Birthday: RFK

Had he lived, Robert Francis Kennedy would be 86 years old today. Perhaps like his brother before him, would also have been a U.S. President and an Elusive Hero. Robert Kennedy, on April 4,1968 in Indianapolis on the campaign trail, upon learning of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr, spoke to the crowd gathered before him, and, like a good enough therapist or parent, put himself in the shoes of an other when he said, “For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and distrust at the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I can only say that I feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling.”

As many that night had shown up with intent to avenge the murder of their beloved spokesperson, it was this empathic attunement which, I believe, circumvented in Indianapolis the violence that erupted in other U.S. cities. By acknowledging, understanding, and accepting such a feeling for himself, noting that he, too, had had a family member killed, the crowd knew that it had been heard and so action as attempt to be understood was not necessary. More than mere empathy, Kennedy, offering himself in communion with their sorrow, offered an alternative that might be shared by all “people who love peace all over the world.” That alternative was “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 they be black,” claiming that “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 who abide in our land.”

In this same address, Robert Kennedy said,
“My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He wrote:

‘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.’ ”

Sometimes I find the work that we do is also through awful grace.

Martin Luther King, Jr Memorial and the Arab Spring

The Martin Luther King, Jr National Memorial, conceived in 1984 by King’s college fraternity and signed into legislation in 1996 by President Clinton, was to be dedicated today, but its dedication was postponed by the vast width of the rains of Hurricane Irene. It stands at 1964 Independence Ave, adjacent to the tidal basin and situated between the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials. (1964 is the year President Johnson signed, with King at his side, Civil Rights legislation.) Forty-eight years ago, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, King gave his “I Have A Dream” speech.

Two huge, granite stones, like a mountain, flank the Memorial’s entrance, symbolic of King’s words: “hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope,” and a thirty foot sculpture of King is carved in this ‘stone of hope.’ A 450 foot wall boasts fourteen quotes, no less relevant today, from King. At its ground breaking in 2006, President Clinton said of the monument to be built there, “The monument … will be but a physical manifestation of the monument already constructed in the lives and hearts of millions of Americans who are more just … because he lived.”

Johnetta Cole, Director of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, said of the monument that it conveys the “power and possibility of change.” She sees as apropos that “Dr. King rises out of a rock … solid and unshakeable.” “To honor and celebrate him,’ she adds, is done “not by our words but by our actions.” Rev. Jesse Jackson, activist and personal friend of King’s, intimates that this memorial compells Americans to “unfinished business” to “fight poverty, illiteracy, disease…”

Sculptor Lei Yixin of China, hoped to convey in King’s serious expression King’s “passion…for hope for the future.” But I think King would have smiled to have his memorial completed and unveiled in the year of the Arab Spring. Despite the violence in Libya, this popular uprising of the Arab world, especially in North Africa, is a bid for justice and liberty, a bid King knew much about.