By Steve Brawner, © 2025 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.
How should political leaders respond to the assassination of conservative political activist Charlie Kirk?
They could follow the example set by Arkansas Governor Winthrop Rockefeller 57 years ago, when passions were also high after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
For those who don’t know Rockefeller’s story, he was the grandson of oil baron John D. Rockefeller and the fifth of six children of John D. Rockefeller Jr. Of the six, he wore the last name, and all it implied about wealth and responsibility, the least comfortably. Known for being a playboy in New York, he left to work in the Texas oil fields and then served in combat in World War 2. He later got married, had a son named Win, and got divorced.
Needing a fresh start, he moved to Arkansas in 1953 and built Winrock Farms on Petit Jean Mountain. To manage it, he hired Jimmy Hudson, an African-American private detective from Harlem. The hiring gave Conway County residents the chance to have good jobs working at a farm owned by one of the nation’s richest men. However, they had to be willing to take orders from a Black man. It was a step in the right direction.
Rockefeller later was elected governor of his adopted state in 1966. He was elected as a Republican progressive and reformer in a state that had voted overwhelmingly for Democrats since the Civil War. He served two two-year terms.
“The Arkansas Rockefeller,” a book written by longtime aide John Ward, described his response to King’s assassination.
Rockefeller was in Hot Springs on April 4, 1968, when he learned the news. He ended his engagement there and flew to Little Rock. City police there informed him that mourners had requested a marching permit, which he feared would lead to violence. Instead, the first lady, Jeannette Rockefeller, suggested a prayer service on the Capitol steps. Police officers and staff members tried to dissuade him. He had a fear of being assassinated when speaking before a large crowd. But he insisted on participating.
Rockefeller was the only Southern governor to publicly mourn King’s assassination. The mourners sang “We Shall Overcome.” At one point, he held hands in a line of African-American men.
In a nine-minute speech, Rockefeller told the crowd, “The problems that confront us today are the problems that confronted us yesterday. Some of them will confront us tomorrow. But maybe this tragic incident and the loss of this great moderate leader, a man who believed in peaceful leadership, will awaken the eyes, the minds and the hearts and the souls of the people throughout our state and throughout the nation. … I feel that Arkansas today stands at the threshold of leading the nation in a demonstration of what people of goodwill – God-fearing people gathered together – can do for a better America.”
When another speaker began to agitate the crowd, Rockefeller placed his hand on his shoulder and told him that it was time for the benediction, Ward wrote.
The killing of Charlie Kirk is the latest of a series of acts of violence against political leaders, Republican and Democrat. Others include the shooting of Democratic U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords in 2011, the shooting of Republican U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise at a congressional baseball practice in 2017, the home attack on Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband in 2022, the killing of Democratic Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman in June, and the two attempts last year on President Trump’s life. Meanwhile, Kirk’s assassination overshadowed yet another school shooting that occurred the same day in Colorado.
All this violence is occurring in a nation with a lot of weapons and not a few crazy people, whom the internet is making even crazier.
In this climate, political leaders cannot make the United States into one nation, under God, indivisible. It’s too much to ask.
They can, however, be instruments of peace.
And so can we.
Maybe for only nine minutes if, as in Rockefeller’ speech, our motivations are noble and our words are gentle. Maybe longer if we can hold hands with people who are different than we are.
Amidst this big story, that would be a big step.