I read something the other day that really struck me – that the most powerful speeches are those which inspire an audience to commit to a cause larger than themselves – and by doing so help them believe they can make a “dent in the universe.”
What a wonderful phrase…and idea.
And so, in the way that thoughts unfold, I was reminded on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday yesterday that it was here in Indianapolis that Bobby Kennedy informed a crowd on the night of April 4, 1968, that Dr. King had been shot and killed. The speech he gave that night made a dent in the universe and encouraged his audience to do the same.
As told on NPR on April 4, 2008, the 40th anniversary of the event, “It was supposed to be a routine campaign stop. In a poor section of Indianapolis…a largely black crowd had waited an hour to hear the presidential candidate speak. The candidate, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, had been warned by the police chief not to go.
“As his car entered the neighborhood, his police escort left him. Once there, he stood on the back of a flatbed truck. He turned to an aide and asked, ‘Do they know about Martin Luther King?’
“They didn’t, and it was left to Kennedy to tell them that King had been shot and killed that night in Memphis, Tenn. The crowd gasped in horror.”
In a gentle and compassionate voice, Kennedy challenged the crowd to move either in the direction of “bitterness, hatred and a desire for revenge” or to “make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, compassion and love.”
Kennedy’s own story increased his credibility: “For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and mistrust of the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I would only say that I can also feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, and he was killed by a white man.”
And then he quoted Aeschylus, whom he called his favorite poet: “Even 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.”
He shared his hopes for the country: “What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; violence and lawlessness, but is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer in our country, whether they be white, or whether they be black.”
And then he asked them to make a dent in the universe: “So I ask you 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.
“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.”
The NPR story concludes, “Many other American cities burned after King was killed. But there was no fire in Indianapolis, which heard the words of Robert Kennedy.
“A historian says a well-organized black community kept its calm. But it’s hard to overlook the image of one single man, standing on a flatbed truck, who never looked down at the paper in his hand – only at the faces in the crowd.”
Leaders in business, government and education may never have as important a message to deliver. But every day businesses, governments and educational institutions around the world impact the lives of individuals in ways big and small. And each of them has a story to tell that can move audiences to embrace something larger than themselves. Every leader can exhort his or her audience to “make a dent in the universe.”
And they should.
