The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A RELUCTANT BROTHER RUNS FOR PRESIDENT
The third son of a wealthy, politically minded Boston family, Robert F. Kennedy graduated from Harvard University and earned a law degree from the University of Virginia in 1951.
“Bobby” worked as a correspondent for the Boston Post and as a lawyer in the Justice Department but resigned in 1952 to manage his older brother Jack’s campaign for U.S. Senate. He then became chief counsel for a Senate committee investigating corruption in organized labor, where he made headlines by challenging Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa for his union’s practices.
Bobby resigned again in 1960 to manage his brother’s campaign for president. Jack returned the favor by appointing Bobby attorney general of the United States. He would be one of Jack’s closest advisors during incidents such as the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
After Jack was assassinated in 1963, Bobby stayed on to serve the administration of his brother’s successor, Lyndon B. Johnson. It was no secret, however, that Bobby didn’t get along with Johnson. In 1964, Bobby stepped down to run for a U.S. Senate seat in New York, overcoming complaints he was a “carpetbagger” from Massachusetts.
Sen. Kennedy pursued a number of causes — he championed the civil rights movement and opposed Johnson’s expansion of the war in Vietnam. When Eugene Mccarthy of Minnesota announced in November 1967 that he would challenge Johnson for the Democratic nomination, Kennedy told everyone who asked that he would not join the race.
That changed after the shock of the Tet Offensive in Vietnam in January 1968. RFK’S friend, writer Pete Hamill, sent Kennedy a letter in which he pointed out that many Americans kept a portrait of JFK on their walls. He argued that Bobby had an “obligation of staying true to whatever it was that put those pictures on the walls.”
On March 12, 1968, Mccarthy nearly defeated Johnson in the New Hampshire primary. Four days later, Kennedy announced he would seek the Democratic nomination for president. On March 31, Johnson responded by announcing he
would neither seek nor accept a nomination for another term.
While Kennedy had entered the race relatively late, his popularity among Democrats became obvious: He won the first three primaries in which he entered: Nebraska on May 4 and Indiana and the District of Columbia on May 7.
President Hubert Humphrey but appeared to be gaining fast. On June 4, he placed second to Mccarthy in the West Virginia primary — as a write-in candidate — but won both the South Dakota and California primaries, picking up another 196 delegates.
Shortly after midnight, Kennedy appeared before his cheering supporters in the Grand Ballroom of Los Angeles‘ Ambassador Hotel and announced that the country was ready to end its fractious divisions.
Accompanied by aides and two famous athletes who were serving as bodyguards — decathlete Rafer Johnson and Los Angeles Rams lineman Roosevelt Grier — Kennedy cut through the hotel’s kitchen on the way to a press conference.
That’s when Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian-born immigrant, stepped up and fired a .22 caliber revolver at point-blank range, hitting Bobby in the head and body and wounding five others as well.
Bobby asked if everyone was OK before he lost consciousness. He was taken to a hospital where he died the next day. Kennedy was 42.