Robert F. Kennedy’s Life and Legacy 40 Years After His Assassination

Forty years ago today, on June 5, 1968, Robert F. Kennedy had just won the California Democratic primary, a major boost in his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. Just after midnight, Kennedy addressed supporters at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, in what would be the last moments of his life.

AMY GOODMAN: Forty years ago today, Robert F. Kennedy was shot at the Ambassador Hotel after the Los Angeles primary, the Democratic primary he won. Today on Democracy Now!, we look back at Kennedy’s life and legacy.

His record as a political figure is a complicated one. To many Americans, he came to embody the hopes of the civil rights and antiwar movements. But while serving in government, he played a major role in actions these movements fought against. As a young lawyer, Robert Kennedy was a key aide to Republican Senator Joe McCarthy on the notorious Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. As Attorney General under his brother, President John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy signed the wiretap order authorizing the FBI’s spying on Martin Luther King, Jr. On foreign policy, Robert Kennedy played a key role in US efforts to overthrow Cuban President Fidel Castro and was part of the inner circle of advisers that backed President Kennedy’s escalation of the bombing and destruction of Vietnam.

But he also was going through transformations at the end of his life. Today, we’ll look at those last months. But we begin with excerpts of the documentary RFK Must Die: The Assassination of Bobby Kennedy, directed by Shane O’Sullivan and produced by E2 Films.

On June 5, 1968, Kennedy had just won the California Democratic primary, a major boost in his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. Just after midnight, Kennedy addressed supporters at the Ambassador Hotel in LA in what would be the last moments of his life.

       ROBERT F. KENNEDY: What I think is quite clear is that we can work together in the last analysis and that what has been going on within the United States over the period of that last three years, the divisions, the violence, the disenchantment with our society, the divisions, whether it’s between blacks and whites, between the poor and the more affluent, or between age groups or on the war in Vietnam, that we can start to work together. We are a great country, an unselfish country and a compassionate country. And I intend to make that my basis for running over the period of the next few months.


Mayor Yorty has just sent me a message that we’ve been here too long already. So, my thanks to all of you, and now it’s on to Chicago, and let’s win there. Thank you very much.


NARRATOR: Moments later, he was assassinated.


ANDY WEST: Oh, my god! Senator Kennedy has been shot in the head. I am right here, and Rafer Johnson has a hold of a man who apparently has fired the shot. He still has the gun. The gun is pointed at me right at this moment. I hope they can get the gun out of his hand. Get the gun! Get the gun! His hand is frozen. Get his thumb! Get his thumb! Get a hold of his thumb and break it if you have to! Get his thumb! OK, now hold onto the guy! Hold onto him! Hold on to him. Ladies and gentleman, they have the gun away from the man.

AMY GOODMAN: Vincent Di Pierro was a waiter at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. He is featured in the documentary RFK Must Die and describes the scene of the shooting.

       VINCENT DI PIERRO: Kennedy, after he got shot with the first shot, his hands went up to his head, like that, and he started to spin to his right. The second shot, it appeared the bullet hit him, because his right arm went limp, and it went down to the side, and he started falling back towards me. The third bullet, I believe, is the bullet that hit Paul Schrade, because at that point Paul went down.


Karl now has got the gun. He’s banging the gun. I’m watching the bullets come out of the gun, as he’s—every time he hits it, he fires. Goldstein gets hit—what number bullet, I don’t remember. He hits me on my right shoulder. I am now falling. I am now on the ground and have Kennedy on my legs. I’ve got Paul under my left arm. And I’ve got Goldstein on top of my right shoulder. I’m basically on the bottom of a pile of—and crying. I was hysterical.


Karl literally had his hand, banging it on the cabinet, trying to get him to release it. Finally, after the gun was empty, he was still banging his hand, and you could still hear the gun click. He was still trying to shoot at him on the ground.


When we were on the floor and the shooting was finished, I was on my knees, and I crawled over to the senator. The first thing he said was, “Is everybody else alright?” We all said, you know, “Don’t say anything. Just don’t speak.” All he was concerned with was everybody else. That’s something I can never forget, to see a man who knew he was probably going to die worrying about everybody else.

AMY GOODMAN: Robert Kennedy was pronounced dead the next day. President Lyndon Johnson would later address the nation in a televised speech.

        PRESIDENT LYNDON JOHNSON: 200 million Americans did not strike down Robert Kennedy last night, any more than they struck down President John F. Kennedy in 1963 or Dr. Martin Luther King in April of this year. But those awful events give us ample warning that in a climate of extremism, of disrespect for law, of contempt for the rights of others, violence may bring down the very best among us.

AMY GOODMAN: Robert Kennedy’s funeral was held at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York. His younger brother, Senator Ted Kennedy, delivered the eulogy.

       SEN. TED KENNEDY: 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. 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.”

AMY GOODMAN: Robert Kennedy’s death came just two months after Martin Luther King’s assassination in Memphis. Kennedy had broken the news to supporters of King’s assassination while campaigning in Indianapolis and delivered what was to become a famous speech.

        ROBERT F. KENNEDY: For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and distrust, of the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I would only say that I can also feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man.


My favorite poet was Aeschylus. And he once wrote, “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.”


What we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love and wisdom and compassion toward one another, a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Robert F. Kennedy breaking the news of the Martin Luther King assassination that night, April 4th, two months before his own assassination. Kennedy was in Indianapolis when Dr. King was killed.

Kennedy’s entry into the Democratic race was steeped in controversy. He was challenging his brother John F. Kennedy’s vice president, Lyndon Johnson, who had become president following Kennedy’s assassination. Kennedy only entered the race after antiwar Senator Eugene McCarthy nearly defeated Johnson in the New Hampshire primary. Faced with a narrow victory and Kennedy’s entry, Johnson would drop out of the race just weeks later.

This excerpt of the film RFK Must Die features a Kennedy campaign ad and clips from the campaign trail.

       CAMPAIGN AD: Tomorrow’s citizen needs people, people who know how to plan for his future. He needs them in the right places, now. People like Robert Kennedy.


ROBERT F. KENNEDY: One thing is clear in this year of 1968, I believe, in this country, as I traveled across, and that is that the American people want no more Vietnams.


CAMPAIGN AD: In August in Chicago, the Democratic Party will nominate its candidate for president of the United States. There are two roads to that nomination. One is to seek commitments through discussions with political leaders. The other is to go to the people.


ROBERT F. KENNEDY: I think this is a great country, and I think we’ve accomplished—“Get a haircut.” I’m just at the pitch of my campaign speech, and I look around, and it says, “Get a haircut.” I got a haircut.


No matter what happens, I’ve got a very tough road ahead.


America was a great force in the world with immense prestige, long before we became a great military power. The real constructive force in this world comes not from bombs, but from the imaginative ideas, the warm sympathies and the generous spirit of a people.


PRESIDENT LYNDON JOHNSON: I shall not seek and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president.


NARRATOR: With the president out of the race, Kennedy took to the campaign trail. He started out away from the cities in the heartland of Indiana and Nebraska.


VOICEOVER: Robert Kennedy on a family farm.


WOMAN FROM FARM: How can we make the people in the city understand our problems?


ROBERT F. KENNEDY: Well, elect me president of the United States.


VOICEOVER: Robert F. Kennedy in Indiana.


ROBERT F. KENNEDY: Even here at home, I’ve seen children here in the United States starving, without the adequate, satisfactory meals, whether it be in Easton, Kentucky, whether it be on some of our Indian reservations, or whether it be in the Delta area of Mississippi, young children starving to death. Obviously, we can work out a system where you can produce these goods, and those goods be made available to our own population.


This is the most dangerous time that you can possibly live in, but that also makes it the most interesting time. Camus said that he wouldn’t exchange his time with any other time just for that reason.


We had great prestige a number of years ago around the rest of the globe, but it wasn’t because of our military power, and it wasn’t because of our economic power. It was just because people believed in us and believed that we would do what was right, believed that the principles that we attempted to follow within our own country we stood for around the rest of the globe. And they don’t have that same confidence now.

AMY GOODMAN: Excerpts of the film RFK Must Die. It is directed and narrated by Shane O’Sullivan. It’s premiering on the Documentary Channel Monday, June 9th at 8:00 p.m. Eastern time. It’s also set for theatrical release here in New York at the Pioneer Theater today, on this fortieth anniversary of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, the War and Peace Report. We’ll be back in a minute.