Robert F. Kennedy

Robert F. Kennedy
Senator, New York
In office January 1965–June 1968
Preceded by	Kenneth Keating
Succeeded by	Charles Goodell
Born	November 20, 1925 Brookline, Massachusetts
Died	June 6, 1968 Los Angeles, California
Political party	Democratic
Spouse	Ethel Skakel Kennedy
Religion	Roman Catholic

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"RFK" redirects here.

Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy (November 20, 1925 – June 6, 1968), also called "RFK", was one of two younger brothers of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and was appointed by his brother as Attorney General for his administration. As one of President Kennedy's most trusted advisors, RFK worked closely with the President during the Bay of Pigs Invasion and the subsequent Cuban Missile Crisis. In 1964, after his brother's death, Kennedy was elected to the US Senate from the state of New York. He was assassinated shortly after delivering a speech celebrating his victory in the 1968 presidential primary of California at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California.

RFK's resounding legacy is in the domain of civil rights. Along with JFK he brought the first sense of justice for minorities to the White House - though, like many of their generation, the brothers were slow to grasp the monumental injustice of racism in America. "I won't say I stayed awake nights worrying about civil rights before I became Attorney General," he admitted, but "my fundamental belief is that all people are created equal." [1]

In the mid-1960s "Bobby" became the voice of a socially-conscious young America as he embraced the causes not just of black America, but of all minorities, as well as that of the impoverished in America and throughout the world.

Childhood and Education

Robert Kennedy was born Nov. 20, 1925, in Brookline, Massachusetts, the seventh of nine children, to Joseph and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. His father, the son of poor South Boston parents, was then already amassing a fortune in the stock market and associated speculative enterprises.

Home only at intervals, Joe Kennedy left the day-to-day management of the family to his capable wife, who was the daughter of John F. (Honey Fitz) Fitzgerald, who served three terms in the House of Representatives and was Mayor of Boston.[2]

The year after Bobby's birth, the family moved to Riverdale, then to Bronxville, New York.

RFK graduated from Milton Academy in Massachusetts, then served in the United States Navy Reserve from 1944 through 1946. He graduated from Harvard University in 1948 and from the University of Virginia Law School in 1951.[3]

Career until 1960

After a brief service in the Navy and officer training (V-12) at Bates College, Kennedy went on to attend Harvard. He became a three-year letterman for the Harvard College football team and graduated in 1948. He then enrolled at the University of Virginia School of Law, and earned his degree in 1951. Following law school, Kennedy managed his brother John's successful 1952 Senate campaign.

Kennedy started his career working for Senator Joseph McCarthy, with whom he shared hardline anti-Communist views. [4] Kennedy served as Counsel with Roy Cohn to the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations during the McCarthy Hearings of 1953-54. He resigned from this committee however, in March 1953, due to dissatisfaction with the basis of many of the investigations. As he stated, "I thought it was headed for disaster...Most of the investigations were instituted on the basis of some preconceived notion by the chief counsel or his staff members and not on the basis of information that had been developed....I thought McCarthy made a mistake in allowing the Committee to operate in such a fashion, told him so and resigned."[5] When the Committee's Democratic senators offered Kennedy a seat on the Committee as minority counsel, he promptly accepted over McCarthy's objections. Ultimately, McCarthy was censured by the Senate in December, 1954.

RFK soon made a name for himself as the chief counsel of the Senate Labor Rackets Committee hearings, which began in 1956. In a dramatic scene, Kennedy squared off against Jimmy Hoffa during the antagonistic argument that marked Hoffa's testimony. Kennedy left the Rackets Committee in 1959 in order to run his brother John's successful Presidential campaign.

Attorney General

After the 1960 election, RFK was appointed Attorney General by President Kennedy. As Attorney General, he continued his crusade against organized crime, often at the resistance of FBI head J. Edgar Hoover. Though organized crime as we know it had existed in America at least since Prohibition, Hoover claimed it was merely a figment of the collective imagination. He was forced into an about-face in 1962, when Kennedy, now US Attorney General, exposed the existence of a national crime syndicate and began ardently prosecuting its members.[6] Convictions against organized crime figures rose by 800% during his term. His book The Enemy Within presented the results of his initial investigations.

Kennedy also began to seriously enforce civil rights and equal opportunity for African-Americans. He expressed the Administration's commitment to civil rights during a 1961 speech at the University of Georgia Law School: "We will not stand by or be aloof. We will move. I happen to believe that the 1954 Supreme Court school desegregation decision was right. But my belief does not matter. It is the law. Some of you may believe the decision was wrong. That does not matter. It is the law."

In September 1962, he sent U.S. Marshals and troops to Oxford, Mississippi to enforce a Federal court order admitting the first African American student - James Meredith - to the University of Mississippi. The Office of Civil Rights also hired its first African American lawyer, Thelton Henderson and began to work cautiously with leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. Robert Kennedy saw voting as the key to racial justice and collaborated with Presidents Kennedy and Johnson to create the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, which helped bring an end to Jim Crow.

He also played a crucial role as a facilitator and as an unquestioned confidante of the President in the strategy to avert war during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Through his far-sightedness, the United States decided to blockade Cuba instead of initiating a military air strike that might have led to nuclear war. His second major contribution during this crisis was his contact with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin and subsequent negotiations with the Soviet Union to remove the missiles. [7]

The Assassination of JFK

The assassination of President Kennedy, which happened two days after Robert Kennedy's 38th birthday, was a brutal shock to the world, the whole nation, the Kennedy family, but especially to Robert. The assassination plunged him into a deep grief that amounted virtually to melancholy. His face was a mask; sadness enveloped his eyes; he seemed to have shrunk physically, and he often walked alone, his hands dug into his jacket pockets.[8] He mourned John's death and the fact that so much of the Kennedy vision and promise was left tragically and ultimately unfulfilled.

For the remainder of his life he seemed to live with thoughts of his brother never far from the surface of his mind. When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in April 1988, Senator Kennedy had just arrived in Indianapolis to speak at a political rally. Spurning his advisors' recommendation to forego the speech, he informed a shocked crowd about the killing and offered the family his condolences, saying that he could understand their feeling of sudden loss because he himself had undergone a similar shock over his brother. He then spoke extemporaneously about King, and appealed for hope and faith, concluding his speech with the words "Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people. Thank you very much." The audience, and the city itself, heeded Kennedy's wish.[9] It is an interesting note that though there were riots and deaths around the country in response to King's assassination, no rioting took place in Indianapolis.

At the 1964 Democratic National Convention, Bobby was due to give a speech prior to the showing of a memorial film dedicated to the late President. As he was introduced, tens of thousands of delegates, party workers, young members, observing journalists and others broke into thunderous applause and an outroar of support for the nervous and emotionally fragile Robert, standing at the podium. He broke down and began to cry. Despite repeated appeals by him and the chairman of the convention, the audience did not stop their display of support for Robert. The applause continued for about 22 minutes.

Robert Kennedy mustered enough strength to deliver the speech, but broke down into tears backstage. He would remain personally devastated for many months. His elder brother's death meant that he was now the eldest living son of Joseph Kennedy, and the head not only of his own large family, but of his sisters, of the children of his brothers and sisters, and even of his younger brother, Ted Kennedy. Robert was now the young leader of the Kennedy family, which had been wracked by tragedies.

Senator of New York

Soon after President John F. Kennedy's assassination, Robert Kennedy left the Cabinet to run for a seat in the United States Senate representing New York. Even though Kennedy was his nemesis, Johnson helped his campaign, as he was later to recall in his memoir of the White House years. His opponent in the 1964 race was Republican incumbent Kenneth Keating, who attempted to portray Kennedy as an arrogant carpetbagger. However, despite Keating's best efforts, Kennedy emerged victorious in the November 64 election.

During his three and a half years as a US Senator, Kennedy visited apartheid-ruled South Africa, helped to start a successful redevelopment project in poverty stricken Bedford-Stuyvesant in New York City, visited the Mississippi Delta as a member of the Senate committee reviewing the effectiveness of War on Poverty programs and, reversing his prior stance, called for a halt in further escalation of the Vietnam War.

As Senator, Robert endeared himself to African Americans, and other minorities such as Native Americans and immigrant groups. He spoke forcefully, and aligned himself with leaders of the civil rights struggle, and led the Democratic party to pursue a more aggressive agenda to eliminate discrimination on all levels. Kennedy supported busing, integration of all public facilities, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and anti-poverty social programs to increase education, offer opportunities for employment and provide health care for millions of disenfranchised and despairing African-Americans.

Kennedy also embraced opposition to the Vietnam War in 1968. Making this decision was difficult for him, for he knew that President Kennedy had increased military support for South Vietnam, and had envisioned a major U.S. commitment, if not exactly as it turned out during President Johnson's administration, to defending South East Asia and the Indochina region from Communist aggression. Many critics allege that Kennedy's switch in position was to reap advantage during the hotly contested Democratic primaries.

Kennedy's presidential campaign was powered by an aggressive vision for civil freedom and justice, the expansion of social development programs beyond Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society programs, active minority participation in American politics and outright opposition to the conservative attitudes of the American South and the aloof attitude of many Americans to serious social problems like poverty and racism.

Here Kennedy was at a remarkable contrast to his brother. JFK had been thwarted in his effort to pacify yet persuade the politicians of the Southern states to accept civil rights legislation, and his unwillingness to steamroll or appear arrogant to southern Americans. JFK had introduced a major tax-cut legislation to propel the economy, and had trimmed and transformed the workings of the U.S. government. His agenda was not half as committed to a major expansion of government institutions as RFK's social program was. And JFK backed U.S. involvement in South East Asia and other parts of the world against Soviet-sponsored communist aggression, while Robert ultimately committed himself against the war in Vietnam.

By these comparisons, it is easier to portray Robert Kennedy, instead of President John F. Kennedy, as a real icon of American liberalism and the modern political ideals of the United States Democratic Party.

Presidential candidacy and assassination

File:RobertKennedy.jpg

RFK, with security in tow.

Originally Kennedy had denied speculation that he was going to run for the Democratic nomination in 1968 against President Lyndon Johnson (The 22nd Amendment didn't disqualify LBJ from running for a third term because he served less than half of JFK's four-year term). Along with doubts of his ability to win the nomination, Kennedy feared that his candidacy would appear to be a product of a personal feud with Johnson. After Johnson won only a very narrow victory in the New Hampshire primary on March 12, 1968 against Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota, an anti-war candidate, Kennedy too declared his candidacy for the Presidency on March 16. On March 31, Johnson appeared on television to state that he was no longer a candidate for re-election.

On April 4, during a campaign stop in Indianapolis, Kennedy learned of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. During a heartfelt, impromptu speech in Indianapolis' inner city, Kennedy called for a reconciliation between the races. In the aftermath of King's assassination, thousands of people were injured and 43 were killed in riots throughout the United States, but Indianapolis remained quiet. Kennedy's campaign relied largely on his ability to run an emotional and intensely personal campaign. Kennedy challenged students on the "hypocrisy" of draft deferments, visited numerous small towns, and made himself available to the masses, by participating in long motorcades and street-corner stump speeches (often in troubled inner-cities). Kennedy made urban poverty a chief concern of his campaign, which in part lead to enormous crowds that would attend his events in poor urban areas or rural parts of Appalachia.

Kennedy won the Indiana and Nebraska Democratic primaries, but lost the Oregon primary.

Tired, but still intense in the last days before his Oregon defeat, RFK speaks from the platform of a campaign train.

On June 4, 1968 Kennedy scored a major victory in his drive toward the Democratic presidential nomination when he won primaries in South Dakota and in California. After Kennedy addressed his supporters in the early morning hours of June 5 in a ballroom at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, he left the ballroom through a service area to greet supporters working in the hotel's kitchen. In a crowded kitchen passageway, Sirhan B. Sirhan, a 24-year-old Los Angeles resident, fired a .22 caliber revolver directly into the crowd surrounding Kennedy. Six people were wounded, including Kennedy, who was shot in the head at close range. All this was witnessed by veteran BBC reporter Alistair Cooke, who was only yards away. Kennedy never regained consciousness and died in the early morning hours of June 6, 1968 at the age of 42. A funeral mass was held at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City on June 8, during which his brother, U.S. Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), famously eulogized him with the words, "My brother need not be idolized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it." Many viewed Ted Kennedy's eulogy as the most poignant moment of the RFK funeral, as it showed one thing: since his father suffered a stroke which left him invalid, he was seen by many as the family patriarch and gave such tributes for the family in times of crisis.

Following the mass, Kennedy's body was transported by train to Washington, D.C., where he was buried near his brother, John, in Arlington National Cemetery.

Sirhan was convicted in a trial in which his guilt was never in question, only his mental state at the time of the shooting, and is currently serving a life prison sentence for the crime although to this day he claims he has absolutely no memory of shooting at Kennedy. It is generally believed, but has never been proven ballistically, that Sirhan fired the shots that hit Kennedy. The FBI photographed additional bullet holes in the pantry, but the eight bullets Sirhan's gun could hold had already been accounted for by an LAPD bullet scenario. The FBI, at the request of the LAPD, later downplayed its original unequivocal identification of the holes as "bullet holes". These facts and others suggested the official account of RFK's assassination is inconsistent or incomplete and that his death was the result of a conspiracy. The autopsy report concluded that RFK had been shot at close range, and had been shot twice from behind, as one shot had left burn-marks on his suit, and the other went into the back of his head, although many witnesses claim that Sirhan was not close enough to him at the time to do that.

The Ambassador Hotel incident had been photographed by then-young James Scott Enyart, who has been in a legal battle with L.A. county/police to recover his film since 1988. During the unusual trial, the court lost a large portion of its own files from the earlier proceedings in addition to other blunders.

Personal life

The Kennedy brothers: John, Robert, and Edward (Ted)

In 1950, he married Ethel Skakel, who would eventually give birth to 11 children:

• Kathleen Hartington (b.1951)
• Joseph Patrick II (b.1952)
• Robert Francis, Jr. (b.1954)
• David Anthony (1955-1984)
• Mary Courtney (b.1956)
• Michael LeMoyne (1958-1997)
• Mary Kerry (b.1959)
• Christopher George (b.1963)
• Matthew Maxwell Taylor (b.1965)
• Douglas Harriman (b.1967)
• Rory Elizabeth Katherine (b.1968)

The last child, Rory, was born several months after her father's assassination.

Kennedy was always a loyal son, brother, and family man. Despite the fact that his father's most ambitious dreams centered around his elder brothers, Robert was fiercely loyal to Joseph, Joe Jr. and John. His competitiveness was admired by his father and elder brothers, while his loyalty bound them affectionately closer to each other than most brothers are. Working on the campaigns of John Kennedy, Robert was more involved, passionate and tenacious than the candidate himself, obsessed with every detail, fighting out every battle and taking workers to task.

Kennedy owned a home at the well-known Kennedy Compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts on Cape Cod but spent most of his time at his estate in Virginia, known as Hickory Hill, located just outside Washington, DC. His widow, Ethel, and his children continued to live at Hickory Hill after his death in 1968. Ethel Kennedy now lives full time at the family's vacation home in Hyannis Port.

His pallbearers included Robert McNamara, John Glenn, Averell Harriman, C. Douglas Dillon, Kirk Lemoyne Billings (schoolmate of John F. Kennedy), Stephen Smith (husband to Jean Ann Kennedy), David Hackett, Jim Whittaker, John Seigenthaler Sr., and Lord Harlech.

Honors

Justice Department building being renamed for Robert Kennedy

1998 Robert Kennedy special dollar coin

D.C. Stadium in Washington, D.C. was renamed Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium in 1969.

In 1998, the United States Mint released a special dollar coin that featured Kennedy on the obverse and the emblems of the United States Department of Justice and the United States Senate on the reverse.

In Washington, DC on November 20, 2001, U.S President George W. Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft dedicated the Department of Justice headquarters building as the Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building, honoring RFK on what would have been his 76th birthday. They both spoke during the ceremony, as did Kennedy's eldest son, Joseph II, who made reference to his uncle John F. Kennedy's Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Profiles in Courage, when he said to the president as he spoke: "Mr. President, your strength since September 11 has been a profile in leadership." [10] [11] [12]

Numerous roads, public schools and other facilities across the United States were named in memory of Robert F. Kennedy in the months and years after his death. In an effort to not just remember the late Senator, but continue his work helping disadvantaged, a small group of private citizens launched the Robert F. Kennedy Children's Action Corps in 1969, which today helps more than 800 abused and neglected children each year.

Writing

Considered an eloquent speaker generally, RFK also wrote extensively on politics and issues confronting his generation:

• The Enemy Within: The McClellan Committee's Crusade Against Jimmy Hoffa and Corrupt Labor Unions (1960)
• To Seek a Newer World (1967)
• Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis (1969)

Quotes

"Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly"

"The problem of power is how to achieve its responsible use, rather than its irresponsible and indulgent use- how to make people of power live for the public, rather than off the public."

"Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital, quality for those who seek to change a world which yields most painfully to change."

"There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream of things that never were and ask why not." (RFK quoting Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw)

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• DiEugenio, James and Lisa Pease, The Assassinations (2003).
• Hilty, James M. Robert Kennedy: Brother Protector (1997), vol 1 to 1963.
• Schlesinger Jr. Arthur M. Robert Kennedy and His Times (1978).
• Shesol, Jeff. Mutual Contempt: Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, and the Feud that Defined a Decade (1997),
• Thomas, Evan. Robert Kennedy: His Life (2002)
• RFK Biography
• RFK (Documentary Film from the Public Broadcasting Service, USA)

External links

• Robert F. Kennedy: Remarks on the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Robert F. Kennedy Memorial
• Robert F. Kennedy Democrats Albany, New York
• American Experience: RFK — From PBS
• American Experience: RFK People & Events — From PBS
• Reopen the RFK Assassination Case-Sirhan is Not Guilty
• Robert F. Kennedy Commemorative Silver Dollar Fact Sheet — From the United States Mint
• The Presidential Promise of Robert F. Kennedy
• Ron Schuler's Parlour Tricks: Bobby
• IMDB entry on Robert F. Kennedy
• Edward Kennedy eulogy to Robert Kennedy (text and audio)

Preceded by: William P. Rogers	Attorney General of the United States 1961–1964	Succeeded by: Nicholas Katzenbach
Preceded by: Kenneth Keating	U.S. Senator from New York 1965–1968	Succeeded by: Charles E. Goodell

cs:Robert Kennedy de:Robert F. Kennedy es:Robert Kennedy eo:Robert F. Kennedy fa:رابرت کندی fr:Robert Francis Kennedy ga:Robert F. Kennedy it:Robert Kennedy he:רוברט קנדי nl:Robert F. Kennedy ja:ロバート・ケネディ no:Robert F. Kennedy pl:Robert Kennedy fi:Robert F. Kennedy sv:Robert Kennedy

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