Robert F. Kennedy offers a master class in what to say when a man you disagreed with is murdered in cold blood.

“I may not agree with Charlie Kirk on politics, but. . .”

“I didn’t agree with a lot of what he said, but. . .”

We’ve all heard a version of this sentence in the last couple days. The hedging, from those who are keen to express their horror at the assassination of a 31-year-old conservative activist—but even keener to reject any possible association with his views. (Views that, it’s worth mentioning, he shared with millions of Americans.) Perhaps America’s problem is encapsulated by these caveats: Signaling our tribe is more important than basic human decency.

How should you respond to a political assassination?

History offers a master class from Senator Robert F. Kennedy. On April 4, 1968, then a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, he was flying to Indianapolis when he learned that Martin Luther King Jr. had been shot. “His eyes went blank,” recalled Johnny Apple, the New York Times reporter who delivered the news to Kennedy. When the plane landed in Indiana, where he was to give a speech ahead of its must-win primary, Kennedy and his team learned that King had died of his wound.

Kennedy’s speech that night is worth revisiting in light of Kirk’s murder on Wednesday in Utah. This is particularly true if you were not a fan of Kirk’s politics and tactics—because Kennedy and King had their differences too. Kennedy’s feelings about King were complicated; as attorney general in his brother’s administration, he had authorized the wiretapping of the civil rights leader, and viewed him with a certain suspicion. They were not close. His staffers wept at the news of King’s death. Kennedy did not.

America, then as now, felt like a giant powder keg. The country was firmly divided over civil rights, and the war in Vietnam. Protests were turning into riots. Kennedy’s brother had been assassinated in 1963; Malcolm X was killed two years later. Just days before Kennedy touched down in Indianapolis, President Lyndon Johnson, exhausted by a country he could not control and increasingly couldn’t recognize, had shocked America by announcing he would not run for reelection.

Kennedy was exhausted too. But fatigue had a way of playing to his advantage, deepening his voice and making it “softer and more resonant,” in the words of his biographer Evan Thomas.

It was with this voice he ventured, despite warnings from Indianapolis’s police chief and his wife Ethel’s pleading not to, into the heart of the city, to deliver such unwelcome news to a mostly black audience. He realized the significance of the moment. Arriving at the podium in his late brother’s coat, Kennedy waved off an aide who had put together a brief speech. He reached into his pockets and took out some crumpled notes. And he announced to the crowd, which had not yet heard, that their greatest champion had been shot and killed.

In audio from the event, you can still hear the dismayed, heartbroken response.

Kennedy suffered from a degree of stage fright, his legs often shaking behind podiums. But after a somewhat awkward start, Kennedy got going and spoke from the heart. He did not pretend that he and King were always on the same side. In fact, he praised him only briefly. (“Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice for his fellow human beings,” he said, “and he died because of that effort.”) Instead, Kennedy spoke to the crowd about the evils of political violence, of giving into hate, about how all of us must unite to protect and continue this project we call America:

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 the 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. . . . 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 . . . 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 . . .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.

Violence erupted in more than 125 American cities that night, leaving 39 people dead and 3,500 injured. But Kennedy’s insistence that the solution to America’s problems must be solved through “love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another” resonated in Indianapolis. The city stayed calm while others burned down.

You don’t need to have loved Kirk or his politics to mourn his passing. Any political assassination is an attack on all of us, our democracy, our God-given right to choose between competing ideas. Kennedy understood that deeply and personally. He loved this country despite what it had taken from him. And he knew the long-suffering crowd of poor black Americans gathered to see him loved this country too, regardless of the fact that he had so little in common with them and their experiences.

After Kirk’s assassination, the central challenge facing the American people is the one Bobby put to us: to see past our differences, to love each other, to embrace our country and dedicate ourselves to improving it. Most importantly, we must reject violence, no matter what bitterness resides within our hearts. Just as Kennedy did. Just as his audience did.

Kennedy did not have Secret Service protection, and he was always aware of the fact that an assassin’s bullet might one day find him. And sure enough, his campaign would end in tragedy just two months later. A devout Catholic and staunch supporter of Israel, he was shot and killed by a Palestinian Christian on June 5, the first anniversary of 1967’s Six-Day War. Yet despite dying at the age of 42, his legacy as a great American patriot and liberal icon had already been secured, in large part because of the speech he gave that dark night in Indianapolis.

His words live on in large part because we all know he was and is correct. We need to make an effort in America. Love is hard work. Being a good American is hard work. And now is the time to embrace that labor, to grow in our compassion toward one another, to befriend and support our fellow Americans no matter how passionate our disagreements are or become.

This is not a way forward in the wake of Kirk’s death. It is the only wayforward. You know it and I know it, just as Kennedy and King knew it. Now we just have to make it happen. It won’t be easy. It must be done.

By Will Rahn

09.14.25 — Things Worth Remembering