Robert F. Kennedy Part III

 

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. 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. 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. 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". 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 an "honest broker" in peace talks. 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.

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 February 1966, Kennedy released a peace plan that called for preserving South Vietnam while at the same time allowing the National Liberation Front, better known as the Viet Cong, to join a coalition government in Saigon. When asked by reporters if he was speaking on behalf of Johnson, Kennedy replied: "I don't think anyone has ever suggested that I was speaking for the White House." Kennedy's peace plan made front-page news with The New York Times calling it a break with the president while the Chicago Tribunal labelled him in an editorial "Ho Chi Kennedy". Vice President Humphrey on a visit to New Zealand said that Kennedy's "peace recipe" included "a dose of arsenic" while the National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy quoted to the press Kennedy's remarks from 1963 saying he was against including Communists in coalition governments (though Kennedy's subject was Germany, not Vietnam). Kennedy was displeased when he heard anti-war protesters chanting his name, saying "I'm not Wayne Morse." To put aside reports of a rift with Johnson, Kennedy flew with Johnson on Air Force One on a trip to New York on February 23, 1966, and barely clapped his hands in approval when Johnson denied waging a war of conquest in Vietnam. In an interview with the Today program, Kennedy conceded that his views on Vietnam were "a little confusing."

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. 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. 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.

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. 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. 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".

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. 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"; Johnson rejected the proposal. 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. 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. Later that month, Kennedy called the war "the gravest kind of error" during a speech in Oregon. In an interview on June 4, hours before he was shot, Kennedy continued to advocate for a change in policy towards the war.

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."

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 decided 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 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."

McCarthy supporters angrily denounced Kennedy as an opportunist. Kennedy's announcement split the anti-war movement in two. On March 31, Johnson stunned the nation by dropping out of the race. Vice President Hubert Humphrey entered the race on April 27 with the financial backing and critical endorsement of the party "establishment", which gave him a better chance at gaining convention delegates from non-primary party caucuses and state conventions. With state registration deadlines long past, Humphrey joined the race too late to enter any primaries but had the support of the president. Kennedy, like his brother before him, planned to win the nomination through popular support in the primaries.

Kennedy ran on a platform of racial equality, economic justice, non-aggression in foreign policy, decentralization of power, and social improvement.  A crucial element of his campaign was youth engagement. "You are the people," Kennedy said, "who have the least ties to the present and the greatest stake in the future." During a speech at the University of Kansas on March 18, Kennedy notably outlined why he thought the gross national product (GNP) was an insufficient measure of success, emphasizing the negative values it accounted for and the positive ones it ignored. According to Schlesinger, Kennedy's presidential campaign generated "wild enthusiasm" as well as deep anger. He visited numerous small towns and made himself available to the masses by participating in long motorcades and street-corner stump speeches, often in inner cities. Kennedy's candidacy faced opposition from Southern Democrats, leaders of organized labor, and the business community. At one of his university speeches (Indiana University Medical School), he was asked, "Where are we going to get the money to pay for all these new programs you're proposing?" He replied to the medical students, about to enter lucrative careers, "From you."

On April 4, Kennedy learned of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and gave a heartfelt impromptu speech in Indianapolis's inner city, calling for reconciliation between the races. The address was the first time Kennedy spoke publicly about his brother's killing. Riots broke out in 60 cities in the wake of King's death, but not in Indianapolis, a fact many attribute to the effect of this speech. Kennedy addressed the City Club of Cleveland the following day; delivering the famous "On the Mindless Menace of Violence" speech. He attended King's funeral, accompanied by Jacqueline and Ted Kennedy. He was described as being the "only white politician to hear only cheers and applause".

Kennedy won the Indiana primary on May 7 with 42 percent of the vote, and the Nebraska primary on May 14 with 52 percent of the vote. On May 28, Kennedy lost the Oregon primary, marking the first time a Kennedy lost an election, and it was assumed that McCarthy was the preferred choice among the young voters. 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.

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: "So my thanks to all of you and 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 someday come to pass for the entire 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 Cardinal 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, and 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 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 bed, and had every bedroom of his children outfitted with a Bible, a statue of St. Mary, a crucifix and holy water. In 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 adapt 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 JFK'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.

Legacy

Kennedy's approach to national problems did not fit neatly into the ideological 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

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 him for 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, notably having criticized his appointment three years prior, praised Kennedy for raising the standards of the position. Some of his successor attorneys general have been unfavorably compared to him, for not displaying the same level of poise in the profession. 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."

Kennedy's (and to a lesser extent his older brother's) ideas about using government authority to assist less fortunate peoples became central to American liberalism as a tenet of the "Kennedy legacy."

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 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.

"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

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 play The Missiles of October (1974) and by Steven Culp in Thirteen Days (2000). The film Bobby (2006) is the story of multiple people's lives leading up to Kennedy's assassination. The film employs stock footage from his presidential campaign, and he is briefly portrayed by Dave Fraunces. Barry Pepper won an Emmy for his portrayal of Kennedy in The Kennedys (2011), an eight-part miniseries. He is played by Peter Sarsgaard in the film about Jacqueline Kennedy, Jackie (2016). He is played by Jack Huston in Martin Scorsese's film The Irishman (2019).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Kennedy