This article was originally published on the 35th anniversary of Robert Kennedy's visit to Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee.
In this speech he talked about the current dissent amongst young people and the reasons behind it.
Later that day he also talked at the University of Alabama, where he talked about the divisions amongst the North and the South and pushed for reconciliation. You can find photographs from his visit at the University of Alabama website. You can also read the speech at the University of Alabama website. Click on the parts under Text of Robert F. Kennedy's speech to see the document.
Like the other post about his visit to Kansas, I found out about these speeches through the book The Gospel According to RFK: Why It Matters Now, edited by Norman MacAfee.
6 comments:
thanks for all of these. I read them all - even the ones that I recognize that I have read before at some point in my life. Every time,in every instance, they cause my eyes to well up. Oh dear God what might have been. Today, in San Diego, I listened to the local NPR affiliate running its regular "editor's roundtable" segment, talking about the the relatively flaccid protest/agitation against the Iraq debacle which shows no signs of ending. The cynicism of one of the editors inspired him to refer to the handful of protesters at a 5th anniversary protest/vigil in Balboa Park as a group "freeze dried from the sixties." I cannot help but juxtapose the callous dismissal in that statement with the description my mother-in-law gives of the same city and a different location (The El Cortez Hotel - now a condo conversion) on that frenzied night in early June when RFK spoke there. Electricity and passion and excitement the kind and character of which is routinely expressed nowadays at sporting events.
The inescapable point ofyour postings and the links contained therein is that there are literally not a handful of "Freeze dried hippies" out there, but tens of thousands of people still suffering the lingering effects of this loss, true, but who themselves because of that feeling of loss and sorrow can be moved, perhaps to act in unison - to bring about those "ripples of hope" which can "sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance." We just need a little, coordinated, firm nudge in the right direction.
Thanks for this wonderful posting. A lot of people have become cynical about politics, but many others still remember the hope and the idealism they felt when RFK was running for president. We need to get beyond the division and the bitterness and work together to literally save the world.
March 21, 1968 I was at the Nashville airport and was among the throng that greeted RFK. I shook his hand a number of times and actually reached out a permanently borrowed the PT109 tie clasp he was wearing. I still have it to this day. Rod Fife
I was present when RFK spoke at Vanderbilt that day. The sense of history was strong, and people cheered wildly in support of almost everything he said, although I suspected that many of those present were opposed to his "liberal" leanings. After his speech (and those of John Glenn and George Hamilton IV) I tried in vain to shake his hand. I was able to reach my arm over his right shoulder, however. I knew--and know--that it was an ignorant thing to do, but this was my ONE CHANCE! I've often wondered since then if there are any photographs out there of my encounter with him. That evening on the CBS Evening News, Roger Mudd reported that "Today Nashville became Mashville" because of the crowd pressing around Mr. Kennedy.
I was present when RFK spoke at Vanderbilt that day. The sense of history was strong, and people cheered wildly in support of almost everything he said, although I suspected that many of those present were opposed to his "liberal" leanings. After his speech (and those of John Glenn and George Hamilton IV) I tried in vain to shake his hand. I was able to reach my arm over his right shoulder, however. I knew--and know--that it was an ignorant thing to do, but this was my ONE CHANCE! I've often wondered since then if there are any photographs out there of my encounter with him. That evening on the CBS Evening News, Roger Mudd reported that "Today Nashville became Mashville" because of the crowd pressing around Mr. Kennedy.
Thanks for sharing your memories Richard. So great that you got so close to him :)
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