After King’s assassination Senator Robert Kennedy stated, “it is perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in.” What did Kennedy see as the solution to the moral and political crisis in the wake of King’s assassination?
In the time immediately after King's death, it was necessary for the people of the nation to be kept under control. At a rally for his presidency, Robert Kennedy, brother of John F. Kennedy, was given the job of presenting the horrifying news of King's assassination to the crowd. "Just as an audience of nearly one thousand gathered, (John) Lewis learned of King’s assassination in Memphis. The staff agreed that Senator Kennedy would break the news of the tragedy to the predominantly black crowd." Kennedy did his best to soothe the crowd in such a time of chaos. He said "We can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend,and to replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand with compassion and love." The citizens chose to express their grief in awful manners. Many turned to violence in mass riots throughout the country. It was sad for those pushing for peace because these riots went against everything King, as well as many others, stood for. With the death of King, came the loss of peace.
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