JOE BIDEN

Joe Biden served as the forty-seventh vice president of the United States, from 2009 to 2017. In 1972, when won his first senatorial bid, Biden was the sixth-youngest person in history to be elected to the U.S. Senate, where he served from 1973 to 2009. Biden served as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee and is credited with reforms related to drug policy, crime prevention, civil liberties, and the creation of both the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act and the Violence against Women Act.

As vice president, Biden oversaw infrastructure spending in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, Iraq policy until the withdrawal of US troops in 2011, tax relief, women’s rights, marriage equality, the expansion of cancer research, and much more. He received the Medal of Freedom from President Obama in 2017.

Vice President Biden currently serves as the Benjamin Franklin Presidential Practice Professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

One of the first people to call Joe Biden when his wife and child died in a tragic car accident in December 1972, was my grandmother, Rose Kennedy. Uncle Teddy was one of the first people to come to the hospital. Our families became close friends and political allies. Vice President Biden accepted the Robert F. Kennedy Ripple of Hope Award in 2016.

REMARKS FROM JOE BIDEN’S ACCEPTANCE OF THE RFK RIPPLE OF HOPE AWARD

Ethel, when you called me to inform me that I would receive this honor, I told you then what I’ll tell you now. Trying not to be emotional about it. Look, I’ve only had—and this is the God’s truth, anybody, including Teddy Kennedy, who became my mentor and one of my best friends in the Senate, can tell you—I only had one political hero in my whole life. And that’s not hyperbole. It was Robert Kennedy. And when I received the call, I thought, “This cannot be really happening.”

I was a senior in law school. I was sitting in Hancock Airport in Syracuse, New York, where I was waiting for a flight to come in from my state of Delaware. And I heard on the radio—I heard on the radio that Dr. King had been shot and killed. As a high school sophomore in Delaware, I got engaged in the civil rights movement. My state was segregated by law. We had been a slave state. We were a border state, and even though if you listen to Barack Obama, everybody thinks I’m the kid from Scranton who crawled out of a coal mine with a lunch bucket, I hadn’t lived in Scranton since I was in third grade. And it makes the people of Delaware mad as hell.

But I sat there and as I listened, waiting for the plane to land—I was in the parking lot, I remember it vividly—and then I heard a familiar voice that I had listened to so many times. And I later learned it was a man standing on top of a truck in Indianapolis saying, “We have to make an effort to understand, to go beyond these rather difficult times.” He talked about 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.”

I didn’t know then what he meant by “the awful grace of God.” That was April 4, 1968. My only political hero was speaking about the man that set the standard for civil rights. It got so many in our generation involved. Then on June 6, I strode across the stage in Archibald Stadium to receive my diploma from Syracuse University Law School, where Robert Kennedy had spoken only a month or so earlier, and we learned that same night that he had been assassinated.

My city of Wilmington, Delaware, was the only city since reconstruction to be occupied by the National Guard for seven months, with drawn bayonets standing on every corner, because a significant portion of it had been burned to the ground after Dr. King died. We didn’t have Robert Kennedy standing in Rodney Square, as he had stood in Indianapolis.

I left the stadium that June day to go home to Delaware, to start a prestigious job in the state’s oldest law firm. But after only a matter of months, to the dismay of my family and friends, I left. Day after day, walking back and forth to the courthouse, I walked past the guardsmen who were standing on every corner in my city. After winning a case in federal court in which I was just sitting in the second chair for a senior partner, he said he wanted to take me to lunch at the Wilmington Club—it was a fancy club that didn’t allow Catholics like me to join in those days or African Americans. The only time I consciously remember telling a lie. I looked at him and said, “My dad is coming in and I’m going to have lunch with him.”

And I walked catty-corner across Rodney Square, to the basement on the corner of the opposite side, and I asked for a job in the public defender’s office. I remember the guy at the time looking at me saying, “You’re kidding. Don’t you work for the Prickett firm?” And I said, “Yeah, I do. But I don’t feel right.” All I could think about was—not explicitly, but implicitly—What would Robert Kennedy do? What would he have done?

Ethel, Jill and I are honored to be with you tonight and with your family. And history will show that Ethel, you, too, are a tidal wave of hope in our time. When you and Kerry told me about this award, I called my whole family to tell them. I had Bobby Kennedy’s office when I was in the Senate. I had the desk that he had sat in and carved his name. Robert Kennedy was literally my hero. I never got to meet him. But I was inspired by his passion and by his courage—a courage to walk into the middle of a riot and stand on top of a vehicle and preach peace; the courage to go to South Africa with all the intimidation the Afrikaner government surrounding his visit implied; the courage that you demonstrated as well, Ethel.

Nine years after Robert Kennedy visited South Africa, I was a young United States senator, and I stepped off the same plane in Johannesburg. Part of a congressional delegation, I was the only Caucasian American on the trip. Because I was a senator, protocol dictated that I get off the plane first. And two, actually three Afrikaner soldiers, muscular in short pants, literally came on the plane holding carbines and said, “We’ll escort you off.”

When I descended the steps of the plane, there was a red carpet that went about sixty feet and then formed a tee. I was the first one off the plane and they were escorting me. When I got to the T I turned to the right. It wasn’t until I’d gotten another twenty yards that I realized that the rest of the delegation, including Andy Young and a lot of other people, were heading in the other direction. And I stopped and said, “I’m with them.” They said, “No, you’re not. You can’t go through the same door they’re going in. And they can’t go in the door you’re going in.”

And that’s when I remembered. I remembered—and I really mean this—I remembered when Robert Kennedy had spoken in South Africa nine years earlier. He said, “Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery on the battlefield or great intelligence, yet is the one, essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world which yields most painfully to change.”

I didn’t know quite what to do. And I stopped and said, “I’m going with them.” They said, “You can’t” and I said, “Then you’ll have to arrest me.” And I walked back and they had this powwow and they decided that they wouldn’t let any of us go through any door together except through the baggage claim area. And they went up and they cleared a restaurant midmeal. They cleared everybody out and declared this a neutral space.

And I thought about his trip, and nothing had changed, by the way. Apartheid was still raging; we were engaged in trying to set up boycotts. But everything about your husband, Ethel, echoed guiding principles that I was taught at my grandfather Finnegan’s kitchen table. This is real. The two most significant principles were first, everyone in the world is entitled to be treated with dignity and respect; and, the worst sin of all that one could commit was the abuse of power, whether it was physical, economic, or psychological.

To be standing here tonight receiving the Robert F. Kennedy Ripple of Hope Award means more to me than any of you will ever know. It’s the single greatest honor of my life. And given the current mood of the country…

I’d like to speak about how Robert Kennedy inspired my career, because it’s what Kerry asked me to do. To share my thoughts for just a few moments on how to overcome these deep divisions in our politics in our society today.

I remind people, ’68 was really a bad year. And America didn’t break. Johnson announced he wasn’t running for president, Bobby Kennedy got involved, the putative nominee gets murdered in the kitchen. Not long after that, students are gunned down at Kent State. As bad as it was, the center still held. It’s as bad now.

But I’m hopeful. I remember when I got to the Senate as a twenty-nine-year-old kid. There was more fundamental division on issues than there is today. On civil rights, unfinished business. On the war in Vietnam, which divided families and divided the nation like nothing else I’ve ever experienced. The nation beginning the women’s movement and all the bitterness it generated. The environmental movement was viewed by those of us who shared those views as though we were kooks.

Robert Kennedy went to South Africa and spoke to proapartheid as well as antiapartheid advocates. He dined with government officials who defended the indefensible and students who risked their lives to fight against that bitter system. In his words, with the purpose not simply to criticize but to engage in dialogue. To see if together, we could elevate reason above prejudice and myth. He did the same the next year in the middle of a battle for civil rights in Greenville, Mississippi; in Bed-Stuy in New York; the year after, in the fight for economic rights for Kentucky coal miners. He went to see for himself how segregation and poverty were ripping our country—poverty greater than today. Children starving with distended stomachs, teenagers with no education—not inadequate, but no education—adults with no jobs, communities with no hope. Individual conversations in huge crowds across rough mountains, rural schoolhouses, inner cities. He was, for those who were there, someone who listened. He listened.

He listened. Even if they didn’t vote for him, even if they didn’t like him, he listened. And he felt their pain. And he knew it. At that inflection point in our history, because of Robert Kennedy, I, along with so many of my generation, felt it so completely within our power to be able to bend history just a little bit. Just a little bit.

That generation, the sixties, remember what the call was? You trust no one over thirty and drop out. No, remember. Remember, as bad as you think it is today, remember. I ran for the Senate as a twenty-nine-year-old kid and got elected. I wasn’t old enough to be sworn in on the day I got elected. Literally, not old enough to be sworn in. I’m the first United States senator I ever knew.

Know why I have hope? I got elected on November 7. December 18, my wife and three children were Christmas shopping. A tractor trailer broadsided and killed my wife and killed my daughter. You know who the first person to show up at the hospital room was? Teddy Kennedy.

Teddy Kennedy. One of the first calls I got was from Rose Kennedy. And the Kennedys did something they always do. They understood, they embraced, they listened. And for nearly forty-four years, as a US senator and a vice president, that’s what I’ve tried to do. I tried to listen. And damn, it’s hard sometimes. It’s hard.

But that’s what Robert Kennedy did. He didn’t hesitate to speak out, but he listened. Believing that even at moments like now, when this country seems so divided, we can still find common hopes and aspirations. There need not be this false choice that’s being debated now on my side of the political ledger between social justice and economic opportunity. They go hand in hand; they’re not different.

And all those neighborhoods—I campaigned for eighty-four events for Hillary this last time out. And I speak at labor union halls, those white guys who are being so maligned right now. And I talk about equal pay for women and they cheer because they know that their economic circumstance was diminished because their wives are not being paid fairly. I talk about violence against women and they cheer because they knew it was wrong. But not a whole lot of people are listening to their plight because they’ve been kind of thrown on the slagheap.

Did you know the highest suicide rate is men between the ages of forty and fifty-five? My dad used to say, “Joey, your paycheck is about a lot more. A job is about a lot more than your paycheck. It’s about dignity and respect.” They think they lost it. We don’t listen enough.

As Pope Francis said, “We have an obligation to one another to leave no one behind.” That we can come from different places but still remain strongest when we act as one America—rich, poor, middle class, black, white, Hispanic, gay, straight, bi, transgender, immigrant, native born. One America, where we live by that most fundamental American notion that all men and women are created equal. We have to take a hard look at the hard truths about our country now and our economy, why so many people feel left out. We have to stop being blinded by anger. We have to start to listen to each other, see each other again.

When one Maasai tribe member meets another, they reach their hand out to each other and say, “I see you.” I see you. I don’t think we’re seeing each other very well. I’ve been around long enough not to be naive. I know it’s going to be really hard, but I’m still optimistic. I know what is possible.

My mother had an expression. She said, “Bravery lives in every heart, and one day it will be summoned.” Well, it’s being summoned now. Just as Bobby Kennedy summoned it all the time.

Bobby liked Greek poets. I like Irish poets.

My favorite modern Irish poet was Seamus Heaney. He wrote a poem called “The Cure at Troy.” And it reminds me of Bobby Kennedy. He said, “History says / Don’t hope on this side of the grave, / but then once in a lifetime / that longed-for tidal wave / of justice can rise up / and hope and history rhyme.” I don’t know, Ethel, it could be presumptuous of me to say. From a kid’s perspective at the time, I believe that’s what your husband believed. For as long as we are alive, we have an obligation to strive. As my mother would say, “You’re not dead till you’ve seen the face of God.”

Just strive to make hope and history rhyme.

If we ever needed the spirit of a single American leader—and there’ve been some good ones—at this moment in our history, we need those characteristics that were almost unique to Bobby Kennedy. He had more passion than anybody of his generation. He had more patience than was reasonable for anyone to endure. And he listened. He listened. Because I think he believed we have the capacity, or at least we have the obligation, to strive, to make hope and history rhyme.

So I mean it when I say this is the greatest honor I’ve ever received in my political life. I thank you for it, Ethel. May God bless the memory of Robert Kennedy. May God bless you all and may God bless our troops. Thank you.