Courtesy Doubleday
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Web Exclusive. . .
Excerpt from Politics Lost
May 2006
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"On the evening of April 4, 1968, about an hour after Dr. Martin Luther
King Jr. was assassinated, Robert F. Kennedy responded with a powerfully simple
speech, which he delivered spontaneously in a black neighborhood in
Indianapolis. Nearly forty years later, Kennedy's words stand as a sublime
example of the substance and music of politics in its grandest form, for its
highest purpose—to heal, to educate, to lead—but, also, sadly, they
represent the end of an era: the last moments before American political 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.
Many people believe Kennedy was standing on top of a car, in the midst of
angry chaos, when he addressed the crowd that night. Actually, he spoke from a
podium on the back of a flatbed truck, and the crowd was quiet and orderly and
unaware, until Kennedy told them, that King was dead. It was a cold and
extremely windy night. The only light came from floodlights trained on the
podium, illuminating a smoky stand of oaks behind the stage. No one knows how
many people gathered in that small park—maybe a thousand, not much more.
There was no police estimate of the crowd, because there was no police presence
that night. Robert Kennedy was unprotected as he was lifted onto that stage: no
secret service, no local police. Kennedy's aides were worried that the
crowd—which had been waiting in the park for more than an
hour—would explode as soon as the senator told them that King was dead.
But there was no chance Kennedy would beg off, play it safe, disappoint the
people. None of his aides even thought to dissuade him. 'Ladies and
gentlemen,' the senator began, tentatively, clearing his throat.
'I'm only going to speak to you for one or two minutes tonight because
I have sad news for all of you…'
Robert Kennedy's presidential campaign was two weeks old at that moment.
Adam Walinsky, Kennedy's young speechwriter, had preceded the campaign
staff to Indianapolis and was having dinner downtown when he heard that King
had been shot. He immediately started drafting remarks for Kennedy on a yellow
legal pad, then jumped in a car and headed for the rally. He arrived about the
same moment as Kennedy. 'Senator,' Walinsky shouted, and pulled the
notes from his pocket.
Kennedy gave Walinsky a grim look and a quick, curt hand signal: no, he
wouldn't be needing any words that night. Walinsky saw Kennedy pull some
notes from his pocket, which he'd probably scribbled in the car on the way
in from the airport.
Kennedy press secretary Frank Mankiewicz, in the back of the crowd, saw
Kennedy up on the podium and wondered if Bobby could keep it all together, keep
his composure, say the right thing and calm the crowd, which
still—remarkably—wasn't aware of King's death. And then,
for the next four minutes and 57 seconds, Robert Kennedy spoke…
'Ladies and gentlemen,' he began, rather formally, respectfully.
'I'm only going to speak to you for one or two minutes tonight because
I have sad news…' His voice caught, and he turned it into a slight
cough, a throat-clearing. The crowd hadn't quite settled in yet; his
supporters were still waving signs. He couldn't go on if they were
celebrating. 'Could you lower those signs over there?' he asked, and
the crowd quieted. 'I have sad news for you, for all of our fellow citizens
and for people who love peace all over the world—' he paused, his
voice still uncertain, then gathered himself up and said—'and that is
that Martin Luther King was shot and 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 total silence now. Rather than exploding, rather than indulging
their anger, the crowd was rapt. One senses, listening to the tape years later,
a trust and respect for the man at the podium, a man who knew all about
assassinations, as well as a yearning to be reassured, to be comforted.
'In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it
is perhaps well to ask what kind of nation we are…and what direction we
want to move in…
'For those of you who are black—considering the evidence,' he
stumbled here, 'evidently there were white people who were
responsible.' A shudder went through the crowd at the powerful unadorned
word: 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.
'Or we can make an effort as Martin Luther King did, to understand and
comprehend,' he paused, perhaps considering whether or not to take the next
step, whether to lay himself bare before that crowd—the next few phrases
seemed to be placeholding, preparation as he gathered himself
emotionally—'and to replace the stain of bloodshed that has spread
across our land, with an effort to understand, with compassion and
love.'
Then he plunged ahead: 'For those of you who are black, and are tempted
to be filled with hatred and distrust of the injustice of such an act, against
all white people,' he paused again, 'I can only say that I
feel'—his voice broke—'in my own heart the same kind of
feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white
man.' Walinsky's head snapped up: he had been working for Kennedy for
five years and had never heard him speak before—publicly or even
privately—of the death of his brother. It was just too painful, a place
Kennedy would not go, a topic skidded away from whenever anyone came close to
raising it. And yet here he was, tentatively—he still could not say the
words 'my brother,' it was 'a member of my
family'—somewhat confusedly (why did the race of his brother's
assassin matter?) stripping himself before strangers, evaporating the distance
between himself and the crowd. They were suffering together now; you could hear
it in the quality of the silence, which seemed a conscious, cooperative thing,
a group achievement. '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.'
He drew them closer still, with a poetic lilt to his phrasing: '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 still suffer within our country, whether they be white or
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 and that compassion of which I spoke.'
Someone shouted, 'YAY!' There were other shouts, which melted into a
warm, buttery round of applause.
Kennedy seemed to exhale. '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.'
Over the next few days, there were riots in 76 American cities. Forty-six
people died, 2,500 were injured, 28,000 jailed.
Indianapolis remained quiet."
Copyright © 2006 by Joe Klein. From the book Politics Lost: How
American Democracy Was Trivialized by People Who Think You're Stupid by
Joe Klein, published by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc. Reprinted
with permission.
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