When Times are Tough it's Time for Love.

April 4th 1968 is a date that will never be forgotten by Civil Rights Activists in the USA. The day saw riots break out across the States, with over 60 seperate cities involved, from New York, to Chicago, to LA. They were mostly black people, some white, who were reacting with violence against the injustice they saw was done to their movement, for April 4th, 1968, was the last time Martin Luther King Jr breathed life, gunned down in his hotel room. With no identifiable suspects at the time, violence erupted against White America - "The Man" if you will.

However one city was noticeably absent from the list of riots. Indianapolis, Indiana was (and still is) home to a large African-American community and if any city was to riot upon hearing the news, surely it would occur here. The fact that it did not is often attributed to one man, Robert F. Kennedy. Robert Kennedy (not to be confused with his brother - JFK) was due to give a speech at a campaign rally for his bid to get the 1968 Democratic nomination for President in Indianapolis that evening. On the way there, he learned that King had been pronounced dead at 7pm and was advised not to attend, lest the scene get ugly. Robert pushed on and found the large gathering of African-Americans in a positive, upbeat mood - they did not know. Kennedy decided to break the news to them in an ad-lib speech, which remains poignant and thought provoking to this day in an age of terrorism, distress, and fighting fellow citizens.

Ladies and Gentlemen - I'm only going to talk to you just for a minute or so this evening. Because...

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.

Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice between fellow human beings. He died in the cause of that effort. In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it's 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 evidently is that there were white people who were responsible - you can be filled with bitterness, and with hatred, and a desire for revenge.

We can move in that direction as a country, in greater 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 to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, compassion and love.

For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and mistrust of the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I would only say that I can also 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 get beyond these rather difficult times.

My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He once wrote: "Even 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 and lawlessness, but is 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 whether they be black.

(Interrupted by applause)

So I ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, yeah 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. And we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; and it's 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 that abide in our land.

(Interrupted by applause)

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. Thank you very much. (Applause)

One single act of Love stopped a city dissolving into what would have been a vicious, violent and murderous night. How awesomely powerful is this intangible thing we try to fathom?

In a shockingly short time later, Robert Kennedy was shot dead on June 4th 1968 after winning the California Primary. His brother, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, eulogised him with the words, "My brother need not be idolized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it."

It is an example worth trying to replicate, no matter how hard it may seem at times.