Forwarding the Conversation

This post is in honor of three individuals whose purposes are connected and whose paths will cross tomorrow. This post is in honor of the MLK, RFK, and Barack Obama.

Nearly forty years ago Bobby Kennedy stood before an almost exclusively African American crowd in Indianapolis and informed them that Martin Luther King had just been assassinated. You can see the video below and read the transcript by clicking here.

Now here we are on the fortieth anniversary of Martin Luther King’s death – the eve of the innauguration of the 44th President of the United States, and the first African American President. Nearly forty years ago Kennedy stood before a crowd and uttered the words:

What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black.

Forty years later that message has been resurrected by Barack Obama who proclaimed in his 2004 DNC convention speech (which you can watch below)

there is not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America — there’s the United States of America.

Barack Obama has sounded the call – yet again – for each of us to summon our better angels. He has summoned us to have love one another and to treat others as we want to be treated. He has summoned us to look at what unites us instead of what divides us. Obama appeals to a part of our humanity that no individual has been able to reach for forty years. Obama calls for each of us to “be the change we want to see in the world.” He calls us now to action because he knew as Kennedy did that:

Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation. 

King inspired a nation to Dream. Kennedy dared to bring that dream into reality. Now Obama stands upon the shoulders of all those who came before him poised to move King’s dream closer to reality. Tomorrow at noon Barack Hussein Obama will be sworn in as our 44th President.  King’s Dream is still alive and we’re not there yet.