ESSENTIAL QUESTION
What rhetorical devices did Robert Kennedy use to convey his grief and contextualize the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.?
CONTEXT
On April 4, 1968, Robert F. Kennedy was campaigning in Indiana for the Democratic Presidential Nomination. After making two speeches and before he boarded a plane for Indianapolis, he learned that Martin Luther King, Jr., had been shot in Memphis, Tennessee. When he landed in Indianapolis he learned that King had died of his wounds. He proceeded to a campaign rally site where a crowd was waiting to hear him speak. While local police stated that they could not protect Kennedy should the crowd decide to riot, he decided to speak anyway. Standing on the back of a flat-bed truck, he spoke for less that five minutes.
As you consider his remarks remember that Robert Kennedy’s brother, President John Kennedy, had been assassinated five years earlier, on November 22, 1963. As soon as RFK announced King’s death the crowd shouted and wailed. Note how Kennedy focused his remarks. Robert Kennedy was himself assassinated two months later, on June 6, 1968, while on a campaign trip in California.
TEXT
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I’m only going to talk to you just for a minute or so this evening, because I have some–some very sad new for all of you–Could you lower those signs, please?- 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 fill with–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, or go beyond those rather difficult times.
My favorite poem, my-my favorite poet was Aeschylus. And 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…
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. And let’s 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…
INQUIRY
- How did Kennedy get his audience’s attention immediately and let them know this would not be a regular campaign speech? What was the effect of him asking the audience to lower the campaign signs? What words did he use?
- How did Kennedy describe Martin Luther King? How did Kennedy describe how black members of his audience might react to King’s assassination? Contrast these two descriptions. What is the effect of this contrast?
- How and why did Kennedy attempt to make a personal connection with his audience?
- What lesson did Kennedy ask his audience to take from the assassination?
- Interpret the Aeschylus quote.
- Why did Kennedy quote Aeschylus? What type of appeal is this, and what is the effect?
- As Kennedy listed what we do not need in the United States he uses anaphora, repetition of beginning clauses. What is the effect?
- Identify examples of appeals to logic, emotion, ethics, and authority in Kennedy’s speech. What are the effects of each?
- What lessons from Kennedy’s speech can apply to the United States today?
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Speech_on_the_Assassination_of_Martin_Luther_King,_Jr.
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