Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968. Robert F. Kennedy was in Indianapolis that day, speaking in a black neighborhood. It fell to him to break the terrible news to the large crowd that had gathered to hear him speak words of hope.

He sought to comfort his hearers, and did so by sharing his grief over the assassination of his brother, John F. Kennedy—something he had never done publicly before. In the midst of that sharing, he spontaneously quoted the following lines about pain from the Greek playwright Aeschylus, his favorite poet: "Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."