On this day in 1968 US senator and presidential hopeful Robert F Kennedy was shot. He died the next day. Kennedy's death, like that of his brother JFK five years prior, shook a nation and threatened its humanity. Today, Kennedy's legacy offers light to a world still reeling from terror.
In many moments since 1968, nations have faced their own crises of terror, times when hope is crushed, and hate and despair look set to prevail. Britain finds itself once again in such a crisis, after facing its third terrorist attack in three months this weekend. The extremist attacks at London Bridge, Manchester and Westminster have caused some to choose division, seeking scapegoats and a local villain to hang – with the targets of suspicion frequently placed on the Islamic community.
On the tragic anniversary of Robert Kennedy's assassination, it's a time to remember the profound words he once offered for a time such as this. Just months before his own murder, Kennedy had to deliver the news of another fallen icon – the death of his friend Martin Luther King Jr on April 4 1968.
Kennedy's remarks from that dark night, to a weeping black community in Indianapolis, have endured because their sentiment lives on beyond one historical moment.
'What kind of a nation we are'
'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.'
Kennedy understood that King's passing threatened the end of the peace that the civil rights leader had laboured his whole life for. He said: '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 bloodshed 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 the 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.'
A Catholic himself, Kennedy then invoked more religious language:
'My favourite 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.'
'We can do well in this country'
Britain may not face the same clear divisions of white and black that persisted in 1960s America, but other divides threaten us still. A fear of Muslims, foreigners and other minorities has undoubtedly pervaded over public debates about security, immigration and national identity.
As Kennedy understood though, to give into shallow labelling and a culture of fear only grants the very wishes of the agents of terror. This politician's pursuit of a higher call would soon cost him his life as well. Nonetheless, his legacy endures.
In Kenney's ever-prescient words: '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.'
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