April 4, 1968 in Indianapolis

On the evening of April 4, 1968 only hours after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, Robert Kennedy braved inner city Indianapolis without the assurance of police protection, to give a previously scheduled speech. There he informed the crowds of MLK's death, and proceeded to give one of his (and our country's) best speeches.

'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...

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.'

It is telling that Indianapolis was one of the few cities in which riots and violence did not break out that fateful night. Kennedy's message of unity and compassion had a profound impact on one city, making his assassination 2 months later all the more tragic.

Ron Klain, a Clinton campaigner in 1992, says this of the 1968 speech and the parallels with the 2008 presidential campaign:

'Forty years later, whenever I hear people say that a politician’s speeches don’t matter, that campaigns are a waste and that the sort of conflict we have in the 2008 Democratic primary is “destructive,” I think of Robert Kennedy’s words in Indianapolis that night — a speech that would have never happened but for the hard-fought, highly competitive 1968 primary campaign — and the millions of people like me who were inspired by them and their impact on that city.'