On April 4, 1968, Robert F. Kennedy delivered what was probably the best unscripted political speech of the modern era. Dr. Martin Luther King had been assassinated earlier in the evening, and it was left to Kennedy to deliver the horrible news to a mostly black audience in Indianapolis, Indiana. While his many well-crafted speeches have been overshadowed by the man he eulogized that night and by his brother the president, this impromptu address represents aspirational language at its very best because it was delivered from the heart, without notes, rather than from some scribe’s pen.
