I think that N.W.A. picked up where Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King would have gone if they hadn't been assassinated.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
The world fell apart. Sirhan Sirhan shot Bobby Kennedy. Why were people shooting all the Kennedys? Had the country gone mad?
Martin Luther King, Jr., would have been the last person to have wanted his iconization and his heroism. He was an enormously guilt-laden man. He was drenched in a sense of shame about his being featured as the preeminent leader of African-American culture and the civil rights movement.
I couldn't say no to A. Philip Randolph and no to Martin Luther King, Jr. These two men, I loved them, I admired them, and they were my heroes.
An interesting parallel: MLK was targeted by J. Edgar Hoover, an unsavory character. I was targeted by the equally unsavory B. Hussein Obama.
Electing a black president was probably the only coup America could pull off.
I think that the implication of King's assassination has not been fully appreciated.
So if 1960 had occurred under the old convention system, Kennedy would have had a very hard time getting the Democratic nomination because he would have been rejected by all those people who had worked with him in Washington.
I believe the death of Bobby Kennedy was in many ways the death of decency in America. I think it was the death of manners and formality, the death of poetry and the death of a dream.
I remember when Martin Luther King was assassinated. I was up early watching television and watched the announcement. I didn't understand what the word 'assassinated' meant.
We don't really know who killed Martin Luther King. We don't really know who killed Bobby Kennedy. We don't really know who killed John Kennedy. We don't really know who killed Tupac Shakur.