Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. Of course we cannot vanish it with a program, nor with a resolution. But we can perhaps remember—even if only for a time—that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short movement of life, that they seek—as we do—nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can. Surely this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our hearts brothers and countrymen once again.Two months after delivering that speech, Robert Kennedy won the California and South Dakota primaries and had a good chance to defeat Richard Nixon and win the Presidency. He addressed his cheering supporters in the Ambassador Hotel ballroom, in Los Angeles, and then tried to leave the building through a crowded kitchen. A man in his mid-twenties named Sirhan Sirhan approached him, raised a handgun, and fired multiple times. Kennedy died at Good Samaritan Hospital the next day. He was forty-two years old. ♦
David Remnick
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