In June of 1968, I was working the second shift at a local
foundry. I’d get home about 2 AM, strip
off my filthy clothes from eight hours grinding rough edges off of gas grills
just out of the molds. (God bless my Mom
for dealing with the laundry that summer!)
I’d shower and fall into bed, getting up just before (or sometime after)
noon to get ready to do it all again.
My Dad was a rural mail carrier, so he rose early to get to
the post office to perform his duties.
Early in the morning of June 5, 1968, Dad came into my bedroom, woke me
and said “They shot Kennedy.”
The day before had been the last major presidential primary
of the year in California. Robert F.
Kennedy had won, and was poised to make a serious run for the Democratic
nomination in Chicago. Leaving the hotel
ballroom after speaking to his supporters, Kennedy was shot three times by
Sirhan Sirhan.[1]
Kennedy succumbed to his wounds the following day, June 6,
1968.
Robert Kennedy often spoke of tolerance and human
rights. He not only spoke of moral
courage, but acted on it, as well. Here
are some quotes:
“Few men are willing to brave the
disapproval of their peers, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their
society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great
intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to
change a world that yields most painfully to change.”[2]
Kennedy called out extremists, too:
“What is objectionable, what is
dangerous about extremists is not that they are extreme, but that they are
intolerant. The evil is not what they say about their cause, but what they say
about their opponents.”
And, he had thoughts about how to challenge the intolerant
man:
“Ultimately, America's answer to the intolerant man is
diversity, the very diversity which our heritage of religious freedom has
inspired.”
Finally, Kennedy talked about the cumulative effect of moral
courage:
“Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve
the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny
ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of
energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the
mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”
Much food
for thought in these insightful quotes.
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