VIDEO: Senator Ted Kennedy's Address to Alaskans

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy spoke to the Alaska Democratic Party Convention in Sitka on April 7, 1968. He addressed the convention shortly after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and weeks before Robert F. Kennedy's death. Senator Ted Kennedy was standing in for his brother, Robert, who had been scheduled to speak.

This speech was discovered as an open reel simply marked, "Ted Kennedy Sitka" forty years later and was in near perfect condition.

Senator Mark Begich referred to this speech in his statement:

"Many Alaskans remember Senator Kennedy's visits to our state - notably in 1968, when he joined Alaskans in mourning the loss of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and in 1971, when he promised rural Alaska help fighting poverty, a promise he made good on."

Courtesy the Alaska State Library Historical Collections.

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Comments

[mychagall]

Thank you for sharing this, Shannyn. He was a truly incredible man and thus ends an era of true Democratic Liberalism, along with Bobby and LBJ.. The Kennedy legacy is like no other and I will miss him terribly.

Few have accomplished as much as Teddy. I hope that Obama rips off the carpet and puts in the new with Health Care reform carpeting. The terms of Teddy's endorsement of Obama was to get the Health Care Reform bill passed. Obama made a promise.. Even if his approval ratings plummet and he doesn't get re-elected, I can't say enough about how important it is.

[profoundimagery]

Prophetic of the current apathy, and even more hate. Ironically the same opportunity to create a milestones of social equality and justice through awakened social consciousness - with even more audacity! As we think, imagine solutions; look at the examples of other nations, listen to facts, we resist the apathy, and ignorance, and become the solution.

Rest in Peace Senator Kennedy. Hopefully your passing will cause the apathetic to take a peek behind the Wizard's curtains and see the tiny 1% minority/cult of conglomerates that own the mass media while calling itself Liberal - disgracing their Charter as Republican or Blue Dog Democrats for the greed of big Oil, Coal, Banks, etc. That is the industrial military complex.

Knowing the cause of the problem, provides the level of action necessary to restore the Constitution. Checking facts, would in itself, set the dynamics in motion for us to "throw the bums out", and rapidly achieve our potential as a true Democracy and not as the current deregulated Oligarchy (rule by a small class), controlling us through reduced access to education and creating debt.

[Geoffrey Dunn - Huffpost Blogger]

What great footage! A great post, Shannyn, as usual. The footage of Senator Ernest Gruening is equally amazing. Gruening, a Democrat, was an Alaskan political pioneer, and one of only two US senators to vote against the Tonkin Gulf Resolution (the 60s equivalent of the Iraq War resolution), which paved the way for the escalation of the Vietnam War. Also the footage of Gene Guess, former Speaker of the Alaska House, who was also a law school classmate of Teddy Kennedy. Wouldn't it be a worthy tribute to the fallen senator for Congress to pass some meaningful health care legislation—and call lie to the duplicities and distortions of its opponents in Alaska, most notably its former governor Sarah Palin. In his speech in Sitka, Kennedy called attention to the civil unrest that was sparked in the U.S. in the aftermath of Martin Luther King's assassination. King's vision was precisely the antithesis of that promulgated by Sarah Palin—who this week called upon her followers to support the likes of Glenn Beck, a political fraud who recently called the first African American president of the United States a racist. She has once again shamed the Last Frontier with such misguided and hyperbolic rhetoric. She is a practitioner of the same hatred and sickness that Teddy Kennedy deplored in Sitka four long decades ago.

[JohnnyHifi]

An amazing speech in momentous times. And poor Bobby was next. Thank you Ted and your brothers for all you have done for people everywhere. Rest in Peace 'Some men see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were and say why not!'