History Rhymes and Rhetoric Echoes

Just now, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey just gave a speech at a press conference after fatal shooting of a woman by an ICE agent. The speech will get a lot of attention for the mayor’s command, “To ICE, get the fuck out of Minneapolis.”

But it’s also notable for the clearest imaginable echo of Robert F. Kennedy’s famous speech in Indianapolis after the assassination of Martin Luther King, in 1968.

Kennedy urged the mostly Black crowd, in shock at just having learned of King’s assassination, to make “an effort to understand with compassion and love.”

He said, “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.”

He concluded, “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. … 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.”

Perhaps less eloquently but more succinctly, Mayor Frey urged the Minneapolis community to show “the kind of courage, bravery, love and compassion that makes Minneapolis Minneapolis and that makes America America.”

He said, “If you’re angry, I get it. I am too. If you’re feeling that kind of despair, it’s understandable.”

But, he concluded, “Let’s show them who we can be, let’s show up with peace. To march, to protest, to hug one another, to love all the way with peace.”