Print View

“A Ripple of Hope” focuses on April 4, 1968. At 6:01 PM that day, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. As news of his death spread, many American cities were engulfed in chaos and fear. Some urban areas erupted in riots. Fires burned out of control. Dozens of people were killed. Robert Kennedy, meanwhile, was enroute to Indianapolis where he was scheduled to speak in an African-American neighborhood at 9:00 PM. Pressing questions arose: should Kennedy venture into the heart of the Indianapolis inner-city and talk to a potentially volatile crowd gathered at night in a park? What could he say to assuage their grief and anger? Should he comply with city officials who ordered him to stay away, or should he defy them and possibly endanger his own life? The answer was never in question. Despite the violence raging throughout the country, Kennedy courageously kept his promise, climbing up a shaky flatbed truck, and announced the death to many who had not yet heard it. He delivered a moving, extemporaneous plea for peace and reconciliation. The crowd dispersed peacefully. The film reconstructs that event using newsreel footage and is interspersed with interviews with U.S. Congressman John Lewis and several of Kennedy's aides, including Frank Mankiewicz and Adam Walinsky.

Producer/Director Donald Boggs, Professor and Chair of the Communications Department at Anderson University, has received nearly twenty Gold, Platinum and Multiplatinum Video Awards, and his programs have aired on the Family Channel, Nashville Network, Gospel Music Channel and TBN. Kerry Kennedy, daughter of Robert Kennedy and a human rights activist in her own right, said after screening the film, “I think this is an extraordinary documentary. It was made with such integrity and sensitivity. It goes way beyond an historical piece. It is really about moral courage. And so I am just delighted to see it and to bring my children to see their grandfather in that light.”