Robert Francis Kennedy-Attorney-General to his older brother, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 35th President of the United States and Presidential candidate for 1968, whom many felt would have unquestionably become president had he lived, manifested seemingly unbelievable poise, dignity and fortitude following one of the darkest days in American history.
In fact, November 22, 1963 wasn't the first time that Robert Kennedy had faced tragedy. He was no stranger to tragedy; he had experienced it several times. But it was his resilience and unassuming attitude that has endeared millions to the man. Robert Kennedy has become memorable for his character and class.
Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy was born on November 20, 1925 in Brookline, Massachusetts. He was the third son of Joseph Patrick and Rose Elizabeth Fitzgerald Kennedy. It seems that the Kennedy Family were constantly on the move. When he was nearly two years old, in September 1927, the family moved from Masschusetts to Riverdale, New York, then to Bronxville, New York two years later. He generally spent summers with his family in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts and Christmas and Easter holidays at the family winter home in Palm Beach, Florida.
He attended public schools in Riverdale Elementary School from kindergarten through second grade. Later he attended Bronxville School from the third to fifth grades then Riverdale County School, a private school for boys. In March 1938, when his father was U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom, 12-year-old Bobby Kennedy attended the Gibb School for Boys in England, leaving just before the outbreak of the Second World War.
He further attended other private schools before finally finishing his secular schooling in March 1944. Inspired by his big brothers John and Joe Jr., Bobby enlisted in the U.S.Naval Reserve six weeks before his 18th birthday as a apprenctice seaman. Between March 1944 to January 1946 he received extensive naval training in the V-12 program; by December 1945 he received a grant to serve on the U.S.S. Joseph P. Kennedy until finally he received an honorable discharge on May 30, 1946.
By September of that year, Bobby entered Harvard College, having received credit for serving in the V-12 program. He played on the Varsity football team as an End and a Starter, in fact he even scored a touchdown in the first game of his senior year. But his stint was short-lived; he broke his leg while practicing. Nevertheless, he won his varsity letter when his coach sent him in the game between Harvard-Yale despite wearing a cast. Bobby graduated from Harvard with a B.A. in government in March 1948.
In September of the same year, Bobby enrolled at The University of Virginia School of Law in Charlottesville. He met a lovely young woman named Ethel Skakel whom he later married on June 17, 1950. They would have eleven children, nine of whom are still alive today.
In late 1951 Robert Kennedy and his wife along with their baby daughter moved to Washington, DC, where he found work as a lawyer working for the Internal Security Section which investigated alleged or actual Communist spies. He left this job in June 1952 to support his older brother's John successful 1952 U.S. Senate Campaign in Massachusetts. Later that year at his father's behest, he was appointed by the controversial Republican Senator Joseph Mc Carthy as assistant counsel of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommitee on Investigations. Three years later he would become chief counsel. Ironically enough, Robert Kennedy was a background figure during the televised Mc Carthy Hearings of 1954, which ultimately destroyed Mc Carthy's political career and ruined his credibility as well.
But it was the Senate Labor Rackets Commitee of 1957-59 that would bring Robert Kennedy into national prominence as he and his older brother John was a virtual dynamic duo that openly exposed the corrupt ethics of the labor union under chairman John L. Mc Clellan and particularly against crooked labor boss Jimmy Hoffa, whose the Kennedy Brothers standoff with has become a part of labor history. Robert later left the Rackets Commission to support his brother's successful Democratic presidential campaign in 1960. Hoffa and the Kennedy Brothers would have a vendetta against each other that would continue until the tragic death of both brothers, in which Hoffa was greatly elated.
On January 20, 1961, John F. Kennedy was inaugurated as the 35th President of the United States. He appointed his younger brother Robert as his Attorney-General, which was controversial at the time. Many felt he had no experience in state or federal court and others felt that it was because of nepotism, or favor based on family influence. But at their father's insistence, Bobby was confirmed before the month of January was out.
But despite the public's chagrin, Kennedy proved that he was an effective Attorney-General; in fact his older often consulted him for advice. In fact he even commented of his younger brother "If I want something done and done immediately I rely on the Attorney-General. He is very much the doer in this administration, and has an organizational gift I rarely if ever seen surpassed,"
Robert and his older brother worked hard to uphold the civil rights of African Americans, whose struggles for racial equality was at a boiling point in the early 1960's. They, for example, were shocked beyond belief when they witnessed on live television Black men, women and children being fire-hosed and beaten with police nightsticks and German Shepherd attack dogs being unleashed on them, as well as Blacks being denied the right to have a college education at the college of their choice, as in the James Meredith Case at the University of Missisippi in 1962. They opened condemned the racist behavior and took vigorous initiatives to protect the basic civil rights of Blacks. This was met with mixed reactions by both Blacks and Whites alike throughout the country.
On November 22, 1963, to the shock of the world and particularly to Robert Kennedy, his older brother John was suddenly assassinated by an assassin or a group of assassins. It seemed as if the Kennedy Administration was riding high, it seemed that it would get better and better, and now all of a sudden, his brother was gone, and Robert was left all alone without his only confidante and his closest friend. It was a very emotionally painful ordeal that he would never fully recover from. He went into a deep depression for months.
In 1964, Robert Kennedy made a bid for the U.S. Senate against Republican Incumbent opponent Robert Keating, to break away from the new president, Lyndon Baines Johnson, whom he despised. He emerged victorious that November, which was helped in part by Johnson's huge victory margin. In 1965, perhaps as a emotional relief, he was the first person to climb Mount Kennedy, named after his slain older brother.
In 1966 he visited South Africa, decrying the evils of social aparthied. Later that year and into 1967 he visited the poverty-strickened community in Brooklyn's Bed- Stuyvesant Section in New York City and the even poorer Mississippi Delta to explore the effectiveness of the 'War on Poverty' as well as openly speaking out against the Vietnam War. He began to endear himself to many in the African American and Native American Communities.
By 1968, Kennedy began to run for re-election to the Senate. It was considered by many at the time to be unrealistic. Initially Kennedy claimed to have no aspirations to the presidency. But after the Tet Offensive of 1968, he received a letter from writer Pete Hamill that poor people kept a picture of his older brother on their walls, and that Robert Kennedy "had an obligation to stay true to whatever it was that put those pictures on the wall."
After meeting with civil rights activist Cesar Chavez who was on a hunger strike, Kennedy announced he would try to persuade little-known Senator Eugene Mc Carthy of Minnesota to withdraw from the presidential race, thinking he didn't have a chance against the seemingly more-powerful Johnson. But President Johnson won a narrow victory on March 12, 1968 in the New Hampshire Primary, which boosted Mc Carthy's standing in the race.
Spurred by Mc Carthy's surprise victory convinced Kennedy that Johnson wasn't as strong as previously thought. After much speculation, on March 16, 1968, Robert F. Kennedy announced his candidacy for the Presidency, using his brother's words of eight years earlier "I do not run for the Presidency merely to oppose any man, but to propose new policies. I run because I am convinced this country is on a perilous course and because I have strong feelings about what must be done and I feel I'm obliged to do all I can."
But to the shock of most persons, on March 31, 1968, President Johnson declared he would not seek another term as the nation's Chief Executive. Now the race was between Mc Carthy and Kennedy and a new up-and-comer named Hubert Humphrey. Kennedy stood on a platform of racial and economic equality, which many saw as political opportunism, as the country was in a state of social chaos, as young people rose in open protest against the hypocrisy of their elders, and Blacks rose up in protest against racial inequality. Whatever the case, kennedy rose to the moment.
Kennedy was a particular source of social healing following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., reminding a shocked and outraged crowd of Blacks that if any felt hatred and distrust for Whites to remember that his brother was murdered by a white man, which quelled the crowd-at least in Indianapolis, Indiana. Sadly, in other parts of the country the Black Community exploded in outrage.
Kennedy won both Indiana and Nebraska in the Democratic primaries, but lost to Oregon. If he could beat Mc Carthy, he would have a one-on-one with Humphrey at Humphrey's birth-state, South Dakota in the Chicago National Convention that August. But sadly, it was not to be.
Kennedy scored a major victory in California in June 1968. On June 5, 1968, he gave a speech in the early morning hours in the ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California. His last publicly spoken words were, "And now, it's off to Chicago, and let's win there!" He originally was supposed to leave through the exit door, but instead went through the kitchen being told it was a shortcut, despite being warned to avoid the kitchen by his FBI bodyguard agent, Bill Barry. Waiting for him inside was an emotionally-unbalanced 24-year-old Middle-Eastern man named Sirhan Bishara Sirhan. In his sick mind he believed that Kennedy was responsible for the 1967 Six-Day War because of Kennedy's support for Israel. He had a .22 caliber pistol. He lunged at Kennedy, firing one shot into his head. Many who first heard the shot thought it was a balloon popping, but when they heard hysterical screams of "Oh no!" " Not again!" "Not again!" they knew something was seriously wrong. Robert Kennedy laid on the floor in a pool of blood. He was rushed to the nearest hospital, but it was to no avail. A few hours later, in the early morning hours of June 6, 1968, Robert Francis Kennedy died. He was 42 years old.
It was a shock to the entire nation. Nearly five years earlier, America was shocked over the death of the 35th President, now it was his younger brother. Robert Kennedy's funeral dominated the headlines for what seemed like weeks. His body was in repose at New York's St, Patrick's Cathedral, in which hundreds of people of all walks of life, from the rich and the famous to the common man on the street paid their respects. His body was then mounted on a special train in which numerous persons paid their respects for miles by the railroad tracks, from the inner cities to the countrysides. He was buried next to his brother John with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery in Arlingon, Virginia.
Robert Francis Kennedy has left his legacy in American history without a doubt.