Kennedy, Robert F. (1925–1968)

Robert F. Kennedy was one of the Democratic Party's leading liberal politicians of the 1960s. Kennedy was viewed with suspicion by many liberals when appointed U.S. Attorney General in 1961 by his brother, President John F. Kennedy. By the time of his death in 1968 while running for president, Robert Kennedy may have been the last politician with the ability to forge a coalition among African Americans and other ethnic minorities, white working-class and middle-class Americans, and mainstream liberals.

Robert Kennedy was born on November 20, 1925, in Boston. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy on his 18th birthday in 1943, but never saw action in World War II. After his discharge he graduated from Harvard University and then the University of Virginia Law School.

He emerged in the public eye as an aide to Senator Joseph McCarthy's Government Operations committee in 1952. Kennedy did not assist in the McCarthy committee's communist witch hunts in his short time on the committee, but some liberals remembered his association with McCarthy until his death. He served as counsel to the Senate Labor Rackets' Committee in the late 1950s where he gained a reputation as a confrontational and rough debater.

Kennedy's reputation for toughness and rigidity was cemented when he ran his brother's presidential campaign in 1960, and then served as the president's attorney general. Kennedy fully supported the demands of African Americans for equal civil rights, but urged African American leaders, often to their frustration, to embrace moderate strategies that focused on voter registration and working within the legal system.

After President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 23, 1963, Robert Kennedy won election to the U.S. Senate from the state of New York in 1964. As a senator Kennedy became a champion of the less privileged. He became a more vociferous supporter of the civil rights movement and became an advocate for the American Indian. Kennedy held hearings in California on the rights of migrant farmworkers and became a consistent supporter of Mexican American rights.

Kennedy became an increasingly vocal critic of Johnson's specific policy in Vietnam and the president's overall foreign policy strategy of containment. He championed democracy and economic justice on foreign policy trips to Poland, South Africa, Japan, and South America.

Kennedy entered the 1968 presidential race to much criticism on March 16, 1968. After he defeated Senator Eugene McCarthy in the California primary on June 4, 1968, he appeared to be the one candidate with the ability to put together a broad coalition of working-class whites and blacks to challenge the Democratic front-runner, Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey. After his victory speech in Los Angeles, the Jordanian-born [Page 799]Sirhan Sirhan, angered by Kennedy's support for Israel, shot Kennedy. Kennedy never regained consciousness and died on June 6, 1968.