The Hill News

I wrote some speeches for Robert F. Kennedy when he ran for the U.S. Senate in 1964. But I know that he was his forensic best when he discarded his writers’ material and spoke from his heart. His best speech, as a presidential candidate, was his extemporaneous words to a crowd in Indiana that gathered when Martin Luther King was shot. There was no time for a speechwriter to compose appropriate words to deal with such a calamity. RFK’s words â€" spoken from his own experience, having lost a brother (also at the hands of a white man, he reminded the crowd) â€" were touching, honest and might have prevented a riot, as happened in many other cities at that time.

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