INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Ethel Kennedy gazed at a monument on the sport where, 40 years ago, her husband gave a speech that helped calm the city after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. — who she said was “a man of peace who is still with us and continues to inspire us.”
Although Ethel Kennedy joined members of the King family and President Clinton to break ground for the monument in May 1994, she saw it for the first time Friday following a ceremony commemorating King’s death and Robert Kennedy’s speech. The monument is made of metal from melted guns, and shows King and Kennedy reaching out to each other.
Hundreds attended Friday’s event at a downtown school next to the monument and what is now Martin Luther King Jr. Park. Dozens of exhibits lined the school halls, and the event began with musical performances by a group of black youth called Dream Keepers that was recently formed to promote King’s calls of peace and racial equality.
Speakers not only recalled the legacy of King’s life, but the off-the-cuff speech Kennedy made that many cite as a major reason that relative peace prevailed in Indianapolis after King’s assassination while riots broke out in dozens of other cities.
State Rep. William Crawford, a black Democrat from Indianapolis, was at the speech that night 40 years ago. He said it left people with a feeling of turning to each other — not on each other.
“The stars aligned over the skies of this site and we created a manifestation of nonviolence,” Crawford said.
Max Kennedy, Ethel Kennedy’s son, said it was an “iconic moment in American history.
“It’s something that helps us connect with the past and know where we were as a country,” he said.
Some said the ceremony was a reminder that much of King’s dream remains unfulfilled.
“I think he would be shocked to realize today, 40 years later, that we are still addressing the problems he confronted when he was alive,” Indianapolis NAACP president Cornell Burris said of King. “Discrimination is very much alive.”
Kennedy was campaigning in Indiana for the Democratic presidential nomination on the night of April 4, 1968, when he learned King had been cut down by a rifle slug as he stood on the balcony of a Memphis hotel.
He announced the civil rights leader’s death to the crowd and urged the shocked audience, most of whom were black, not to answer violence with violence, even though he said it would be natural to be filled with “bitterness, and with hatred and a desire for revenge.”
“Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, compassion and love,” he told the crowd.
At 6:01 p.m, the time King was shot, his speech was played for those at Friday’s ceremony. Many people hung their heads and some wiped tears away as they listened.
“The words and the presentation of Robert Kennedy were a tremendous source of comfort to those who heard them,” Republican Sen. Richard Lugar, who was the city’s mayor at the time, said in a telephone interview Friday. “I’m certain it had very, very constructive results with a much larger group of people, not only in Indianapolis but also around the country.”
Dequan King, a 19-year-old member of the Dream Keepers, said he thought most black youth know of King’s primary objective.
“It’s that he dedicated his life to black people and to see that racism should be out of the country and out of this world because it’s evil,” he said. “But I think as they grow older they will understand more.”
Eddie Booker, 72, of Indianapolis, said he was glad the commemoration ceremony was held.
“As you can see, 40 years later people are still talking about Dr. King, so that’s one of the things that makes this important,” Booker said. “People have not forgotten how great he was.”
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