'To tame the savageness of man' — Robert Kennedy's speech on the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King Jr

Today is 55 years since the assassination of MLK. When he heard the news, Robert Kennedy delivered an impromptu speech from a flat bed truck that went down in history.

Two of the greatest speeches in American history occurred within the same 24 hour period. On the night before he was assassinated, Dr King spoke in Memphis Tennessee and delivered the soaring ‘I Have Been to the Moutaintop’ which at times rings like a premonition, as he contemplates the risks to his life, a previous assassination attempt (‘if I’d sneeze…