Speaking the Truth: Two Bobby Kennedy Speeches

I believe that the only way to genuinely connect with an audience is by speaking the truth. By this, I mean being willing to be vulnerable and exposing how you really feel, and what you really think. The first speech I use to exemplify speaking the truth was given by Robert F. (Bobby) Kennedy the night that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated (April 4, 1968). I close with the speech Kennedy gave the day after the assassination of Dr. King.

It is rare to have the opportunity to compare two different speeches by the same person prompted by the same event. Yet, that is exactly what we get in these speeches. One was an impromptu set of remarks and the other was delivered from a prepared text. When I show these speeches, students often ask, “why can’t people (i.e., politicians) speak like that anymore?” I tell them they can. But they don’t.

After learning of Dr. King’s death, Kennedy decided to keep this campaign appearance despite the recommendations of the police and other officials in Indianapolis that he cancel it. It is probably a good thing that he did speak. In over 100 cities around the country, there were riots that night in response to the tragic slaying of the civil rights leader. But nothing happened in Indianapolis. And many attribute that calm to Kennedy’s willingness to speak publicly about the event.

While not pretty or polished, Kennedy’s impromptu remarks to the largely African-American audience were certainly heartfelt and probably wrenching for him to give. It is almost as if he was reliving his brother’s assassination just five years before. He seemed stunned, even traumatized, or, in his case, re-traumatized by King’s murder. He’s also incredibly nervous as demonstrated by his constant wringing of the notes he was holding but never looked at.

Kennedy is clearly present in the moment saying what he feels needs to be said to that particular group of people at that particular time.

He even mentions his brother’s assassination which he never talked about publicly. Congressman John Lewis feels that Kennedy’s willingness to talk about his brother demonstrated his empathy and enabled him to connect with the audience.

He is also thinking every minute that he’s speaking. The best example of this is the time that he took—that incredibly long pause—to remember the exact words of that lengthy, but appropriate Aeschylus quote.

Not surprisingly, because he is thinking as he speaking, the speech is not smooth but halting. It is not logical at times (e.g., the point about his brother being killed by a white man). But it is right for the occasion and the audience and could only come from someone who has experienced such a tragedy.

What do I want you to take away from this speech? The power of speaking the truth, of being willing to be vulnerable and expose your pain if you want to connect with an audience in such a situation. Kennedy came across as empathetic and caring. What more can you offer to people who are grieving?

The next day Kennedy kept his speaking engagement at the City Club of Cleveland. He canceled all his other campaign appearances.

The City Club is nonpartisan and is the oldest continuously operating free-speech forum in the United States according to its website. Looking back, it was the perfect forum for this speech.

Considering how quickly the speech was prepared, it is a remarkably powerful speech. The speech was written by Adam Walinsky and Jeff Greenfield, his principal speechwriters. While the theme is unique, the mindless menace of violence, I’m sure that a good part of the speech was recycled from other speeches that Kennedy had given. How else could they have put it together in such a short time? And recycling is good if the content is timely and appropriate to the audience. It makes the speechwriter’s life a little easier and is easier for the speaker to deliver since he or she is familiar with the material.

While both speeches—the impromptu as well as the prepared one—were in response to Dr. King’s death, they are very different speeches because they are directed at different audiences, have a different objective, and communicate a different message.

In Indianapolis, Kennedy had to be concerned about the feelings of the people in front of him when he announced the death of Dr. King. His message: try to understand and trust in the system. He wanted them to honor their fallen leader by following his nonviolent philosophy. He did this by telling his own story and offering empathy. It was an emotional message, straight from the heart. The speech was all about Dr. King and the pain that his death would cause that audience.

In Cleveland, Dr. King is not mentioned at all. Clearly, he is on everybody’s mind and they feel his loss, but the assassination in Memphis gives way to a much bigger, broader, more universal discussion of violence itself. This speech is not just about the death of one man, but about the violence that is done to ordinary men and women every day. And it follows a night of nationwide rioting.

Kennedy’s purpose here is not to eulogize Dr. King, but to urge these influential leaders to do something about violence in general. While never asking for their vote, this speech pretty much sums up everything that he was running for. What he stood for. He’s against the war in Vietnam, but he is also against anyone who uses violence to protest against that war. He wants to end poverty because it is another form of violence since it can destroy a person’s soul. He wants justice for all, not just the rich or the well-educated. Like King, he wants an end to racial discrimination. And he wants to call attention to those things in American life that lead to or permit violence to flourish.

The speech is beautifully written and carefully crafted, but you hear the man’s anguish in his voice and feel his commitment to justice and peace. He is speaking his truth even if it’s from a prepared text.

This is pain. This is poetry. This is speaking the truth.

The speech uses anaphora, alliteration, antithesis, and what I call “visual verbs” to create memorable images; for example, “the mindless menace of violence which stains our land and every one of our lives”, “violence breeds violence”, “whenever we tear at the fabric of our lives which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children…”, and “only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our souls”. This is pain. This is poetry. This is speaking the truth.

He also quotes Lincoln directly and later alludes to Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address at the end of the speech when he talks about “binding up the wounds”.

The speechwriters have also captured the speaker’s voice and distinctive rhythm with the way that he seems to build on what has gone before; for example, using antithesis to talk about “alien men with whom we share a city, but not a community, men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in a common effort”. This is probably best illustrated, however, in the successive clauses (anaphora) that begin with the phrase “when you teach…”. You also see it in the use of balanced phrases in quick succession like “The victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown.”

While Kennedy clearly respected and trusted his speechwriters, he was not above changing the text when he delivered the speech. For example, I think he improved upon the text by adding “and on in this country of ours” to the end of the second paragraph to make us feel that violence is endless. And he added the Tennyson quote at the end. To my mind, this was not as good an ending to the speech as the one that the speechwriters had written (the anaphora beginning with “surely”). But it’s the speaker’s speech, not the writer’s. And that’s the way it should be.

It is not your typical political speech and he is not your typical politician.

The speech is long on problem (defining and describing violence) and short on solution (what to do about it)until you realize that the only way to curb the violence is to recognize our common humanity and begin to treat people as equals. It is not your typical political speech and he is not your typical politician. In fact, he sounds more like a spiritual leader than someone campaigning for the presidency. But what better way to honor the memory of the nonviolent leader than to carry on his work by spreading his message?

So what can you take away from analyzing Kennedy’s two speeches? First, match the message and the delivery to the occasion and the audience. What Kennedy said in Indianapolis would not have been right for the audience in Cleveland and vice versa. Second, use an important occasion to say something important. Lincoln did this at Gettysburg. Ronald Reagan did it when he commemorated the 40^th anniversary of the Normandy invasion. And Kennedy did it in both Indianapolis and Cleveland in 1968. Third, really great speeches, like great works of art, transcend their time. That’s certainly the case with the “Mindless Menace of Violence” speech. It’s as appropriate today as it was when it was given almost 50 years ago. If not more so.

Why don’t people speak like that anymore?