Feb 19, 2019 3 min read

The 85-day presidential campaign of Robert F. Kennedy in 1968 has taken on a mythological aspect in the half-century since its brief life and tragic conclusion, and Kennedy’s oldest daughter, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, summoned one of the most fabled moments from that crusade in a talk at Washington & Jefferson College Monday morning.

She recounted how the campaign had touched down in Indianapolis on April 4, 1968, when the news broke that Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated in Memphis, Tenn. Rather than duck a campaign appearance as tensions were boiling around the country, Kennedy instead ventured into the city, informed the crowd that King had been killed – many in the throng had not yet heard – and offered calm and comfort, citing his own brother’s murder a little more than four years before, and quoting from the Greek poet Aeschylus, who mused that “in our own despair, against our will, comes with wisdom through the awful grace of God.”

“The crowd went home in peace,” Kennedy Townsend said at the Olin Fine Arts Center Theatre. “It was one of the few places in the country where they had peace.” She said that, given his privileged background, her father might not have been a natural to offer solace at that moment, but “obviously, it took courage. It takes a lifetime of dedication to justice. … He could have been filled with revenge and anger. Yet he didn’t use those words.”

Kennedy Townsend, the former lieutenant governor of Maryland and currently a research professor at Georgetown University, kicked off a daylong symposium on democracy at W&J. Now in its second year, the theme of this year’s event was “Courageous Conversations: Civil Discourse in Divisive Times.” Other discussions throughout the day focused on such topics as activism, “gotcha” politics, social media and gerrymandering.

Kennedy Townsend, 67 and the oldest of Robert and Ethel Kennedy’s 11 children, mixed recollections of her father and uncle, President John F. Kennedy, with advocacy for more civility in public life. She recounted how her father “always thought you should speak to people who disagree with you,” and “speak out, even if it’s not that popular. He did go into places where he was not particularly popular.”

She also thinks the tenor of our current discourse needs to be toned down.

“If you scream and yell, you don’t convince anyone on the other side,” Kennedy Townsend explained.

Another suggestion: People need to get a sense of humor.

“You have to make fun of yourself,” she said. “Don’t be self-righteous. Laughing at yourself is helpful. You can’t take yourself seriously all the time.”

Along with her position at Georgetown, Kennedy Townsend is the director of retirement security at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning Washington, D.C., think tank. Kennedy Townsend was the Democratic nominee for governor in Maryland in 2002, narrowly losing the election to Republican Robert Ehrlich.