INDIANAPOLIS — Riots broke out in more than 100 cities on the day Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated but none happened in Indianapolis thanks, many believe, to an impassioned call for peace from Robert F. Kennedy.
Kennedy, then a U.S. senator running for president, broke the news of King's murder and called for love and compassion as he addressed about 2,500 people from atop a flatbed truck at 17th and Broadway streets on April 4, 1968.
"What we need in the United States is not division," Kennedy told the crowd, "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."
That historic speech, delivered just two months before Kennedy himself would fall to an assassin's bullet, will be remembered with prayer, song and tributes Monday at the site where Kennedy spoke.
The late William Crawford, then a member of the Black Radical Action Project, stood about 20 feet away when Kennedy spoke.
"Look at all those other cities," Crawford told Indianapolis Star reporter Will Higgins for a story published last April. "I believe it would have gone that way (in Indianapolis) had not Bobby Kennedy given those remarks."
A year after that speech, Crawford became a community organizer for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Crawford won a seat on the Indiana General Assembly in 1972, where he served for 40 years until his death in September at age 79.
"The sincerity of Bobby Kennedy's words just resonated," Crawford told Higgins, "especially when he talked about his brother."
It was the first time the younger brother had spoken publicly about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
"For those of you who are black and are tempted to ... 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," Kennedy said.
"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 these rather difficult times."
Anger gave way to tears. The speech ended. The crowd solemnly dispersed.
Other cities burned; Indianapolis mourned.
Follow Vic Ryckaert on Twitter: @vicryc
