Unity or division

To the Editor:

On April 4, 1968, about five years after his brother, President John F. Kennedy, was killed, Senator Robert F. Kennedy was standing in front of a crowd of mostly African Americans in Indianapolis. In 1963, news was not instantaneous, so most people in the crowd were expecting a rehearsed message from Kennedy. Instead, Kennedy delivered the news of the assassination of American Baptist Minister, Martin Luther King Jr.

“...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 bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand with compassion and love.”

Despite deep personal loss, Kennedy delivered the type of leadership that honored King who, in 1967, wrote:

“The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy, instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

So who do we look to for leadership now? To those who find words to unite us or to those who find words to divide us? 

Peter Truitt

Danbury