pittsburgh and Baltimore. Thirty five people died.

Here’s a photograph from Arlington National Cemetery, where RFK’s speech as been memorialized:

Robert_Kennedy_Memorial

Martin Luther King, Jr. was only 39 years old.

Two months and a day later, Robert F. Kennedy was shot with a .22-caliber revolver by Palestinian Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, at The Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California. Writer George Plimpton was one of several witnesses who wrestled the assassin to the ground after he opened fire.

Kennedy passed away early the next morning on June 6, 1968. He was 42.