RFK

Part 2: The American canon

Two of the greatest speeches in American history happened within 24 hours of one another. The first is Martin Luther King’s “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech, delivered on April 3, 1968.

King’s momentous speeches and urgent moral crescendo reached their apogee in his final address. This speech by King is almost biblical in its meaning, foreshadowing of death, optimism and grace. It is the most optimistic speech in American history.

It is separated by an assassin’s bullet from the words of another great man who, too, would be shot dead in the tumult of 1968. When Senator Robert Kennedy learned about Dr. King’s death, he was about to speak to a crowd of black people from the back of a pickup truck in Indianapolis. Moments before he stepped up, he was told that King was dead.

What followed was the greatest impromptu political speech in American history.