Last week I watched a PBS show about the life and death of Robert F. Kennedy. It was extremely emotional to me and I discussed it with several people. This was a man to dedicated his life to peace and died a violent death. I guess this is par for the course but it really upset me. It kind of haunted me for a few days...especially a video of him addressing a rally in Indianapolis on April 4, 1968...the day Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed. It was absolutely chilling.
Little did I know when I watched that documentary last week that I would end up going to Arlington National Cemetery today where RFK is buried. I went today with Will, Jeremy and Lindsay and it was a very last minute decision. I was really choked up for many reasons. One of which is that we're in a very similar state to where we were in the 60's. Our civil rights are still being violated, we're still at war for no good reason...The only thing is that we don't have may American's like Bobby Kennedy or Martin Luther King to stand up for those who can't stand up for themselves.
While we walked through Arlington Will pointed out the fact that we (the Frank's) are who we are today because of the Kennedy's. Even as a kid I stood out in the rain and the cold to campaign for candidates I believed in. I don't think I knew it at the time but I did that because of what the Kennedy's taught my parents and what my parents taught me. My beliefs, my convictions, my tolerance, my music taste, my desire for justice all stems from those two men. The fact that I stood at their graves today just blew my mind...and this was not my first visit to Arlington. I just went there with my eyes open today.
Here's the incredibly moving speech RFK gave the day MLK died. Two months before he was also killed...
Ladies And Gentlemen,
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 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.
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.