Robert F. Kennedy
Robert F. Kennedy | |
---|---|
United States Senator from New York | |
In office January 3, 1965 – June 6, 1968 | |
Preceded by | Kenneth Keating |
Succeeded by | Charles Goodell |
64th United States Attorney General | |
In office January 21, 1961 – September 3, 1964 | |
President | |
Deputy |
|
Preceded by | William P. Rogers |
Succeeded by | Nicholas Katzenbach |
Personal details | |
Born | Robert Francis Kennedy November 20, 1925 Brookline, Massachusetts, U.S. |
Died | June 6, 1968 Los Angeles, California, U.S. | (aged 42)
Manner of death | Assassination |
Resting place | Arlington National Cemetery |
Political party | Democratic |
Spouse | |
Children | 11, including |
Parents | |
Relatives | Kennedy family |
Education | |
Signature | U.S. Naval Reserve |
Years of service | 1944–1946 |
Rank | Seaman apprentice |
Unit | USS Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. |
Battles/wars | World War II |
Robert Francis Kennedy (November 20, 1925 – June 6, 1968), also known by his initials RFK, was an American politician and lawyer. He served as the 64th
Kennedy was born into a
His tenure is known for advocating for the
In
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.[10] Robert described his position in the family hierarchy by saying, "When you come from that far down, you have to struggle to survive."[11] His parents were members of two prominent Irish-American families that were active in the Massachusetts Democratic Party.[12] All four of Kennedy's grandparents were children of Irish immigrants.[13] 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 created a fortune through a variety of activities and established
As his father's business success expanded, Kennedy and his family lived in increasing prosperity in Massachusetts, New York, and Florida, as well as London, where his father served as the
Secondary education
In September 1939, Kennedy began eighth grade at
In September 1942, Kennedy transferred to his third boarding school, Milton Academy, in Milton, Massachusetts, for 11th and 12th grades.[27] His father wanted him to transfer to Milton, believing it would better prepare him for admittance to Harvard.[28] At Milton, he met and became friends with David Hackett. Hackett admired Kennedy's determination to bypass his shortcomings and remembered him redoubling his efforts whenever something did not come easy to him, which included athletics, studies, success with girls, and popularity.[29] Hackett remembered the two of them as "misfits", a commonality that drew him to Kennedy, along with an unwillingness to conform to how others acted even if doing so meant not being accepted. He had an early sense of virtue; he disliked dirty jokes and bullying, once stepping in when an upperclassman tried bothering a younger student.[30] The headmaster at Milton would later summarize that he was a "very intelligent boy, quiet and shy, but not outstanding, and he left no special mark on Milton".[11] Kennedy graduated from Milton Academy in May 1944.[31]
In the summer of 1943, Kennedy worked on a Massachusetts farm "not too enthusiastically", then as a clerk at the same East Boston bank where Joe Sr. started out. Biographer Thomas wrote that Kennedy was bored by the drudgery, though he enjoyed taking the Boston subway and encountering, for the first time, "common folk". He began to notice inequity in the wider world. On a trip to the family's home in Hyannis Port, Kennedy began questioning his father about the poverty he glimpsed from the train window. "Couldn't something be done about the poor people living in those bleak tenements?" he asked.[32][33]
Six weeks before his 18th birthday in 1943, Kennedy enlisted in the United States Naval Reserve as a seaman apprentice.[34] 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 College in Cambridge, Massachusetts from March to November 1944. He was relocated to Bates College in Lewiston, Maine from November 1944 to June 1945,[35] where he received a specialized V-12-degree along with 15 others.[36] During the college's winter carnival, Robert built a snow replica of a Navy boat.[37][38] He returned to Harvard in June 1945, completing his post-training requirements in January 1946.[39]
Kennedy's oldest brother Joseph Jr. died in August 1944,
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
In September 1948, he enrolled at the University of Virginia School of Law in Charlottesville.[48] 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.[49] He graduated from law school in June 1951, finishing 56th in a class of 125.[50]
The Boston Post
Upon graduating from Harvard, Kennedy sailed on the
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.[57][58] 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.[59][60] On June 6, 1952, he resigned to manage his brother John's U.S. Senate campaign in Massachusetts.[61] JFK's victory was of great importance to the Kennedys, elevating him to national prominence and turning him into a serious potential presidential candidate. John's victory was also equally important to Robert, who felt he had succeeded in eliminating his father's negative perceptions of him.[62]
In December 1952, at his father's behest, Kennedy was appointed by family friend
After a period as an assistant to his father on the
Stevenson aide and focus on organized labor (1956–1960)
Kennedy went on to work as an aide to
Senate Rackets Committee
From 1957 to 1959, he made a name for himself while serving as the chief counsel to the U.S. Senate's
JFK presidential campaign (1960)
Kennedy went to work on the presidential campaign of his brother, John.[90] 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.[91] 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.[92]
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
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.[98] 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.[99]
Attorney General of the United States (1961–1964)
After winning the 1960 presidential election, president-elect John F. Kennedy appointed his younger brother as
According to Bobby Baker, the Senate majority secretary and a protégé of Lyndon Johnson, president-elect Kennedy did not want to name his brother attorney general, but their father overruled him. At the behest of vice president-elect Johnson, Baker persuaded the influential Southern senator Richard Russell to allow a voice vote to confirm the president's brother in January 1961, as Kennedy "would have been lucky to get 40 votes" on a roll-call vote.[105][106] The deputy and assistant attorneys general Kennedy chose included Byron White and Nicholas Katzenbach.[107]
Author James W. Hilty concludes that Kennedy "played an unusual combination of roles—campaign director, attorney general, executive overseer, controller of patronage, chief adviser, and brother protector" and that nobody before him had had such power.[108] To a great extent, President Kennedy sought the counsel of his younger brother, with Robert being the president's closest adviser and confidant.[109] Kennedy exercised widespread authority over every cabinet department, leading the Associated Press to dub him "Bobby—Washington's No. 2-man."[110][111] 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."[112]
Organized crime and the Teamsters
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.[113] 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.[114] In 1961, Kennedy worked to secure the passage of anti-racketeering legislation (Wire Act, Travel Act, and Interstate Transportation of Paraphernalia Act) to prohibit interstate gambling. The Federal Wire Act specifically targeted the use of wire communications and sought to disrupt the Mafia's gambling operations.[115][116][117] Convictions against organized crime figures rose by 800 percent during his term.[118] Kennedy worked to shift Hoover's focus away from communism, which Hoover saw as a more serious threat, to organized crime.[119] According to James Neff, Kennedy's success in this endeavor was due to his brother's position, giving the attorney general leverage over Hoover.[120] Biographer Richard Hack concluded that Hoover's dislike for Kennedy came from his being unable to control him.[121]
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,
Juvenile delinquency
In his first press conference as attorney general in 1961, Kennedy spoke of an "alarming increase" in
Civil rights
Kennedy expressed the administration's commitment to civil rights during a May 6, 1961, speech at the University of Georgia School of Law:
Our position is quite clear. We are upholding the law. The federal government would not be running the schools in Prince Edward County any more than it is running the University of Georgia or the schools in my home state of Massachusetts. In this case, in all cases, I say to you today that if the orders of the court are circumvented, the Department of Justice will act. We will not stand by or be aloof—we will move. I happen to believe that the 1954 decision was right. But my belief does not matter. It is now the law. Some of you may believe the decision was wrong. That does not matter. It is the law.[137]
FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover viewed civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. as an upstart troublemaker,
Kennedy played a large role in the response to the
Kennedy's attempts to end the Freedom Rides early were tied to an upcoming summit with Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna and Charles de Gaulle in Paris. He believed the continued international publicity of race riots would tarnish the president heading into international negotiations.[152] This attempt to curtail the Freedom Rides alienated many civil rights leaders who, at the time, perceived him as intolerant and narrow-minded.[153] Historian David Halberstam wrote that the race question was for a long time a minor ethnic political issue in Massachusetts where the Kennedy brothers came from, and had they been from another part of the country, "they might have been more immediately sensitive to the complexities and depth of black feelings".[154] In an attempt to better understand and improve race relations, Kennedy held a private meeting on May 24, 1963, in New York City with a black delegation coordinated by prominent author James Baldwin. The meeting became antagonistic, and the group reached no consensus. The black delegation generally felt that Kennedy did not understand the full extent of racism in the United States, and only alienated the group more when he tried to compare his family's experience with discrimination as Irish Catholics to the racial injustice faced by African Americans.[155]
In September 1962, Kennedy sent a force of U.S. Marshals,
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 laws.[160] Throughout the spring of 1964, Kennedy worked alongside Senator Hubert Humphrey and Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen in search of language that could work for the Republican caucus and overwhelm the Southern Democrats' filibuster. In May, a deal was secured that could obtain a two-thirds majority in the Senate—enough to end debate. Kennedy did not see the civil rights bill as simply directed at the South and warned of the danger of racial tensions above the Mason-Dixon Line. "In the North", he said, "I think you have had de facto segregation, which in some areas is bad or even more extreme than in the South", adding that people in "those communities, including my own state of Massachusetts, concentrated on what was happening in Birmingham, Alabama or Jackson, Mississippi, and didn't look at what was needed to be done in our home, our own town, or our own city." The ultimate solution "is a truly major effort at the local level to deal with the racial problem—Negroes and whites working together, within the structure of the law, obedience to the law, and respect for the law."[161]
Between December 1961 and December 1963, Kennedy also expanded the United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division by 60 percent.[162]
U.S. Steel
At the president's direction, Kennedy used the power of federal agencies to influence
Berlin
As one of the president's closest White House advisers, Kennedy played a crucial role in the events surrounding the
Cuba
As his brother's confidant, Kennedy oversaw the CIA's anti-Castro activities after the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion in Cuba. He also helped develop the strategy during the Cuban Missile Crisis to blockade Cuba instead of initiating a military strike that might have led to nuclear war.[170]
Allegations that the Kennedys knew of plans by the CIA to kill Fidel Castro, or approved of such plans, have been debated by historians over the years.[171] The "Family Jewels" documents, declassified by the CIA in 2007, suggest that before the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the attorney general personally authorized one such assassination attempt.[172][173] But there is evidence to the contrary, such as that Kennedy was informed of an earlier plot involving the CIA's use of Mafia bosses Sam Giancana and John Roselli only during a briefing on May 7, 1962, and in fact directed the CIA to halt any existing efforts directed at Castro's assassination.[174][175] Biographer Thomas concludes that "the Kennedys may have discussed the idea of assassination as a weapon of last resort. But they did not know the particulars of the Harvey-Rosselli operation – or want to."[176] Concurrently, Kennedy served as the president's personal representative in Operation Mongoose, the post-Bay of Pigs covert operations program the president established in November 1961.[177] Mongoose was meant to incite revolution in Cuba that would result in Castro's downfall, not his assassination.[178][179]
During the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, Kennedy proved himself to be a gifted politician with an ability to obtain compromises, tempering aggressive positions of key figures in the hawk camp. The trust the president placed in him on matters of negotiation was such that his role in the crisis is today seen as having been of vital importance in securing a blockade, which averted a full military engagement between the United States and the Soviet Union.[180] On October 27, Kennedy secretly met with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin. They reached a basic understanding: the Soviet Union would withdraw their missiles from Cuba, subject to United Nations verification, in exchange for a U.S. pledge not to invade Cuba.[181][182] Kennedy also informally proposed that the Jupiter MRBMs in Turkey would be removed[183] "within a short time after this crisis was over".[184] On the last night of the crisis, President Kennedy was so grateful for his brother's work in averting nuclear war that he summed it up by saying, "Thank God for Bobby."[185] Kennedy authored his account of the crisis in a book titled Thirteen Days (posthumously published in 1969).
Japan
At a summit meeting with Japanese prime minister
Assassination of John F. Kennedy
When President Kennedy
An hour after the president was shot, Robert Kennedy received a phone call from Vice President Johnson before Johnson boarded Air Force One. RFK remembered their conversation starting with Johnson demonstrating sympathy before the vice president stated his belief that he should be sworn in immediately; RFK opposed the idea since he felt "it would be nice" for President Kennedy's body to return to Washington with the deceased president still being the incumbent.[190] Eventually, the two concluded that the best course of action would be for Johnson to take the oath of office before returning to Washington.[191] In his 1971 book We Band of Brothers, aide Edwin O. Guthman recounted Kennedy admitting to him an hour after receiving word of his brother's death that he thought he would be the one "they would get" as opposed to his brother.[192] In the days following the assassination, he wrote letters to his two eldest children, Kathleen and Joseph, saying that as the oldest Kennedy family members of their generation, they had a special responsibility to remember what their uncle had started and to love and serve their country.[193][194] He was originally opposed to Jacqueline Kennedy's decision to have a closed casket, as he wanted the funeral to keep with tradition, but he changed his mind after seeing the cosmetic, waxen remains.[195]
The ten-month investigation by the
The assassination was judged as having a profound impact on Kennedy. Michael Beran assesses the assassination as having moved Kennedy away from reliance on the political system and to become more questioning.[200] Larry Tye views Kennedy following the death of his brother as "more fatalistic, having seen how fast he could lose what he cherished the most."[201]
1964 vice presidential candidate
The "Bobby problem"
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.[202] 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."[203] It was an open secret that they disliked each other,[204] and Johnson had no intention of remaining in the shadow of another Kennedy.[205] 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."[206][207] 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 with 18 percent and Hubert Humphrey with 10 percent.[208]
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
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 JFK 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."[213] 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.[213]
Democratic National Convention
As the Democratic National Convention approached, Johnson feared that delegates, still swept with lingering emotion over the assassination of JFK, might draft his brother onto the ticket as the vice-presidential nominee. Johnson ordered the FBI to monitor Kennedy's contacts and actions at the convention, and made sure that Kennedy did not speak until after Hubert Humphrey was confirmed as his running mate.[214]
On the last day of the convention, Kennedy introduced a short film, A Thousand Days, in honor of his brother's memory. After Kennedy appeared on the convention floor, delegates erupted in 22 minutes of uninterrupted applause, causing him to nearly break into tears. Speaking about his brother's vision for the country, Kennedy quoted from Romeo and Juliet: "When he shall die, take him and cut him out into the stars, and he shall make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night and pay no worship to the garish sun."[215][216]
Kennedy's political future
In June 1964, Kennedy offered to succeed Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. as U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam.[217] President Johnson rejected the idea.[218] Kennedy considered leaving politics altogether after his brother, Ted Kennedy, suffered a broken back in the crash of a small plane near Southampton, Massachusetts on June 19.[219][220] Positive reception during a six-day trip to Germany and Poland convinced him to remain in politics.[221][222]
In search of a way out of the dilemma, Kennedy asked speechwriter Milton Gwirtzman to write a memo comparing two offices: 1) governor of Massachusetts and 2) U.S. senator from New York, and "which would be a better place from which to make a run for the presidency in future years?"[223] Biographer Shesol wrote that the Massachusetts governorship offered one important advantage: isolation from Lyndon Johnson. However, the state was hobbled by debt and an unruly legislature.[224] Gwirtzman informed Kennedy that "you are going to receive invitations to attend dedications and speak around the country and abroad and to undertake other activities in connection with President Kennedy"...and that "it would seem easier to do this as a U.S. senator based in Washington, D.C. than as a governor based in Boston."[225]
U.S. Senate (1965–1968)
1964 election
On August 25, 1964, two days before the end of that year's Democratic National Convention,
His opponent was
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.[244] 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.[245] 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".[246] 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.[245] Harris noted that Kennedy was intense about matters and issues that concerned him.[247] 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".[247]
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.[248] 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."[248][249] 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.[250][251] 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.[252]
As a senator, he was popular among African Americans and other minorities, including Native Americans and immigrant groups. He spoke forcefully in favor of what he called the "disaffected",
On February 8, 1966, Kennedy urged the United States to pledge that it would not be the first country to use nuclear weapons against countries that did not have them noting that China had made the pledge and the Soviet Union indicated it was also willing to do so.[260]
Kennedy increased emphasis on human rights as a central focus of U.S. foreign policy.
At the University of Natal in Durban, I was told the church to which most of the white population belongs teaches apartheid as a moral necessity. A questioner declared that few churches allow black Africans to pray with the white because the Bible says that is the way it should be, because God created Negroes to serve. "But suppose God is black", I replied. "What if we go to Heaven and we, all our lives, have treated the Negro as an inferior, and God is there, and we look up and He is not white? What then is our response?" There was no answer. Only silence.[266]
At the University of Cape Town he delivered the annual Day of Affirmation Address. A quote from this address appears on his memorial at Arlington National Cemetery: "Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope."[267]
During his years as a senator, he helped to start
He
Kennedy worked on the
Vietnam
The JFK administration backed U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia and other parts of the world in the frame of the Cold War, but Kennedy was not known to be involved in discussions on the Vietnam War as his brother's attorney general.[290][291] Entering the Senate, Kennedy initially kept private his disagreements with President Johnson on the war. While Kennedy vigorously supported his brother's earlier efforts, he never publicly advocated commitment of ground troops. Though bothered by the beginning of the bombing of North Vietnam in February 1965, Kennedy did not wish to appear antagonistic toward the president's agenda.[292] But by April, Kennedy was advocating a halt to the bombing to Johnson, who acknowledged that Kennedy played a part in influencing his choice to temporarily cease bombing the following month.[293] Kennedy cautioned Johnson against sending combat troops as early as 1965, but Johnson chose instead to follow the recommendation of the rest of his predecessor's still intact staff of advisers. In July, after Johnson made a large commitment of American ground forces to Vietnam, Kennedy made multiple calls for a settlement through negotiation. In a letter to Kennedy the following month, John Paul Vann, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, wrote that Kennedy "indicat[ed] comprehension of the problems we face".[294] In December 1965, Kennedy advised his friend, the Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, that he should counsel Johnson to declare a ceasefire in Vietnam, a bombing pause over North Vietnam, and to take up an offer by Algeria to serve as a "honest broker" in peace talks.[295] The left-wing Algerian government had friendly relations with North Vietnam and the National Liberation Front and had indicated in 1965–1966 that it was willing to serve as a conduit for peace talks, but most of Johnson's advisers were leery of the Algerian offer.[296]
On January 31, 1966, Kennedy said in a speech on the Senate floor: "If we regard bombing as the answer in Vietnam, we are headed straight for disaster."
In April 1966, Kennedy had a private meeting with Philip Heymann of the State Department's Bureau of Security and Consular Affairs to discuss efforts to secure the release of American prisoners of war in Vietnam. Kennedy wanted to press the Johnson administration to do more, but Heymann insisted that the administration believed the "consequences of sitting down with the Viet Cong" mattered more than the prisoners they were holding captive.[299] On June 29, Kennedy released a statement disavowing President Johnson's choice to bomb Haiphong, but he avoided criticizing either the war or the president's overall foreign policy, believing that it might harm Democratic candidates in the 1966 midterm elections.[300] In August, the International Herald Tribune described Kennedy's popularity as outpacing President Johnson's, crediting Kennedy's attempts to end the Vietnam conflict which the public increasingly desired.[301]
In early 1967, Kennedy traveled to Europe, where he had discussions about Vietnam with leaders and diplomats. A story leaked to the State Department that Kennedy was talking about seeking peace while President Johnson was pursuing the war. Johnson became convinced that Kennedy was undermining his authority. He voiced this during a meeting with Kennedy, who reiterated the interest of the European leaders to pause the bombing while going forward with negotiations; Johnson declined to do so.[302] On March 2, Kennedy outlined a three-point plan to end the war which included suspending the U.S. bombing of North Vietnam, and the eventual withdrawal of American and North Vietnamese soldiers from South Vietnam; this plan was rejected by Secretary of State Dean Rusk, who believed North Vietnam would never agree to it.[303] On November 26, during an appearance on Face the Nation, Kennedy asserted that the Johnson administration had deviated from his brother's policies in Vietnam, his first time contrasting the two administrations' policies on the war. He added that the view that Americans were fighting to end communism in Vietnam was "immoral".[304][305]
On February 8, 1968, Kennedy delivered an address in Chicago, where he critiqued Saigon "government corruption" and expressed his disagreement with the Johnson administration's stance that the war would determine the future of Asia.[306] On March 14, Kennedy met with defense secretary Clark Clifford at the Pentagon regarding the war. Clifford's notes indicate that Kennedy was offering not to enter the ongoing Democratic presidential primaries if President Johnson would admit publicly to having been wrong in his Vietnam policy and appoint "a group of persons to conduct a study in depth of the issues and come up with a recommended course of action";[307] Johnson rejected the proposal.[308] On April 1, after President Johnson halted bombing of North Vietnam, Kennedy said the decision was a "step toward peace" and, though offering to collaborate with Johnson for national unity, opted to continue his presidential bid.[309] On May 1, while campaigning in Indiana, Kennedy said continued delays in beginning peace talks with North Vietnam meant both more lives lost and the postponing of the "domestic progress" hoped for by the U.S.[310] Later that month, Kennedy called the war "the gravest kind of error" during a speech in Oregon.[311] In an interview on June 4, hours before he was shot, Kennedy continued to advocate for a change in policy towards the war.[312]
1968 presidential campaign
In 1968, 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.[313] 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".[314] 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.[315] Kennedy indicated that Johnson's apparent disinterest in the commission's conclusions meant that "he's not going to do anything about the cities."[316]
Kennedy traveled to Delano, California, to meet with civil rights activist
After much speculation, and reports leaking out about his plans,[321] and seeing in McCarthy's success that Johnson's hold on the job was not as strong as originally thought, Kennedy 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.[322] 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."[323]
McCarthy supporters angrily denounced Kennedy as an
Kennedy ran on a platform of
On April 4, Kennedy learned of the
Kennedy won the Indiana primary on May 7 with 42 percent of the vote,[347] and the Nebraska primary on May 14 with 52 percent of the vote.[348] On May 28, Kennedy lost the Oregon primary,[349] marking the first time a Kennedy lost an election, and it was assumed that McCarthy was the preferred choice among the young voters.[350] If he could defeat McCarthy in the California primary, the leadership of the campaign thought, he would knock McCarthy out of the race and set up a one-on-one against Vice President Humphrey at the Democratic National Convention in August.[351]
Assassination
Kennedy scored major victories when he won both the California and South Dakota primaries on June 4.
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.[359] 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."[360][361] 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.[362][363] He lost consciousness shortly thereafter.[364] 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.[365][366] Kennedy's death, like the 1963 assassination of his brother John, has been the subject of conspiracy theories.[367]
Funeral
Kennedy's body was returned to Manhattan, where it
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."[371]
The requiem Mass concluded with the hymn "
Burial
Kennedy was buried close to his brother John in
The 15-minute ceremony began at 10:30 p.m.
Officials at Arlington National Cemetery said that Kennedy's burial was the only night burial to have taken place at the cemetery.[383] (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.[377] His brother, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, was also buried at night, in 2009.[384]
On June 9, President Johnson assigned security staff to all U.S. presidential candidates and declared an official national day of mourning.[385] After the assassination, the mandate of the U.S. Secret Service was altered by Congress to include the protection of U.S. presidential candidates.[386][387]
Personal life
Wife and children
On June 17, 1950, Kennedy married Ethel Skakel at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Greenwich, Connecticut.[388] The couple first met during a skiing trip to Mont Tremblant Resort in Quebec in December 1945.[389] 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, Matthew in 1965, Douglas in 1967, and Rory in 1968.[390]
Kennedy owned a home at the well-known
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.[394]
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."[395]
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.[396][397]
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."[398] Evan Thomas noted that although Kennedy embraced the counterculture movement to some extent, he remained true to his Catholic outlook and censorious moralism.[399]
Relationship with family members
Kennedy's mother Rose found his gentle personality endearing, but this made him "invisible to his father."[29] She influenced him heavily and, like her, Robert became a devout Catholic, practicing his faith more seriously than his siblings over his lifetime.[400] 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.[401]
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 to Israel, India, Pakistan, Vietnam, and Japan.[402] 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[403] 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.[404]
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.[405] Historian Evan Thomas calls Kennedy a "romantic Catholic who believed that it was possible to create the Kingdom of Heaven on earth."[406] 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."[407] 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."[408]
At his household, Kennedy and his family prayed before meals and bed, and had every bedroom of his children outfitted with a
In the last years of his life, Kennedy also found solace in the playwrights and poets of Ancient Greece, especially Aeschylus,[394] suggested to him by Jacqueline after JFK's death.[411] In his Indianapolis speech on April 4, 1968, on the day of 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.[412][413]
Legacy
"Kennedy's approach to national problems did not fit neatly into the idealogical categories of his time. ...His was a muscular liberalism, committed to an activist federal government but deeply suspicious of concentrated power and certain that fundamental change would best be achieved at the community level, insistent on responsibilities as well as rights, and convinced that the dynamism of capitalism could be the impetus for broadening national growth."
— Edwin O. Guthman and C. Richard Allen, 1993[414]
Biographer Evan Thomas wrote 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."[415] Walter Isaacson commented that Kennedy "turned out arguably to be the best attorney general in history", praising him for his championing of civil rights and other initiatives of the administration.[416] As Kennedy stepped down from being attorney general in September 1964, The New York Times, notably having criticized his appointment three years prior, praised Kennedy for raising the standards of the position.[417] Some of his successor attorneys general have been unfavorably compared to him, for not displaying the same level of poise in the profession.[418][419] Near the end of his time in office as attorney general under Barack Obama, Eric Holder cited Kennedy as the inspiration for his belief that the Justice Department could be "a force for that which is right."[420]
Kennedy has also been praised for his oratorical abilities
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.[327][427][428][429] 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."[430]
Kennedy's death has been cited as a significant factor in the Democratic Party's loss of the 1968 presidential election.
Kennedy's (and to a lesser extent his older brother's) ideas about using government authority to assist less fortunate peoples became central to
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.[451][452]
- 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.[453]
- On June 4, 2008, the
The
In 1978, the U.S. Congress awarded Kennedy the Congressional Gold Medal for distinguished service.[458] 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.[459]
Personal items and documents from his office in the Justice Department Building are displayed in a permanent exhibit dedicated to him at the
Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.
"I have bad news for you, for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world, and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and killed tonight." "Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and justice for his fellow human beings, and he died because of that effort. In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it is perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in." — Robert Kennedy[462]
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.[463]
- In 1994, the Landmark for Peace Memorial sculpture was erected in Indianapolis.[464][465]
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."[466]
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)
Art, entertainment, and media
Kennedy has been the subject of several documentaries and has appeared in various works of popular culture. Kennedy's role in the
See also
- Kennedy family tree
- List of assassinated American politicians
- List of peace activists
- List of United States Congress members killed or wounded in office
- List of United States Congress members who died in office (1950–1999)
References
Citations
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- ^ Nelson, Michael (1998). The Presidency A to Z. Congressional Quarterly. p. 284.
- ^ "From the archives: Bobby claims victory over Keating". New York Daily News. Retrieved April 8, 2020.
- ^ Kahlenberg, Richard (March 16, 2018). "The Inclusive Populism of Robert F. Kennedy". The Century Foundation. Retrieved September 19, 2018.
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- ^ Donovan, Robert J. (1961). PT-109, John F. Kennedy in World War II. McGraw-Hill. p. 26.
His forebears had immigrated from Ireland and acquired political power in the Democratic Party in Massachusetts.
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It is unclear where the rumor began about McCarthy being godfather to Bobby's firstborn, Kathleen. Authors and journalists echoed it enough that they stopped footnoting it, but they continued citing it as the clearest sign of how close Kennedy was to McCarthy. Even Kathleen's mother, Ethel, asked recently whether it was true, said, 'He was. I think he was.' Kathleen, who would enter politics herself and knew firsthand the stigma of being associated with Joe McCarthy, has 'no idea' where the rumor came from but double-checked her christening certificate to confirm that it was false. 'It's bizarro' she says, adding that her actual godfather was Daniel Walsh, a professor at Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart, Ethel's alma mater, and a counselor to the Catholic poet and mystic Thomas Merton.
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A congressional investigation of the CIA later uncovered eight separate plots of varying ridiculousness between 1960 and 1965. But did either John or Robert Kennedy actually order him killed? History will probably never know. The Kennedys knew the meaning of the term 'plausible deniability' all too well, and had been taught the old Boston Irish political rule, "never write it down.
- ^ January 4, 1975, memorandum of conversation between President Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger, made available by the National Security Archive, June 2007
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- ^ Tye, p. 314.
- ^ Palermo, Joseph A. (2001). In His Own Right: The Political Odyssey of Senator Robert F. Kennedy. Columbia University Press. p. 5.
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- ^ Dallek, Robert (1998). Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961-1973. Oxford University Press. p. 135.
- ^ Palermo, Joseph A. (2001). In His Own Right: The Political Odyssey of Senator Robert F. Kennedy. Columbia University Press. p. 6.
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- ^ Donaldson, Gary (2003). Liberalism's Last Hurrah: The Presidential Campaign of 1964. M.E. Sharpe. p. 111.
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- ^ Donaldson, Gary (2003). Liberalism's Last Hurrah: The Presidential Campaign of 1964. M.E. Sharpe. p. 186.
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- ^ Shesol, Jeff (1998). Mutual Contempt: Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, and the Feud that Defined a Decade. W. W. Norton. p. 180.
- ^ Shesol, Jeff (1998). Mutual Contempt: Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, and the Feud that Defined a Decade. W. W. Norton. p. 180.
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- ^ "But Does New York Need Him?". The New York Times. The New York Times. August 12, 1964. "if his brother were not already representing Massachusetts in the U.S. Senate, Mr. Kennedy undoubtedly would have run in that state. But to run now would mean that he would have to elbow out another Kennedy. Thus, Mr. Kennedy apparently needs New York. But does New York really need Bobby Kennedy?"
- ^ Rudin, Ken (June 11, 1999). "A Warm New York Welcome". Washington Post.
His goal thwarted, Bobby then decided to run for the Senate. He couldn't run from his home state of Massachusetts – not when the incumbent up in '64 was his brother Ted.
- ^ Shesol, Jeff (1998). Mutual Contempt: Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, and the Feud that Defined a Decade. W. W. Norton. p. 213.
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Further reading
- Altschuler, Bruce E. (1980). "Kennedy Decides to Run: 1968". Presidential Studies Quarterly. 10 (3): 348–352. ISSN 0360-4918.
- Barnes, John A. Irish-American Landmarks. Canton, Mich.: Visible Ink, 1995.
- Brown, Stuart Gerry (1972). The Presidency on Trial: Robert Kennedy's 1968 Campaign and Afterwards. Honolulu: U. Press of Hawaiʻi. ISBN 0-8248-0202-0.
- Burner, David; West, Thomas R. (1984). The Torch Is Passed: The Kennedy Brothers and American Liberalism. New York: Atheneum. ISBN 0-689-11438-9.
- Dooley, Brian (1996). Robert Kennedy: The Final Years. New York: St. Martin's. ISBN 0-312-16130-1.
- Goldfarb, Ronald (1995). Perfect Villains, Imperfect Heroes: Robert F. Kennedy's War against Organized Crime. New York: Random House. ISBN 0-679-43565-4.
- Grubin, David, director and producer, RFK. Video. (DVD, VHS). 2hr. WGBH Educ. Found. and David Grubin Productions, 2004. Distrib. by PBS Video
- Guthman, Edwin O.; Allen, C. Richard, eds. (1993). RFK: Collected Speeches. New York City: Viking. ISBN 0-670-84873-5.
- Haas, Lawrence J. The Kennedys in the World: How Jack, Bobby, and Ted Remade America's Empire (2021) excerpt
- Hersh, Burton (2007). Bobby and J. Edgar: The Historic Face-Off Between the Kennedys and J. Edgar Hoover That Transformed America. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0786719822.
- Hilty, James M. Robert Kennedy: Brother Protector (1997), vol. 1 to 1963. Temple U. Press., 1997.
- Martin, Zachary J. The Mindless Menace of Violence: Robert F. Kennedy's Vision and the Fierce Urgency of Now. Lanham, Md.: Hamilton Books, 2009.
- Mills, Judie (1998). Robert Kennedy. Millbrook Press. ISBN 978-1562942502.
- Langguth, A.J. (2000). Our Vietnam: The War 1954-1975. New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0-7432-1231-2.
- ISBN 978-1561713240.
- Murphy, John M. (1990). "'A Time of Shame and Sorrow': Robert F. Kennedy and the American Jeremiad". Quarterly Journal of Speech. 76 (4): 401–414. ISSN 0033-5630. RFK's speech after the death of Martin Luther King in 1968.
- Navasky, Victor S. Kennedy Justice (1972). Argues the policies of RFK's Justice Department show the conservatism of justice, the limits of charisma, the inherent tendency in a legal system to support the status quo, and the counterproductive results of many of Kennedy's endeavors in the field of civil rights and crime control.
- Neff, James. Vendetta: Bobby Kennedy Versus Jimmy Hoffa (2016) excerpt
- Newfield, Jack (2003). RFK: A Memoir. Nation Books.
- Niven, David (2003). The Politics of Injustice: The Kennedys, the Freedom Rides, and the Electoral Consequences of a Moral Compromise. U. of Tennessee Press.
- Palermo, Joseph A. (2001). In His Own Right: The Political Odyssey of Senator Robert F. Kennedy. Columbia U. Press. ISBN 9780231120685.
- .
- Schlesinger, Arthur, M. Jr. (2002) [1978], Robert Kennedy And His Times, Mariner Books-Houghton Mifflin Co., ISBN 978-0-618-21928-5.
- Schmitt, Edward R. (2010). President of the Other America: Robert Kennedy and the Politics of Poverty. UMass Press. ISBN 1-55849-730-7
- Shesol, Jeff (1997). Mutual Contempt: Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, and the Feud that Defined a Decade. W.W. Norton. ISBN 9780393040784.
- Schmitt, Edward R. President of the Other America: Robert Kennedy and the Politics of Poverty (University of Massachusetts Press, 2010) 324 pp. ISBN 978-1-55849-730-6
- Sullivan, Patricia (2021) Justice Rising: Robert Kennedy's America in Black and White (Harvard University Press, 2021)
- Thomas, Evan (2002). Robert Kennedy: His Life. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0743203296. online free
- Tye, Larry (2016). Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon. Random House. ISBN 978-0812993349.
External links
- FBI Records: The Vault – Robert F. Kennedy at fbi.gov
- Biography at United States Department of Justice
- United States Congress. "Robert F. Kennedy (id: K000114)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
- Annotated Bibliography for Robert F. Kennedy from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues Archived August 4, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
- American Experience: RFK Archived February 9, 2017, at the PBS
- Text, Audio, and Video of Robert Kennedy's Remarks on the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
- Edward Kennedy eulogy to Robert Kennedy (text and audio)
- My Father's Stand on Cuba Travel by Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, The Washington Post, April 23, 2009
- Radio airchecks/recordings of the shooting and death of Senator Kennedy including Mutual Radio's Andrew West's shooting coverage, continued live coverage from CBS Radio, announcements of RFK's death, CBS Radio's complete coverage of funeral mass St. Patrick's Cathedral, and CBS Radio coverage of the train arrival of RFK's body in Washington DC.
- KTTV assassination coverage Archived September 24, 2015, at the Wayback Machine at The Museum of Classic Chicago Television
- FBI file on the RFK assassination
- "The Robert F. Kennedy Assassination Archives" – a collection within the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Archives and Special Collections established in 1984
- Appearances on C-SPAN