Words of Bobby Kennedy
I was a freshman in high school when Bobby Kennedy was murdered in 1968. I didn't know much about him at the time. Too caught-up in being a teenager in the sixties, I suppose. But as I flicked through the hundreds of channels on my television last night, I came upon the end of a movie filmed around the day Bobby Kennedy was killed. It struck me as more than coincidental, that here, during a time when our country seems to be at a crossroads of conscience, that my cable box would present me with a treasure that has been hiding in plain sight for nearly fifty years.
"Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."
The above sentence is a small part of a speech given by Bobby Kennedy to a group of students in South Africa. It is a speech I never knew existed. How lacking I felt when I read it. Even more, when I listened to Bobby Kennedy speaking at the end of the movie—when the film makers used audio clips of his speeches to tie together all the plot lines of the characters—I realized I had gone some fifty years without hearing the voice of someone I had been waiting to hear most of my life.
I cried listening to Bobby Kennedy talk. I cried as I listened to him speak about poverty and prejudice and humanity and hope, and what the world can accomplish, and what it has been slow to embrace.
"Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change the world—which yields most painfully to change."
Researching and reading the words of Bobby Kennedy was a revelation. Even more uplifting was to hear him speak of ideals and issues that hold the same weight-of-truth today as they did some fifty years ago. He seemed keenly aware that our country has come a long way in its turbulent march toward equality for all, but he did not shy away from the fact that it still has a long way to go before men and women of all races, nationalities and religious beliefs accept each other as equals.
"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 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 that abide in our land."
The above excerpt is part of a speech given by Bobby Kennedy the night Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. He offered those words to a crowd of African-Americans from the back of a flatbed truck in the middle of an Indianapolis ghetto after being warned that his safety could not be assured. Perhaps the fabric of moral courage is woven with the threads of compassion, understanding, and plain old-fashioned guts.
"Surely, this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely, we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men, and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again."
The words of Bobby Kennedy are well worth the time to research, read and listen to. In this time of doubt and uncertainty, they are a welcome bastion of hope and courage.
"Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."
The above sentence is a small part of a speech given by Bobby Kennedy to a group of students in South Africa. It is a speech I never knew existed. How lacking I felt when I read it. Even more, when I listened to Bobby Kennedy speaking at the end of the movie—when the film makers used audio clips of his speeches to tie together all the plot lines of the characters—I realized I had gone some fifty years without hearing the voice of someone I had been waiting to hear most of my life.
I cried listening to Bobby Kennedy talk. I cried as I listened to him speak about poverty and prejudice and humanity and hope, and what the world can accomplish, and what it has been slow to embrace.
"Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change the world—which yields most painfully to change."
Researching and reading the words of Bobby Kennedy was a revelation. Even more uplifting was to hear him speak of ideals and issues that hold the same weight-of-truth today as they did some fifty years ago. He seemed keenly aware that our country has come a long way in its turbulent march toward equality for all, but he did not shy away from the fact that it still has a long way to go before men and women of all races, nationalities and religious beliefs accept each other as equals.
"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 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 that abide in our land."
The above excerpt is part of a speech given by Bobby Kennedy the night Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. He offered those words to a crowd of African-Americans from the back of a flatbed truck in the middle of an Indianapolis ghetto after being warned that his safety could not be assured. Perhaps the fabric of moral courage is woven with the threads of compassion, understanding, and plain old-fashioned guts.
"Surely, this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely, we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men, and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again."
The words of Bobby Kennedy are well worth the time to research, read and listen to. In this time of doubt and uncertainty, they are a welcome bastion of hope and courage.
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