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What makes this
item unique are the two Unofficial First Day Cancels - from the
Ambassador Hotel for the RFK issue, (Where he was shot) and from
Watts Station, LA for the MLK issue. The official cities were
Washington, D.C. and Atlanta GA. Martin and Robert were shot
exactly two months apart on April 4, 1968 and June 4, 1968.
Robert Kennedy died two days later on June 6, 1968
Official Statement
on the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
by Robert Kennedy on April 4, 1968
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 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, 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 make gentle the life of this world.
Let us dedicate
ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people. |
