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Kennedy:
Do they know about Martin Luther King? [speaking to a rally organizer]
Man in crowd:
No. We've left that up to you.
Kennedy:
Could you lower those signs, please? [People lower their "RFK
for President" picket-signs.]
I have bad news for you, 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 killed tonight.
Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice
for his fellow human beings, and he died because of that effort.
In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United
States, it is perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are
and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are
black--considering the evidence there evidently is, that 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 black, white people amongst white, filled with hatred
toward one another.
Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand
and to comprehend, and to replace that violence, that stain of
blood shed that has spread across our land, with an effort to
understand with compassion and love.
For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with
hatred and distrust at the injustice of such an act, against all
white people, I can only say that I feel in my own heart that
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
go beyond these rather difficult times.
My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He wrote: "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 toward
those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white
or they be black.
So I shall ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for
the family of Martin Luther King, that's true, but more importantly,
to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love--a prayer
for understanding and 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; we will have difficult
times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not
the end of lawlessness; it is not the end of disorder.
But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of
black people in this 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.
DuBois at the Niagra Conference
Churchill's
'Do Your Worst...'
Luther's 95 Theses
I
have a dream...
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