Robert F. Kennedy announces Martin Luther King Jr.’s death to an audience in Indianapolis - April 4, 1968.

You can watch his full speech here. 

Senator Kennedy’s words had a great impact - he was credited with preventing the violent riots that spread across the country after King’s assassination from occurring in Indianapolis, and some consider this speech one of the greatest in modern American history. He also surprised many of his aides by mentioning the assassination of his brother five years earlier, in an attempt to unite black and white Americans during these “difficult times”. Two months later, Kennedy himself would be assassinated while campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination.