So began a speech made 40 years ago this evening by Senator Robert Kennedy announcing to his mostly African American audience in Indianapolis that Dr. Martin Luther King had been shot and killed. Joe Klein's book, Politics Lost, begins with a description of this moment in time and laments the fact that Presidential campaigns have gone down hill ever since. When our current discussions concern bowling scores in Altoona, he just might be right.
Last Saturday at the TLT Symposium, Professor Nichola Gutgold spoke of rhetorical moments like this and how she uses YouTube and other on-line resources to engage her students in the study of communications and rhetoric. On the American Rhetoric Web site I linked to above, you can find the text of Senator Kennedy's speech, an MP3 file of the audio recording, and a YouTube rendering for the video for the speech. If you are at all interested in American rhetoric, it's worth spending some time on this site.
This has been a week of remembrance -- the 40 year anniversary of Dr. King's death, his speeches, the people who were with him at the time of his death, and the Memphis strikes that brought him there in the first place. We've come a long way, but we still have a way to go.
Take some time and listen to the words of Dr. King and Senator Kennedy. They still resonate 40 years later.
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