Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History (32 page)

As attorney general, Robert Kennedy had approved the FBI wiretapping of Dr. King, which led to even more intimate surveillance by state and local police; this action may have been in the back of his mind as he
shared his shock and sorrow with a stunned audience. His statement “It is not the end of violence” was prescient; Robert Kennedy was gunned down in California three months later.

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I HAVE BAD
news for you, for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world, and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and killed tonight.

Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice for his fellow human beings, and he died because of that effort.

In this difficult day, 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.

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.

My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He wrote, “In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”

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 towards 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, that’s true, 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.

We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times. We’ve had difficult times in the past. We will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; it is not the end of disorder.

But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings who abide in our land.

Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and to make gentle the life of this world.

Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.

A personal note from the anthologist: as a Nixon White House speechwriter, I turned out a speech for Senate Minority Leader Everett McKinley Dirksen, hailing the first hundred days of the Nixon administration. In it, I had the senator saying, “We finally have a firm hand on the rudder of the Ship of State.” He passed on to me this comment from a constituent: “If there’s a firm hand on the rudder, then somebody’s drowning and nobody’s minding the tiller.”

I felt guilty about that mixed-up metaphor, and when the Illinois
senator with the mellifluous voice and carefully tousled hair died, I volunteered to write the eulogy President Nixon was to deliver in the Capitol Rotunda on September 9, 1969. Mr. Nixon returned my first draft, a respectable but commonplace effort with the comment “Ev was a politician, in the best sense. Show here what that word meant to him.” I drafted a passage defining the Dirksen idea of an honorable politician, which the president edited and used as the centerpiece of his tribute. Mr. Nixon added his own Sophoclean closing, which he has used for many years in most of his tributes and memorials.

The reference to Dirksen’s love of the marigold had to do with his annual attempt to have it named our national flower; that oratorical interlude in Senate business is on p. 565.

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WHEN DANIEL WEBSTER
died more than a century ago, a man who differed strongly with him on many public issues rose in Congress to say this in eulogy, “Our great men are the common property of the country.”

Everett Dirksen, of Illinois, was and is the “common property” of all the fifty states.

Senator Dirksen belonged to all of us because he always put his country first. He was an outspoken partisan, he was an individualist of the first rank, but he put his nation before himself and before his party….

Through four presidencies, through the adult life of most Americans living today, Everett Dirksen has had a hand in shaping almost every important law that affects our lives.

Everett Dirksen was a politician in the finest sense of that much abused word. If he were here, I think he might put it this way:

A politician knows that more important than the bill that is proposed is the law that is passed.

A politician knows that his friends are not always his allies, and that his adversaries are not his enemies.

A politician knows how to make the process of democracy work, and loves the intricate workings of the democratic system.

A politician knows not only how to count votes, but how to make his vote count.

A politician knows that his words are his weapons, but that his word is his bond.

A politician knows that only if he leaves room for discussion and room for concession can he gain room for maneuver.

A politician knows that the best way to be a winner is to make the other side feel it does not have to be a loser.

And a politician—in the Dirksen tradition—knows both the name of the game and the rules of the game, and he seeks his ends through the time-honored democratic means.

By being that kind of politician, this “Man of the Minority” earned the respect and affection of the majority. And by the special way he gave leadership to legislation, he added grace and elegance and courtliness to the word “politician.”

That is how he became the leader of a minority, and one of the leaders of our nation. And that is why, when the Senate worked its way, Everett Dirksen so often worked his way….

Some will remember his voice—that unforgettable voice—that rolled as deep and majestically as the river that defines the western border of the state of Illinois he loved so well. Others will remember the unfailing—often self-deprecating—sense of humor, which proved that a man of serious purpose need never take himself too seriously.

Others will remember the mastery of language, the gift of oratory that placed him in a class with Bryan and Churchill, showing, as only he would put it, that “the oil can is mightier than the sword.”

But as we do honor to his memory, let us never forget the single quality that made him unique, the quality that made him powerful made him beloved: the quality of character.

Everett Dirksen cultivated an appearance that made him seem old-fashioned, an incarnation of a bygone year. But that quality of character is as modern as a Saturn 5.

As he could persuade, he could be persuaded. His respect for other points of view lent weight to his own point of view. He was not afraid to change his position if he were persuaded that he had been wrong. That tolerance and sympathy were elements of his character, and that character gained him the affection and esteem of millions of his fellow Americans.

We shall always remember Everett Dirksen in the terms he used to describe his beloved marigolds: hardy, vivid, exuberant, colorful—and uniquely American.

To his family, his staff, and his legion of friends who knew and loved Everett Dirksen, I would like to add a personal word.

There are memorable moments we will never know again—those eloquent speeches, the incomparable anecdotes, those wonderfully happy birthday parties.

But he, least of all, would want this to be a sad occasion. With his
dramatic sense of history, I can hear him now speaking of the glory of this moment.

As a man of politics, he knew both victory and defeat.

As a student of philosophy, he knew the triumph of and the tragedy and the misery of life.

And as a student of history, he knew that some men achieve greatness, others are not recognized for their greatness until after their death. Only a privileged few live to hear the favorable verdict of history on their careers.

Two thousand years ago the poet Sophocles wrote, “One must wait until the evening to see how splendid the day has been.”

We who were privileged to be his friends can take comfort in the fact that Everett Dirksen—in the rich evening of his life, his leadership unchallenged, his mind clear, his great voice still powerful across the land—could look back upon his life and say, “The day has indeed been splendid.”

“Eloquence” is not a word associated with President Carter. After his inaugural address, he walked instead of riding in his parade, triggering the assessment from this quarter that the whole day’s work was pedestrian. Yet his “the” speech—the one that he made and remade throughout his campaign to the nomination—touched a chord with many in that
post-Watergate period. “All I want is the same thing you want,” he told the California State Senate in May of 1976. “To have a nation with a government that is as good and honest and decent and competent and compassionate and as filled with love as are the American people.”

He delivered set speeches stiffly, smiling at the wrong moments, but could come across warmly in recounting anecdotes. On December 2, 1977, President Carter appeared before a large Washington dinner raising funds for Hubert Humphrey’s institute at the University of Minnesota. He told a few personal stories about his relationship with the guest of honor; the low-key, self-deprecating humor went over well and the three episodes about Humphrey’s brief and sometimes unknowing relationship with three members of the Carter family—especially because of the mental pictures evoked—make a lasting impression.

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HE IS A
man who has touched my life and that of my family, as I’m sure he’s touched almost everyone here, in a strange and very delightful way. And I’m going to tell you just a few brief instances that occurred, actually, long before I had any dreams of coming to Washington myself.

The first time I heard about Senator Humphrey was when I was in the navy, and he made a famous speech at the Democratic National Convention. He was quite well known in Georgia. I don’t think anyone else has kept more Georgia politicians from seeing the end of a Democratic convention than Senator Humphrey has, because it got so that every time he walked in, they walked out and came back home.

So, in 1964, when he became the vice-presidential candidate, in Georgia, it wasn’t a very popular thing to be for the Johnson-Humphrey slate. My mother, Lillian, ran the Sumter County Johnson-Humphrey headquarters. And I could always tell when my mother was coming down the road, because she was in a brand-new automobile with the windows broken out, the radio antenna tied in a knot, and the car painted with soap.

In that campaign, Hubert and Muriel came down to south Georgia to Moultrie for a Democratic rally. And because of my mother’s loyalty, she was given the honor of picking up Muriel at the airport. And Rosalynn and my mother and Muriel and my sister Gloria went down to Moultrie to attend the rally. Senator Humphrey made a speech, and they had a women’s reception for Muriel. And they were riding around that south Georgia town getting ready for the reception. Everybody in town was very excited. And as Muriel approached the site, she said, “Are any black women invited to the reception?”

For a long time no one spoke, and finally my sister said, “I don’t know.” She knew quite well that they weren’t. And Muriel said, “I’m not going in.” So, they stopped the car, and my sister Gloria went inside to check and let the hostess know that Muriel was not coming to the reception. But in a few minutes, Gloria came back and said, “Mrs. Humphrey, it’s okay.” So, she went in and, sure enough, there were several black ladies there at the reception. And Muriel never knew until now that the maids just took off their aprons for the occasion. But that was the first integrated reception in south Georgia, Muriel, and you are responsible for it.

Ten or eleven years ago, when I was not in political office at all, Senator Humphrey was vice-president. He had been to Europe on a long, tedious, very successful trip. And he came down to Atlanta, Georgia, to visit in the home of a friend named Marvin Shube. And I was invited there to meet him, which was a great honor for me. I have never yet met a Democratic president, and he was the only Democratic vice-president I had ever met. And I stood there knowing that he was very weary because he had just returned from Europe. But he answered the eager questions of those Georgia friends until quite late in the morning, about two o’clock. And he was very well briefed, because when I walked in the room, he said, “Young man, I understand that your mother is in the Peace Corps in India.”

And I said, “Yes, sir, that’s right.” He said, “Well I’ve been very interested in the Peace Corps. The idea originally came from me, and I’ve been proud to see it put into effect.” He said, “Where’s your mother?” And I said, “She’s near Bombay.” He said, “How’s she getting along?” I said, “Well she’s quite lonely, sir. She’s been there about six months, and she’s not seen anybody, even the Peace Corps officials. She’s in a little town called Vikhroli.”