The day after Martin Luther King was assassinated in April 1968, Robert F. Kennedy was in Cleveland to deliver a scheduled speech to the Cleveland City Club. He tossed it out to deliver a different speech, which began, “This is a time of shame and sorrow.”
Kennedy’s call for an end to the “mindless menace of violence” ended with these words, which seem more plausible this week than they did last, when I read them at the end of PSA World Conference session by the current CEO of the Cleveland City Club:
Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. Of course we cannot vanish it with a program, nor with a resolution.
But we can perhaps remember—even if only for a time—that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short movement of life, that they seek—as we do—nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.
Surely this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our hearts brothers and countrymen once again.
Photo taken today in Humboldt Park, Chicago.
Leave a Reply