Just a reminder that it was 40 years ago today that the world lost a great leader, at just 39 years old, in Martin Luther King. If you haven’t yet viewed the moving and inspirational speech Robert Kennedy made on that night, it’s below.
A little story I heard our Leaders in London conference chair Rene Carayol tell, he having heard it from Rudy Giuliani, two-time Mayor of New York, who is coming to speak to us at this year’s summit: Giuliani’s father took him to see Dr. King speak, saying in advance something like “I want you to see what a dangerous man sounds like. America has to be careful of people like this.” After they’d both listened to Dr. King speak for a little while, Giuliani’s father leant down to him and said something like “Forget what I said. You are listening to a great, great man.” Giuliani says there were tears in his father’s eyes. Just to remind us that the best leadership moves and inspires us.
Here’s Robert Kennedy on that night forty years ago. Professor John Kotter showed us this speech at Leaders in London 2006 and told us a story of the hidden acts of leadership behind this public face of leadership that night. Over 100 American cities saw riots that night in outrage and grief at Dr. King’s death. But not Indianapolis, thanks to this speech and the other acts of leadership orchestrated by Kennedy in the background, involving 100 young campaign supporters of his who went out into the city after this speech as peace emissaries, with the job, Kennedy told them, of looking for trouble spots, and comforting and consoling people who were fiercely angry, and reminding them of what Dr. King stood for. The screen is dark for thirty seconds as the cameraman was taken by surprise:
Posted on behalf of
Leaders in London
by
Phil Dourado of
The Leadership Hub
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