Remembering Bobby
How to mark the fortieth anniversary of Bobby Kennedy's death? Perhaps best with his own words, which formed the great part of Ted Kennedy's beautiful eulogy to his brother in St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York, on June 8, 1968. Please do listen to it here; the speech evokes superbly the spirit of the deceased, his maturity of emotion and complexity of thought, and his sensitive reading of history that sought to inspire and empower. Forty years on, many of us feel what Bobby described as “the excitement and danger that come with even the most peaceful progress” in the candidacy of an individual who likewise challenges us to challenge ourselves, to nurture ‘the better angels of our nature’. Certainly it was these qualities that emboldened the eulogist, who himself is very much in our thoughts at present.
Let us remember him, then, for infusing in others – “those he touched, and who sought to touch him”– a sense of their own potential, and their duty to work for a more just world. To the students he addressed in Cape Town in 1966, to the campaign colleagues who recall his assassination, to those who, on the other side of the Atlantic, in a different generation entirely, listen to his words and are moved by them, Bobby speaks to us still.
Benjamin Ramm
Editor
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