Today we remember the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee and the importance of his brief life and his work for social justice which remains unfinished.
In the story below is the poem quoted from Aeschylus which captures the tragedy and hope for wisdom which we search for at this time 40 years later:
On that very day, Robert Kennedy was campaigning for the presidential nomination in Indianapolis and was prepared to make a routine campaign stop when he was informed of the death of Martin Luther King Jr. The police warned him not to go into the inner city campaign location. He went without police escort and made a very brief announcement and a few remarks. His audience was primarily African Americans and he told them of the shared grief that he knew they were feeling because he too had seen his brother John assassinated.
As his car entered the neighborhood, his police escort left him. Once there, he stood in the back of a flatbed truck. He turned to an aide and asked, "Do they know about Martin Luther King?"
They didn't, and it was left to Kennedy to tell them that King had been shot and killed that night in Memphis, Tenn. The crowd gasped in horror.
Kennedy spoke of King's dedication to "love and to justice between fellow human beings," adding that "he died in the cause of that effort."
And Kennedy sought to heal the racial wounds that were certain to follow by referring to the death of his own brother, President John F. Kennedy.
"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."
Two months later, Robert himself was felled by an assassin's bullet.
