Jim Trulock remembers exactly where he was in the crowd the day Robert F. Kennedy came to Indianapolis for a campaign rally on April 4, 1968. He was right beside the senator, about 15 feet away. Like some others in the crowd, though, Trulock knew it wasn’t actually going to be a campaign rally. Kennedy showed up to inform those gathered that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been shot and killed in Memphis earlier that day.
“I started feeling that mournful feeling,” said Trulock, then 30 years old. “My God, we’ve lost one of our great men. How can this be? … Now I don’t know what to do.”
The Kennedy King Memorial Initiative will recognize the 51st anniversary of Kennedy’s speech with a ceremony in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Park and is encouraging those who witnessed the speech to come forward in advance to be honored.
Trulock, now 81 years old, will be one of the witnesses to give a speech at the event. He was the political chairman of the local United Auto Workers union and had asked his president for a night off to attend the speech. Trulock was helping hand out literature before the event when he found out King was assassinated, but he said Kennedy’s speech helped him come to peace with what had happened.
“What I remember was the fact that this was a time to be contemplative and mournful,” he said, “and he understood what people were thinking and feeling. He felt the same thing. He had a particular poignant feeling about it.”
Joining Trulock to give a personal testimony will be Billie Breaux, who was a teacher in her late 20s in 1968. Breaux said she heard the news on the radio but “it didn’t resonate” until she heard Kennedy that evening. She remembered hearing a sigh in the crowd when Kennedy made the announcement. It felt like another crushing loss for those fighting for civil rights.
“The thing that really impacted me was the fact that this was the ‘60s and we were losing leaders one after another,” said Breaux, now 82 years old. “There were fights in the streets, police gunning Blacks down, just a time of unrest. So it was discomforting.”
Like Trulock, Breaux said Kennedy’s “calming voice and sincerity” helped settle everyone. She said it’s important to continue to recognize this important day and event so future generations can remember the struggle.
“We can’t let down,” she said. “We have to keep fighting.”
Abie Robinson was also at Kennedy’s speech that day, to the right of the stage about 25 feet away, and said his immediate reaction was anger and even vengeance.
“I didn’t like white people right then at that moment,” said Robinson, then 24 years old. “I was very hateful at the moment.”
But Robinson said listening to Kennedy’s brief, impromptu speech calmed his feelings and gave him a new perspective.
“He was able to identify what I was feeling at the moment,” Robinson said. “He was able to make me feel that he had empathy, that he understood the anger. And he reminded me that he knew what the message of Dr. King was.”
That message, Robinson said, was that lashing out in anger would not have done anything positive or made him feel better. Now 74 years old, Robinson is the senior program manager for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Park.
Contact staff writer Tyler Fenwick at 317-762-7853. Follow him on Twitter @Ty_Fenwick.
Abie Robinson was at Robert F. Kennedy’s speech 51 years ago and now works at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Park.
