True Compass: A Memoir by Edward Moore Kennedy

Author:Edward Moore Kennedy [Kennedy, Edward Moore]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Legislators - United States, Autobiography, Political, U.S. Senate, 1932-, Legislators, Diseases, Congress., Kennedy; Edward M - Family, Kennedy; Edward M, Kennedy; Edward Moore - Family, Personal Memoirs, Large type books, Health & Fitness, Cancer, Senate, General, United States, Biography & Autobiography, Kennedy; Edward Moore, Biography
ISBN: 9780446539258
Google: L1QYfgjv3mkC
Publisher: Hachette Digital, Inc.
Published: 2009-09-14T06:55:45+00:00

In the early spring of 1968, America found itself in shock from a loss that in and of itself would have marked the year as catastrophic. On April 4, Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed as he stood on a motel balcony in Memphis.

On that same day, Bobby had arrived in Indiana to begin his campaign. He'd kicked it off with an address in Muncie. Then he boarded a flight to Indianapolis for a speech in one of the most troubled African-American neighborhoods in the city, at a children's playground at Seventeenth Street and Broadway. Before his plane left the ground, Pierre Salinger reached my brother by telephone with the news that Dr. King had been shot. Upon his arrival in the city, Bobby learned that King was dead.

Most white political figures would have made any excuse to avoid standing before a black crowd in a ghetto under any circumstances in the summer of 1968. My brother did not hesitate, even when cautioned against it by the Indianapolis mayor. Carrying with him the news of King's assassination, Bobby moved ahead toward a moment that I believe encapsulates his life entire: a moment of conviction, compassion, courage, and eloquence.

Standing hatless on the floor of a flatbed truck under harsh lights on a rainy, windy night, in an enclave of desolation and anger, above a crowd whose reaction could not be predicted, Robert Kennedy broke the news with the directness of a family member: "I have some very sad news for all of you, and I think 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."

Bobby invited the grieving people before him to make a choice: "You can be filled with bitterness, with hatred, with a desire for revenge." Or, he said, "we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand with compassion and love."

He quoted Aeschylus: "'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.'"

And Bobby closed with another invitation, this one offering no options at all, other than hope: "Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and to make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people."

Upon the news of King's murder, more than a hundred cities across America erupted in rioting and burning. Indianapolis remained calm.

I've always thought in very personal terms of the power of my brother's words that evening. I believe the people of Indianapolis responded to the sincerity of a man whose own life had been touched by such profound loss and grief, by a man who understood.

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