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I have bad news for
you, for all of our fellow citizens, and people who
love peace all over the world, and that is that
Martin Luther King was shot and killed tonight.
Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to
justice for his fellow human beings, and he died
because of that effort.
In this difficult day, in this difficult time for
the United States, it is perhaps well to ask what
kind of a nation we are and what direction we want
to move in. For those of you who are
black--considering the evidence there evidently is,
that there were white people who were
responsible--you can be filled with bitterness, with
hatred, and a desire for revenge. We can move in
that direction as a country, in great
polarization--black people amongst black, white
people amongst white, filled with hatred toward one
another.
Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did,
to understand and to comprehend, and to replace that
violence, that stain of blood shed that has spread
across our land, with an effort to understand with
compassion and love.
Let us dedicate ourselves to...tame the savageness
of man and make gentle the life of this world.
For those of you who are black and are tempted to be
filled with hatred and distrust at the injustice of
such an act, against all white people, I can only
say that I feel in my own heart that same kind of
feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he
was killed by a white man. But we have to make an
effort in the United States, we have to make an
effort to understand, to go beyond these rather
difficult times.
My favourite poet was
Aeschylus. He wrote: "In our sleep, pain which
cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart
until, in our own despair, against our will, comes
wisdom through the awful grace of God."
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.
So I shall ask you tonight to return home, to say a
prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, that's
true, but more importantly, to say a prayer for our
own country, which all of us love--a prayer for
understanding and that compassion of which I spoke.
We can do well in this country. We will have
difficult times; we've had difficult times in the
past; we will have difficult times in the future. It
is not the end of violence; it is not the end of
lawlessness; it is not the end of disorder.
But the vast majority of white people and the vast
majority of black people in this country want to
live together, want to improve the quality of our
life, and want justice for all human beings who
abide in our land.
Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote
so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and
make gentle the life of this world.
Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer
for our country and for our people.
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