This week’s speech recognizes one of the most famous speeches in history, and it was completely extemporaneous. In fact, some historians say it was impromptu. Since we opened the semester evaluating perhaps the most famous speech in history, Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Dream” speech, it seems fitting to analyze a speech Senator Robert F. Kennedy delivered the night of King’s assassination.
It was April 4, 1968, and Kennedy was scheduled to deliver a campaign speech in Indianapolis, in the heart of one of the city’s ghettos. The New York senator was running for president on the Democratic ticket, so it was supposed to be a typical campaign speech to appeal to the predominantly African-American audience. But when he learned of King’s death, just minutes before he was scheduled to take the stage, which was the flatbed of a truck in a parking lot, Kennedy was compelled to deliver a very different speech.
Police officials and associates warned Kennedy there could be rioting if he made the announcement, because few, if any, in the audience knew of King’s assassination before the senator delivered the news. Information traveled more slowly in 1968. Police recommended he cancel his speech, warning him they would be unable to protect him if riots erupted during what was already one of the most racially divided periods in America’s history.
But Kennedy insisted on delivering the heartbreaking news. His speech writers hurriedly wrote some talking points, which he ultimately set aside when he took to the microphone. Listen closely to the audio (before the video feed begins), and you can hear Kennedy ask if anyone has announced the news of King’s death, to which you can barely hear someone reply they had not told the audience of the tragedy that occurred earlier that day in Memphis. That difficult task would be Kennedy’s.
With a calm and genuine demeanor, Kennedy delivered a speech, not from notecards, but from his soul. It effectively persuaded audience members to grieve and mourn, to remain peaceful and respectful, to set racial differences aside and come together as one during that most difficult time. There would be no rioting that night in Indianapolis, only collective prayers of healing. Sadly, Kennedy himself was assassinated two months later, on June 6, 1968, in Los Angeles, punctuating one of the most volatile summers in U.S. history.
In this week’s Evaluating Famous Speeches, I am asking you to focus on one specific lecture that I think will help you in delivering your own Persuasive Speech:
- Watch the speech below, provided by the History Channel.
- Make note of areas during the speech that reflect material from the specific lecture.
- Write about two (2) topics from that lecture that interested you, topics in which you think Kennedy’s speech was effective in that there is something you can apply to your Persuasive Speech. Be specific in referring to a particular lecture slide or slides, discuss the concept(s) in writing, and relate how it might apply to your upcoming speech. Each of the two (2) lecture concepts you select will need only a few sentences, so be concise.
- As you do this assignment, ask yourself this question: What is Kennedy trying to persuade the audience to do, if anything?
- Finally, recognizing the racial tensions and unrest that communities nationwide have endured in recent times, how do you feel Kennedy’s speech would resonate today?
Here’s the link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bDlET_gK68&t=1s