He gave better – and better-known – speeches. Less remembered is what he said in a hot, crowded, chaotic Los Angeles ballroom just minutes before he flashed a grin and a peace (or victory) sign and said, “So on to Chicago and let’s win there.”

He speaks to us today just as he did to a torn and angry nation that night 50 years ago:

“I think that we can end the divisions within the United States. What I think is quite clear is that we can work together in the last analysis and that what has been going on in the United States within the period of the last three years – the divisions, the violence, the disenchantment with our society, the divisions, whether it’s between blacks and whites, between the poor and the more affluent or between age groups or over the war in Vietnam – that we can start to work together. We are a great country and an unselfish county and a compassionate country and I intend to make that the basis for my running over the next few months.”

I went to bed right after the speech. Not long after, my father woke me up to tell me he’d been shot.

You think things are bad now? You should have been around then. War, riots, assassinations. And we ended up with Nixon. Now we’ve got Trump. It’s easy to feel just as disenchanted and disillusioned as many Americans did in 1968.

But we had that one voice that spoke to our hopes, not our fears. A voice free of anger, bitterness and cynicism. A voice with a positive, hopeful, affirming message about America and Americans.

We could use a leader like him again.