Robert Kennedy Address To Cleveland City Club Analysis

For this assignment I chose to analyze the document of Robert Kennedy’s address to the Cleveland City Club. This document was written by Robert Kennedy and the help of his speechwriters and was given on April 5th, 1968. The speech was given only a day after Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated and the country now (delete “now”) was in a state of unrest and much dismay. The main idea of this document is to address and quell the growing violence and hostilities in the nation as a whole between races and continue to search for solutions to the problems of racial injustice while holding ourselves accountable. After hearing of the King assassination and the shockwave it had sent ripping through the United States, Kennedy knew that making this speech in the interest of his political campaign would not only find himself being viewed less by his political fan base but would be a very distasteful and unsatisfactory strategy on his …show more content…
What would be now considered the highest point of racial tension in that era, Kennedy knew that it had to be addressed or things would have gotten much worse. “Some looks for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear; violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleaning of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul.” He explains in his speech that only(get rid of “only”) violence and repression will continue the cycle the country has been in for years unless they begin a cleansing from the inside-out of the American culture. He even(get rid of “even”) goes on to talk about the slow destruction of discrimination against blacks in schools, housing, and even hunger that they had faced during that point in time as well. Along with this, he shows us the idea that when hate is taught, people only see each other as enemies and not fellow