Robert F. Kennedy

Early life

Robert Francis Kennedy was born outside Boston in Brookline, Massachusetts on November 20, 1925, to Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., a politician and businessman, and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, a philanthropist and socialite. He was the seventh of their nine children. Robert described his position in the family hierarchy by saying, "When you come from that far down, you have to struggle to survive." His parents were members of two prominent Irish-American families that were active in the Massachusetts Democratic Party. All four of Kennedy's grandparents were children of Irish immigrants. His eight siblings were Joseph Jr., John, Rosemary, Kathleen, Eunice, Patricia, Jean, and Ted.

Starting from a solidly middle-class family in Boston, his father amassed a fortune and established trust funds for his nine children that guaranteed lifelong financial security. Turning to politics, Joe Sr. became a leading figure in the Democratic Party and had the money and connections to play a central role in the family's political ambitions. During Robert's childhood, his father dubbed him the "runt" of the family and wrote him off. He focused greater attention on his two eldest sons, Joseph Jr., and John. His parents involved their children in discussions of history and current affairs at the family dinner table. "I can hardly remember a mealtime," Kennedy reflected, "when the conversation was not dominated by what Franklin D. Roosevelt was doing or what was happening in the world. ...Since public affairs had dominated so much of our actions and discussions, public life seemed really an extension of family life."

Kennedy was raised at the Kennedy Compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts; La Querida in Palm Beach, Florida; and Bronxville, New York; as well as London, where his father served as the U.S. ambassador to the Court of St James's from 1938 to 1940. When the Kennedy family returned to the United States just before the outbreak of World War II in Europe, Robert was shipped off to an assortment of boarding schools in New England: St. Paul's, a Protestant school in Concord, New Hampshire; Portsmouth Priory, a Benedictine Catholic school in Portsmouth, Rhode Island; then, in September 1942, to Milton Academy, a preparatory school near Boston in Milton, Massachusetts, for 11th and 12th grades. Kennedy graduated from Milton in May 1944. Kennedy later said that, during childhood, he was "going to different schools, always having to make new friends, and that I was very awkward ... [a]nd I was pretty quiet most of the time. And I didn't mind being alone."

Naval service (1944–1946)

Six weeks before his 18th birthday in 1943, Kennedy enlisted in the United States Naval Reserve as a seaman apprentice. He was released from active duty in March 1944, when he left Milton Academy early to report to the V-12 Navy College Training Program at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts from March to November 1944. He was relocated to Bates College in Lewiston, Maine from November 1944 to June 1945, where he received a specialized V-12-degree along with 15 others. During the college's winter carnival, Robert built a snow replica of a Navy boat. He returned to Harvard in June 1945, completing his post-training requirements in January 1946.

Kennedy's oldest brother Joseph Jr. died in August 1944, when his bomber exploded during a volunteer mission known as Operation Aphrodite. Robert was most affected by his father's reaction to his eldest son's passing. He appeared completely heartbroken, and his peer Fred Garfield commented that Kennedy developed depression and questioned his faith for a short time. After his brother's death, Robert gained more attention, moving higher up the family patriarchy. On December 15, 1945, the United States Navy commissioned the destroyer USS Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., and shortly thereafter granted Kennedy's request to be released from naval-officer training to serve aboard Kennedy starting on February 1, 1946, as a seaman apprentice on the ship's shakedown cruise in the Caribbean. On May 30, 1946, he received his honorable discharge from the Navy.

Further study and journalism (1946–1951)

College and law school

Throughout 1946, Kennedy became active in his brother John's campaign for the U.S. House seat vacated by James Michael Curley; he joined the campaign full-time after his naval discharge. Schlesinger wrote that the election served as an entry into politics for both Robert and John. In September, Kennedy entered Harvard as a junior after receiving credit for his time in the V-12 program. He worked hard to make the Harvard Crimson football team as an end; he was a starter and scored a touchdown in the first game of his senior year before breaking his leg in practice. He earned his varsity letter when his coach sent him in wearing a cast during the last minutes of a game against Yale. Kennedy graduated from Harvard in 1948 with a bachelor's degree in political science.

In September 1948, he enrolled at the University of Virginia School of Law in Charlottesville. Kennedy adapted to this new environment, being elected president of the Student Legal Forum, where he successfully produced outside speakers including James M. Landis, William O. Douglas, Arthur Krock, Joseph McCarthy, and his brother John F. Kennedy. Kennedy's paper on Yalta, written during his senior year, is deposited in the Law Library's Treasure Trove. He graduated from law school in June 1951, finishing 56th in a class of 125.

The Boston Post

Upon graduating from Harvard, Kennedy sailed on the RMS Queen Mary with a college friend for a tour of Europe and the Middle East, accredited as a correspondent for The Boston Post, filing six stories. Four of these stories, submitted from Palestine shortly before the end of the British Mandate, provided a first-hand view of the tensions in the land. He was critical of British policy on Palestine and praised the Jewish people he met there, calling them "hardy and tough". Kennedy predicted that "before too long", the United States and Great Britain would be looking for a Jewish state to preserve a "toehold" of democracy in the region. He held out some hope after seeing Arabs and Jews working side by side but, in the end, feared that the hatred between the groups was too strong and would lead to a war.

In June 1948, Kennedy reported on the Berlin Blockade. He wrote home about the experience: "It is a very moving and disturbing sight to see plane after plane take off amidst a torrent of rain particularly when I was aboard one." In September 1951, a few months after Kennedy graduated from law school, The Boston Post sent him to San Francisco to cover the convention that concluded the Treaty of Peace with Japan.

Senate committee counsel and political campaigns (1951–1960)

JFK Senate campaign and Joseph McCarthy (1952–1955)

In 1951, Kennedy was admitted to the Massachusetts Bar. That November, he started work as a lawyer in the Internal Security Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, which prosecuted espionage and subversive-activity cases. In February 1952, he was transferred to the Criminal Division to help prepare fraud cases against former officials of the Truman administration before a Brooklyn grand jury. On June 6, 1952, he resigned to manage his brother John's U.S. Senate campaign in Massachusetts. John's victory was of great importance to the Kennedys, elevating him to national prominence and turning him into a serious potential presidential candidate. It was also equally important to Robert, who felt he had succeeded in eliminating his father's negative perceptions of him.

In December 1952, at his father's behest, Kennedy was appointed by family friend Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy as one of 15 assistant counsels to the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Kennedy disapproved of McCarthy's aggressive methods of garnering intelligence on suspected communists. He resigned in July 1953, but "retained a fondness for McCarthy". The period of July 1953 to January 1954 saw him at "a professional and personal nadir", feeling that he was adrift while trying to prove himself to his family. Kenneth O'Donnell and Larry O'Brien (who worked on John's congressional campaigns) urged Kennedy to consider running for Massachusetts Attorney General in 1954, but he declined.

After a period as an assistant to his father on the Hoover Commission, Kennedy rejoined the Senate committee staff as chief counsel for the Democratic minority in February 1954. That month, McCarthy's chief counsel Roy Cohn subpoenaed Annie Lee Moss, accusing her of membership in the Communist Party. Kennedy revealed that Cohn had called the wrong Annie Lee Moss and he requested the file on Moss from the FBI. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had been forewarned by Cohn and denied him access, calling Kennedy "an arrogant whippersnapper". When Democrats gained a Senate majority in January 1955, Kennedy became chief counsel and was a background figure in the televised Army–McCarthy hearings of 1954 into McCarthy's conduct. The Moss incident turned Cohn into an enemy, which led to Kennedy assisting Democratic senators in ridiculing Cohn during the hearings. The animosity grew to the point where Cohn had to be restrained after asking Kennedy if he wanted to fight him. For his work on the McCarthy committee, Kennedy was included in a list of Ten Outstanding Young Men of 1954, created by the U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce. His father had arranged the nomination, his first national award. In 1955, Kennedy was admitted to practice before the United States Supreme Court.

Stevenson aide and focus on organized labor (1956–1960)

Kennedy was a Massachusetts delegate at the 1956 Democratic National Convention, having replaced Tip O'Neill at the request of his brother, joining in what was ultimately an unsuccessful effort to help John get the vice-presidential nomination. Kennedy went on to work as an aide to Adlai Stevenson II during the 1956 presidential general election which helped him learn how national campaigns worked, in preparation for a future run by his brother, John. Unimpressed with Stevenson, he mentioned a decade later that he had voted for incumbent Dwight D. Eisenhower.

From 1957 to 1959, Kennedy made a name for himself while serving as the chief counsel to the U.S. Senate's Select Committee on Improper Activities in Labor and Management, nicknamed the McClellan committee after its chairman John L. McClellan, to investigate labor racketeering. Kennedy was given authority over testimony scheduling, areas of investigation, and witness questioning by McClellan, a move that was made by the chairman to limit attention to himself and allow outrage by organized labor to be directed toward Kennedy.

Under Kennedy's relentless direction, the McClellan committee exposed the corruption and fraud, including the misuse of union pension funds, of the Teamsters Union, resulting in the conviction of its president, Dave Beck, and the indictment of his successor, Jimmy Hoffa. Kennedy's face-off with Hoffa attracted national attention. Glossy magazines like Life ("Young Man with Tough Questions") and The Saturday Evening Post ("The Amazing Kennedys") helped raise the Kennedy profile. "Two boyish young men from Boston," wrote a Look magazine reporter, "have become hot tourist attractions in Washington."

During the hearings, Kennedy received criticism from liberal critics and other commentators both for his outburst of impassioned anger and doubts about the innocence of those who invoked the Fifth Amendment. Senators Barry Goldwater and Karl Mundt wrote to each other and complained about "the Kennedy boys" having hijacked the McClellan Committee by their focus on Hoffa and the Teamsters. They believed Kennedy covered for Walter Reuther and the United Automobile Workers (UAW), a union which typically would back Democratic office seekers. Amidst the allegations, Kennedy wrote in his journal that the two senators had "no guts" as they never addressed him directly, only through the press. Kennedy left the committee in September 1959 in order to manage his brother's presidential campaign. The following year, Kennedy published The Enemy Within, a book which described the corrupt practices within the Teamsters and other unions that he had helped investigate.

JFK presidential campaign (1960)

Kennedy went to work on the presidential campaign of his brother, John. In contrast to his role in his brother's previous campaign eight years prior, Kennedy gave stump speeches throughout the primary season, gaining confidence as time went on. His strategy "to win at any cost" led him to call on Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. to attack Senator Hubert Humphrey as a draft dodger; Roosevelt eventually did make the statement that Humphrey avoided service.

Concerned that John Kennedy was going to receive the Democratic Party's nomination, some supporters of Lyndon Johnson, who was also running for the nomination, revealed to the press that John had Addison's disease, saying that he required life-sustaining cortisone treatments. Though in fact a diagnosis had been made, Robert tried to protect his brother by denying the allegation, saying that John had never had "an ailment described classically as Addison's disease." After securing the nomination, John Kennedy nonetheless chose Johnson as his vice-presidential nominee. Robert, who favored labor leader Walter Reuther, tried unsuccessfully to convince Johnson to turn down the offer, leading him to view Robert with contempt afterward. Robert had already disliked Johnson prior to the presidential campaign, seeing him as a threat to his brother's ambitions.

In October, just a few weeks before the election, Kennedy was involved in securing the release of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. from a jail in Atlanta. He spoke with Georgia Governor Ernest Vandiver and later Judge Oscar Mitchell, after the judge had sentenced King for violating his probation when he protested at a whites-only snack bar.

U.S. Attorney General (1961–1964)

Nomination and confirmation

After the 1960 presidential election, president-elect John F. Kennedy appointed his younger brother as U.S. attorney general. Despite concerns about the appearance of nepotism, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. pushed for Robert Kennedy to get the position, in part on the grounds that the president would need someone in his cabinet with whom he had an absolute trust. Both brothers harbored doubts about the proposed appointment, but first John decided it was a good idea and then Robert was persuaded to accept it. The choice was controversial, with publications including The New York Times and The New Republic calling him inexperienced and unqualified. He had no experience in any state or federal court, causing the president to joke, "I can't see that it's wrong to give him a little legal experience before he goes out to practice law."

Republican Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen expressed doubts about Kennedy's level of legal experience but found Kennedy competent otherwise and supported the president's ability to choose his own cabinet members. On January 13, Kennedy testified before the Judiciary Committee for two hours, with questioning that was largely friendly. Pressed by Senator Roman Hruska about his lack of experience, Kennedy responded: "In my estimation I think that I have had invaluable experience ... I would not have given up one year of experience that I have had over the period since I graduated from law school for experience practicing law in Boston." At the conclusion of the hearing, Kennedy's nomination received unanimous approval from the committee. The nomination was approved by the full Senate on January 21, 1961, via a division vote, with only one senator standing in opposition.

For the position of Deputy Attorney General, Kennedy chose Byron White, who helped select the rest of the department's staff. These included Archibald Cox as Solicitor General; among the Assistant Attorneys General, Nicholas Katzenbach, Burke Marshall, and Ramsey Clark; and press aides Edwin O. Guthman and John Seigenthaler. The scholars and historians Alexander Bickel, Jeff Shesol, and Evan Thomas have all noted that with these picks, Kennedy showed he was not averse to surrounding himself with very able people who had more qualifications and experience than he did.

Robert Kennedy's influence in the administration extended well beyond law enforcement. Though different in temperament and outlook, the president came to rely heavily on his brother's judgment and effectiveness as political adviser, foreign affairs counselor, and most trusted confidant. Kennedy exercised widespread authority over every cabinet department, leading the Associated Press to dub him "Bobby—Washington's No. 2-man." The president once remarked about his 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 have rarely if ever seen surpassed."

Kennedy administration (1961–1963)

As attorney general, Kennedy pursued a relentless crusade against organized crime and the Mafia, sometimes disagreeing on strategy with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Through speeches and writing, Kennedy alerted the country to the existence of a "private government of organized crime with an annual income of billions, resting on a base of human suffering and moral corrosion". He established the first coordinated program involving all 26 federal law enforcement agencies to investigate organized crime. The Justice Department targeted prominent Mafia leaders like Carlos Marcello and Joey Aiuppa; Marcello was deported to Guatemala, while Aiuppa was convicted of violating of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918. Kennedy worked to secure the passage of five anti-crime bills (i.e., Wire Act, Travel Act, and Interstate Transportation of Paraphernalia Act) directed against those who aided interstate racketeering or gambling enterprises or who transported gambling paraphernalia, gambling information by wire, or firearms (by felons) across state lines. Convictions against organized crime figures rose by 800 percent during his term. Kennedy worked to shift Hoover's focus away from communism, which Hoover saw as a more serious threat, to organized crime. According to James Neff, Kennedy's success in this endeavor was due to his brother's position, giving the attorney general leverage over Hoover. Biographer Richard Hack concluded that Hoover's dislike for Kennedy came from his being unable to control him.

He was relentless in his pursuit of Teamsters Union president Jimmy Hoffa, due to Hoffa's known corruption in financial and electoral matters, both personally and organizationally, creating a so-called "Get Hoffa" squad of prosecutors and investigators. The enmity between the two men was intense, with accusations of a personal vendetta—what Hoffa called a "blood feud"—exchanged between them. On July 7, 1961, after Hoffa was reelected to the Teamsters presidency, Kennedy told reporters the government's case against Hoffa had not been changed by what he called "a small group of teamsters" supporting him. The following year, it was leaked that Hoffa had claimed to a Teamster local that Kennedy had been "bodily" removed from his office, the statement being confirmed by a Teamster press agent and Hoffa saying Kennedy had only been ejected. On March 4, 1964, Hoffa was convicted in Chattanooga, Tennessee, of attempted bribery of a grand juror during his 1962 conspiracy trial in Nashville and sentenced to eight years in prison and a $10,000 fine. After learning of Hoffa's conviction by telephone, Kennedy issued congratulatory messages to the three prosecutors. While on bail during his appeal, Hoffa was convicted in a second trial held in Chicago, on July 26, 1964, on one count of conspiracy and three counts of mail and wire fraud for improper use of the Teamsters' pension fund, and sentenced to five years in prison. Hoffa spent the next three years unsuccessfully appealing his 1964 convictions, and began serving his aggregate prison sentence of 13 years (eight years for bribery, five years for fraud) on March 7, 1967, at the Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary in Pennsylvania.

Johnson administration (1963–1964)

In the wake of the assassination of his brother and Lyndon Johnson's ascension to the presidency, with the office of vice president now vacant, Kennedy was viewed favorably as a potential candidate for the position in the 1964 presidential election. Johnson faced pressure from some within the Democratic Party to name Kennedy as his running mate, which Johnson staffers referred to internally as the "Bobby problem." It was an open secret that they disliked each other, and Johnson had no intention of remaining in the shadow of another Kennedy. At the time, Johnson privately said of Kennedy, "I don't need that little runt to win", while Kennedy privately said of Johnson that he was "mean, bitter, vicious—an animal in many ways." An April 1964 Gallup poll reported Kennedy as the vice-presidential choice of 47 percent of Democratic voters. Coming in a distant second and third were Adlai Stevenson II with 18 percent and Hubert Humphrey with 10 percent.

Although Johnson confided to aides on several occasions that he might be forced to accept Kennedy in order to secure a victory over a moderate Republican ticket such as Nelson Rockefeller and George Romney, Kennedy supporters attempted to force the issue by running a draft movement during the New Hampshire primary. This movement gained momentum after Governor John W. King's endorsement and infuriated Johnson. Kennedy received 25,094 write in votes for vice president in New Hampshire, far surpassing Senator Hubert Humphrey, the eventual vice-presidential nominee. The potential need for a Johnson–Kennedy ticket was ultimately eliminated by the Republican nomination of conservative Barry Goldwater. With Goldwater as his opponent, Johnson's choice of vice president was all but irrelevant; opinion polls had revealed that, while Kennedy was an overwhelming first choice among Democrats, any choice made less than a 2% difference in a general election that already promised to be a landslide.

During a post-presidency interview with historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, Johnson claimed that Kennedy "acted like he was the custodian of the Kennedy dream" despite Johnson being seen as this after President Kennedy was assassinated; arguing that he had "waited" his turn and Kennedy should have done the same. Johnson recalled a "tidal wave of letters and memos about how great a vice president Bobby would be," but felt he could not "let it happen" as he viewed the possibility of Kennedy on the ticket as ensuring that he would never know if he could be elected "on my own." In July 1964, Johnson issued an official statement ruling out all of his current cabinet members as potential running mates, judging them to be "so valuable ... in their current posts." In response to this statement, angry letters poured in directed towards both Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird, expressing disappointment at Kennedy being dropped from the field of potential running mates.

U.S. Senate (1965–1968)

1964 election

On August 25, 1964, two days before the end of that year's Democratic National Convention, Kennedy announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate representing New York. He resigned as attorney general on September 3. Kennedy could not run for the U.S. Senate from his native Massachusetts because his younger brother Ted was running for reelection in 1964. Despite their notoriously difficult relationship, President Johnson gave considerable support to Kennedy's campaign. The New York Times editorialized, "there is nothing illegal about the possible nomination of Robert F. Kennedy of Massachusetts as Senator from New York, but there is plenty of cynical about it, ... merely choosing the state as a convenient launching‐pad for the political ambitions of himself."

His opponent, Republican incumbent Kenneth Keating, attempted to portray Kennedy as an arrogant "carpetbagger" since he did not reside in the state and was not registered to vote there. Kennedy was a legal resident of Massachusetts, and, under New York law, was not eligible to vote in the election. His wife Ethel made light of the criticism by suggesting this slogan: "There is only so much you can do for Massachusetts." Kennedy charged Keating with having "not done much of anything constructive" despite his presence in Congress during a September 8 press conference. During the campaign, Kennedy was frequently met by large crowds where he encountered multitudes of hecklers carrying signs that read: "BOBBY GO HOME!" and "GO BACK TO MASSACHUSETTS!". In the end, New York voters ignored the carpetbagging issue and Kennedy won the November election with a comfortable 700,000 vote margin, helped in part by Johnson's huge 2½ million vote victory margin in the state. With his victory, Robert and Ted Kennedy became the first brothers since Dwight and Theodore Foster to serve simultaneously in the U.S. Senate. Frequent appearances during this campaign period would help Kennedy refine his style, and he would give more than 300 speeches throughout his time in the Senate.

Tenure

Kennedy drew attention in Congress early on as the brother of President Kennedy, which set him apart from other senators. He drew more than 50 senators as spectators when he delivered a speech in the Senate on nuclear proliferation in June 1965. But he also saw a decline in his power, going from the president's most influential advisor to one of a hundred senators, and his impatience with collaborative lawmaking showed. Though fellow senator Fred R. Harris expected not to like Kennedy, the two became allies; Harris even called them "each other's best friends in the Senate". Kennedy's younger brother Ted was his senior there. Robert saw his brother as a guide on managing within the Senate, and the arrangement worked to deepen their relationship. Harris noted that Kennedy was intense about matters and issues that concerned him. Kennedy gained a reputation in the Senate for being well prepared for debate, but his tendency to speak to other senators in a more "blunt" fashion caused him to be "unpopular ... with many of his colleagues".

While serving in the Senate, Kennedy advocated gun control. In May 1965, he co-sponsored S.1592, proposed by President Johnson and sponsored by Senator Thomas J. Dodd, that would put federal restrictions on mail-order gun sales. Speaking in support of the bill, Kennedy said, "For too long we dealt with these deadly weapons as if they were harmless toys. Yet their very presence, the ease of their acquisition and the familiarity of their appearance have led to thousands of deaths each year. With the passage of this bill we will begin to meet our responsibilities. It would save hundreds of thousands of lives in this country and spare thousands of families ... grief and heartache." In remarks during a May 1968 campaign stop in Roseburg, Oregon, Kennedy defended the bill as keeping firearms away from "people who have no business with guns or rifles". The bill forbade "mail order sale of guns to the very young, those with criminal records and the insane", according to The Oregonian's report. S.1592 and subsequent bills, and the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy himself, paved the way for the eventual passage of the Gun Control Act of 1968.

Kennedy and his staff had employed a cautionary "amendments–only" strategy for his first year in the Senate. He added an amendment to the Appalachian Regional Development Act to add 13 low-income New York counties situated along the Pennsylvania border. He succeeded in amending the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to protect U.S. educated non-English speakers (mainly Puerto Ricans in New York City) from unfair imposition of English-language literacy tests. Kennedy, concerned that federal funds would be misspent and not used to help disadvantaged children, delayed passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act until an evaluation clause was included. In 1966 and 1967 they took more direct legislative action, but were met with increasing resistance from the Johnson administration. Despite perceptions that the two were hostile in their respective offices to each other, U.S. News reported Kennedy's support of the Johnson administration's "Great Society" program through his voting record. Kennedy supported both major and minor parts of the program, and each year over 60% of his roll call votes were consistently in favor of Johnson's policies.

1968 presidential campaign

In 1968, President Johnson prepared to run for reelection. In January, faced with what was widely considered an unrealistic race against an incumbent president, Kennedy said he would not seek the presidency. After the Tet Offensive in Vietnam in early February, he received a letter from writer Pete Hamill that said poor people kept pictures of President Kennedy on their walls and that Kennedy had an "obligation of staying true to whatever it was that put those pictures on those walls". There were other factors that influenced Kennedy's decision to seek the presidency. On February 29, the Kerner Commission issued a report on the racial unrest that had affected American cities during the previous summer. The report blamed "white racism" for the violence, but its findings were largely dismissed by the Johnson administration. Kennedy indicated that Johnson's apparent disinterest in the commission's conclusions meant that "he's not going to do anything about the cities." However, a phone conversation between President Johnson and Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley on January 27, 1968, revealed that Daley had knowledge of Kennedy's intentions to run for president by that time, with Daley telling Johnson that Kennedy met with him and sought his support, which he declined. Daley and Johnson also noted how they were trying to feed to Kennedy's ego and make him think that his pending presidential run was a "revolution" for the Democratic Party.

Kennedy traveled to Delano, California, to meet with civil rights activist César Chávez, who was on a 25-day hunger strike showing his commitment to nonviolence. It was on this visit to California that Kennedy stated he would challenge Johnson for the presidency, telling his former Justice Department aides, Edwin Guthman and Peter Edelman, that his first step was to get lesser-known U.S. Senator Eugene McCarthy to drop out of the presidential race. His younger brother Ted Kennedy was the leading voice against a bid for the presidency. He felt that his brother ought to wait until 1972, after Johnson's tenure was finished. If Robert ran in 1968 and lost in the primaries to a sitting president, Ted felt that it would destroy his brother's chances later. Johnson won a narrow victory in the New Hampshire primary on March 12, against McCarthy 49–42%, but this close second-place result dramatically boosted McCarthy's standing in the race.

After much speculation, and reports leaking out about his plans, and seeing in McCarthy's success that Johnson's hold on the job was not as strong as originally thought, Kennedy publicly declared his candidacy on March 16, in the Caucus Room of the Russell Senate Office Building, the same room where his brother John had declared his own candidacy eight years earlier. He said, "I do not run for the presidency merely to oppose any man, but to propose new policies. I run because I am convinced that this country is on a perilous course and because I have such strong feelings about what must be done, and I feel that I'm obliged to do all I can."

Assassination

Kennedy scored major victories when he won both the California and South Dakota primaries on June 4. He was now in second place with 393 total delegates, against Humphrey's 561 delegates. Kennedy addressed his supporters shortly after midnight on June 5, in a ballroom at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. At approximately 12:10 a.m., concluding his speech, Kennedy said: "My thanks to all of you and it's on to Chicago and let's win there." Leaving the ballroom, he went through the hotel kitchen after being told it was a shortcut to a press room. He did this despite being advised by his bodyguard—former FBI agent Bill Barry—to avoid the kitchen. In a crowded kitchen passageway, Kennedy turned to his left and shook hands with hotel busboy Juan Romero just as Sirhan Sirhan, a 24-year-old Palestinian, opened fire with a .22-caliber revolver. Kennedy was hit three times, and five other people were wounded.

George Plimpton, former decathlete Rafer Johnson, and former professional football player Rosey Grier are credited with wrestling Sirhan to the ground after he shot the senator. As Kennedy lay mortally wounded, Romero cradled his head and placed a rosary in his hand. Kennedy asked Romero, "Is everybody OK?", and Romero responded, "Yes, everybody's OK." Kennedy then turned away from Romero and said, "Everything's going to be OK." After several minutes, medical attendants arrived and lifted the senator onto a stretcher, prompting him to whisper, "Don't lift me", which were his last words. He lost consciousness shortly thereafter. He was rushed first to Los Angeles' Central Receiving Hospital, less than 2 miles (3.2 km) east of the Ambassador Hotel, and then to the adjoining (one city block distant) Good Samaritan Hospital. Despite extensive neurosurgery to remove the bullet and bone fragments from his brain, Kennedy was pronounced dead at 1:44 a.m. (PDT) on June 6, nearly 26 hours after the shooting. Kennedy's death, like the 1963 assassination of his brother John, has been the subject of conspiracy theories.

Funeral

Kennedy's body was returned to Manhattan, where it lay in repose at Saint Patrick's Cathedral from approximately 10:00 p.m. until 10:00 a.m. on June 8. A high requiem Mass was held at the cathedral at 10:00 a.m. on June 8. The service was attended by members of the extended Kennedy family, President Johnson and his wife Lady Bird Johnson, and members of the Johnson cabinet. Ted, the only surviving Kennedy brother, said the following:

My brother need not be idealized, 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. Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will some day come to pass for all the world. As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him: "Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not."

The requiem Mass concluded with the hymn "The Battle Hymn of the Republic", sung by Andy Williams. Immediately following the Mass, Kennedy's body was transported by a special private train to Washington, D.C. Kennedy's funeral train was pulled by two Penn Central GG1 electric locomotives. Thousands of mourners lined the tracks and stations along the route, paying their respects as the train passed. The train departed New York Penn Station at 12:30 pm. When it arrived in Elizabeth, New Jersey, an eastbound train on a parallel track to the funeral train hit and killed two spectators and seriously injured four, after they were unable to get off the track in time, even though the eastbound train's engineer had slowed to 30 mph for the normally 55 mph curve, blown his horn continuously, and rung his bell through the curve. The normally four-hour trip took more than eight hours because of the thick crowds lining the tracks on the 225-mile (362 km) journey. The train was scheduled to arrive at about 4:30 pm, but sticking brakes on the casket-bearing car contributed to delays, and the train finally arrived at Washington, D.C.'s Union Station at 9:10 p.m. on June 8.

Burial

Kennedy was buried close to his brother John at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, just across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. Although he had always maintained that he wished to be buried in Massachusetts, his family believed Robert should be interred in Arlington next to his brother. The procession left Union Station and passed the New Senate Office Building, where he had his offices, and then proceeded to the Lincoln Memorial, where it paused. The Marine Corps Band played "The Battle Hymn of the Republic". The funeral motorcade arrived at the cemetery at 10:24 p.m. As the vehicles entered the cemetery, people lining the roadway spontaneously lit candles to guide the motorcade to the burial site.

The 15-minute ceremony began at 10:30 p.m. Cardinal Patrick O'Boyle, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Washington, officiated at the graveside service in lieu of Cardinal Richard Cushing, Archbishop of Boston, who fell ill during the trip. Also officiating was Terence Cooke, Archbishop of New York. On behalf of the United States, John Glenn presented the folded flag to Ted Kennedy, who passed it to Robert's eldest son, Joe, who passed it to Ethel Kennedy. The Navy Band played "The Navy Hymn".

Officials at Arlington National Cemetery said that Kennedy's burial was the only night burial to have taken place at the cemetery. (The re-interment of Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, who died two days after his birth in August 1963, and a stillborn daughter, Arabella, both children of President Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline, also occurred at night.) After the president was interred in Arlington Cemetery, the two infants were buried next to him on December 5, 1963, in a private ceremony without publicity. His brother, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, was also buried at night, in 2009.

On June 9, President Johnson assigned security staff to all U.S. presidential candidates and declared an official national day of mourning. After the assassination, the mandate of the U.S. Secret Service was altered by Congress to include the protection of U.S. presidential candidates.

Personal life

Wife and children

On June 17, 1950, Kennedy married Ethel Skakel at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Greenwich, Connecticut. They first met during a skiing trip to Mont Tremblant Resort in Quebec, Canada in December 1945. The couple had 11 children: Kathleen in 1951, Joseph in 1952, Robert Jr. in 1954, David in 1955, Mary Courtney in 1956, Michael in 1958, Mary Kerry in 1959, Christopher in 1963, Maxwell in 1965, Douglas in 1967, and Rory in 1968.

As a law student, Kennedy listed his legal residency in the Beacon Hill section of Boston, across from the Massachusetts State House. After law school, Kennedy and his wife Ethel lived in a townhouse in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. In 1956, the Kennedys purchased Hickory Hill, a six-acre estate in McLean, Virginia, from Robert's brother John. Robert and Ethel held many gatherings at Hickory Hill and were known for their impressive and eclectic guest lists.

The couple also owned a home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts on Cape Cod, their legal residence until 1964. When he began preparations to run for the U.S. Senate from New York, Kennedy rented a Colonial home in Glen Cove, Long Island. In 1965, he purchased an apartment at United Nations Plaza in Manhattan.

Attitudes and approach

Kennedy's opponents on Capitol Hill maintained that his collegiate magnanimity was sometimes hindered by a tenacious and somewhat impatient manner. His professional life was dominated by the same attitudes that governed his family life: a certainty that good humor and leisure must be balanced by service and accomplishment. Schlesinger comments that Kennedy could be both the most ruthlessly diligent and yet generously adaptable of politicians, at once both temperamental and forgiving. In this, he was very much his father's son, lacking truly lasting emotional independence, and yet possessing a great desire to contribute. He lacked the innate self-confidence of his contemporaries, yet found a greater self-assurance in the experience of married life; an experience he said had given him a base of self-belief from which to continue his efforts in the public arena.

Kennedy confessed to possessing a bad temper that required self-control: "My biggest problem as counsel is to keep my temper. I think we all feel that when a witness comes before the United States Senate, he has an obligation to speak frankly and tell the truth. To see people sit in front of us and lie and evade makes me boil inside. But you can't lose your temper; if you do, the witness has gotten the best of you."

Attorney Michael O'Donnell wrote, "[Kennedy] offered that most intoxicating of political aphrodisiacs: authenticity. He was blunt to a fault, and his favorite campaign activity was arguing with college students. To many, his idealistic opportunism was irresistible."

In his earlier life, Kennedy had developed a reputation as the family's attack dog. He was a hostile cross-examiner on Joseph McCarthy's Senate committee; a fixer and leg-breaker as JFK's campaign manager; an unforgiving and merciless cutthroat—his father's son right down to Joseph Kennedy's purported observation that "he hates like me." Yet Bobby Kennedy somehow became a liberal icon, an antiwar visionary who tried to outflank Lyndon Johnson's Great Society from the left.

On Kennedy's ideological development, his brother John once remarked, "He might once have been intolerant of liberals as such because his early experience was with that high-minded, high-speaking kind who never got anything done. That all changed the moment he met a liberal like Walter Reuther." Evan Thomas noted that although Kennedy embraced the counterculture movement to some extent, he remained true to his Catholic outlook and censorious moralism.

Relationship with family members

Kennedy's mother Rose found his gentle personality endearing, but this made him "invisible to his father." She influenced him heavily and, like her, Robert became a devout Catholic, practicing his faith more seriously than his siblings over his lifetime. Joe Sr. was satisfied with Kennedy as an adult, believing him to have become "hard as nails", more like him than any of the other children, while his mother believed he exemplified all she had wanted in a child.

In October 1951, Kennedy embarked on a seven-week Asian trip with his brother John (then a U.S. congressman from Massachusetts' 11th district) and their sister Patricia, traveling to Israel, India, Pakistan, Vietnam, and Japan. Because of their age gap, the two brothers had previously seen little of each other—this 25,000-mile (40,000 km) trip came at their father's behest, and was the first extended time they had spent together, serving to deepen their relationship. On this trip, the brothers met Liaquat Ali Khan just before his assassination and India's prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.

Religious faith and Greek philosophy

Throughout his life, Kennedy made reference to his faith, how it informed every area of his life, and how it gave him the strength to reenter politics after his brother's assassination. Historian Evan Thomas calls Kennedy a "romantic Catholic who believed that it was possible to create the Kingdom of Heaven on earth." Journalist Murray Kempton wrote about Kennedy: "His was not an unresponsive and staid faith, but the faith of a Catholic Radical, perhaps the first successful Catholic Radical in American political history." Kennedy was deeply shaken by anti-Catholicism he encountered during his brother's presidential campaign in 1960, especially that of Protestant intellectuals and journalists. That year, Kennedy said, "Anti-Catholicism is the anti-semitism of the intellectuals."

At his household, Kennedy and his family prayed before meals and before bed, and had every bedroom of his children outfitted with a Bible, a statue of the Virgin Mary, a crucifix and holy water. During their visit to the Vatican in 1962, Pope John XXIII gave Robert and Ethel medals of his Pontificate and rosaries for themselves and each of their seven children. Kennedy also pressured the Catholic hierarchy to move toward progressivism. In 1966, he visited Pope Paul VI and urged him to address the misery and poverty of South Africa's black population. In 1967, he asked Paul to adopt more liberal rhetoric and extend the Church's appeal to Hispanics and other nationalities.

In the last years of his life, Kennedy also found solace in the playwrights and poets of Ancient Greece, especially Aeschylus, suggested to him by Jacqueline after John's death. In his Indianapolis speech on April 4, 1968, following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., Kennedy quoted these lines from Aeschylus:

Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.

Use and advocacy of psychedelics

Kennedy has been reported to have taken psychedelic drugs such as LSD or psilocybin in the early 1960s. His wife Ethel is also reported to have undergone psychedelic-assisted therapy with LSD in the 1960s. In 1966, Kennedy led a congressional investigation into the curtailing of many government-funded LSD therapy research projects. In a Senate hearing, he argued that regulators were ending valuable research and stated that LSD "can be very, very helpful in our society if used properly". However, his efforts proved unsuccessful. Subsequently, Kennedy's son, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has disclosed his own use of psychedelics and his own son taking ayahuasca in the 2020s. In addition, he has advocated for their medical use as the head of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in the 2020s.

Legacy

Biographer Evan Thomas wrote in 2000 that, at times, Kennedy misused his powers by "modern standards", but concluded, "on the whole, even counting his warts, he was a great attorney general." Walter Isaacson commented that Kennedy "turned out arguably to be the best attorney general in history", praising his championing of civil rights and other initiatives of the administration. As Kennedy stepped down from being attorney general in September 1964, The New York Times, which had notably criticized his appointment three years earlier, praised Kennedy for raising the standards of the position. Some of his successors as attorney general have been unfavorably compared to him for not displaying the same level of professional poise. Attorney General Eric Holder cited Kennedy as the inspiration for his belief that the Justice Department could be "a force for that which is right."

Kennedy has also been praised for his oratorical abilities and his skill at creating unity. Joseph A. Palermo of The Huffington Post observed that Kennedy's words "could cut through social boundaries and partisan divides in a way that seems nearly impossible today." Dolores Huerta and Philip W. Johnston expressed the view that Kennedy, both in his speeches and actions, was unique in his willingness to take political risks. That blunt sincerity was said by associates to be authentic; Frank N. Magill wrote that Kennedy's oratorical skills lent their support to minorities and other disenfranchised groups who began seeing him as an ally.

Kennedy's assassination was a blow to the optimism for a brighter future that his campaign had brought for many Americans who lived through the turbulent 1960s. Juan Romero, the busboy who shook hands with Kennedy right before he was shot, later said, "It made me realize that no matter how much hope you have it can be taken away in a second."

Kennedy's death has been deemed a significant factor in the Democratic Party's loss of the 1968 presidential election. Since his passing, Kennedy has become generally well-respected by liberals and conservatives, which is far from the polarized views of him during his lifetime. Joe Scarborough, John Ashcroft, Tom Bradley, Mark Dayton, John Kitzhaber, Max Cleland, Tim Cook, Phil Bredesen, Joe Biden, J. K. Rowling, Jim McGreevey, Gavin Newsom, and Ray Mabus have acknowledged Kennedy's influence on them. Josh Zeitz of Politico observed, "Bobby Kennedy has since become an American folk hero—the tough, crusading liberal gunned down in the prime of life."

Honors

In the months and years after Kennedy's death, numerous roads, public schools, and other facilities across the United States have been named in his memory. Examples include:

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

On November 20, 2001, President George W. Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft dedicated the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Justice as the Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building.

On June 4, 2008, the Triborough Bridge in New York City was renamed the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Bridge.

The Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights was founded in 1968, with an international award program to recognize human rights activists. In a further effort to remember Kennedy and continue his work helping the disadvantaged, a small group of private citizens launched the Robert F. Kennedy Children's Action Corps in 1969. The private, nonprofit, Massachusetts-based organization helps more than 800 abused and neglected children each year.

In 1978, the U.S. Congress awarded Kennedy the Congressional Gold Medal for distinguished service. In 1998, the United States Mint released the Robert F. Kennedy silver dollar, a special dollar coin that featured Kennedy's image on the obverse and the emblems of the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Senate on the reverse.

In January 2025, President Joe Biden posthumously awarded Kennedy the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award of the United States.

Personal items and documents from his office in the Justice Department Building are displayed in a permanent exhibit dedicated to him at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston. Papers from his years as attorney general, senator, peace and civil rights activist and presidential candidate, as well as personal correspondence, are also housed in the library.

Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.

Several public institutions jointly honor Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.:

In 1969, the former Woodrow Wilson Junior College, a two-year institution and a constituent campus of the City Colleges of Chicago, was renamed Kennedy–King College.

In 1994, the Landmark for Peace Memorial sculpture was erected in Indianapolis.

In 2019, Kennedy's "Speech on the Death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr." (April 4, 1968) was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Recording Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

Publications

The Enemy Within: The McClellan Committee's Crusade Against Jimmy Hoffa and Corrupt Labor Unions (1960)

Just Friends and Brave Enemies (1962)

The Pursuit of Justice (1964)

To Seek a Newer World, essays (1967)

Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis, published posthumously (1969)

Depictions in media

Kennedy has been the subject of several documentaries and has appeared in various works of popular culture. Kennedy's role in the Cuban Missile Crisis has been dramatized by Martin Sheen in the TV docudrama The Missiles of October (1974) and by Steven Culp in the political thriller film Thirteen Days (2000). The film Bobby (2006) is the story of multiple people's lives leading up to Kennedy's assassination. It employs stock footage from his presidential campaign and he is briefly portrayed by Dave Fraunces. Barry Pepper won the 2011 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie for his portrayal of Kennedy in The Kennedys (2011), an eight-part miniseries. He is portrayed by Peter Sarsgaard in the film about Jacqueline Kennedy, Jackie (2016), and by Jack Huston in the Martin Scorsese crime film The Irishman (2019).