"Now it's on to Chicago, and let's win there."

June 5, 2018 10:44 AM

50 years ago today, Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated.

"I think we can end the divisions in the United States ... the violence, the disenchantment with our society, the divisions, whether it’s between blacks and whites, between the poor and the affluent, or between age groups, or over the war in Vietnam–that we can start to work together again. We are a great country, an unselfish country and a compassionate country ... So my thanks to all of you, and it’s on to Chicago, and let’s win there."
– Robert F. Kennedy's last words

Moments after celebrating his victory in the California Presidential primary, Senator Kennedy was shot and killed at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on June 5, 1968. 50 years ago today.

Historian Robert Goodwin would go on to say, "The sixties came to an end in a Los Angeles hospital.” Journalist Jack Newfield would write, "From this time forward, things would get worse.”

• TIME: Behind the Picture: RFK's Assassination, Los Angeles, 1968

• LA Times: "The assassination of Robert Kennedy, as told 50 years later"

• NY Times: "50 Years Later, the Story Behind the Photos of Robert Kennedy’s Assassination"

• NY Times: A Campaign, a Murder, a Legacy: Robert F. Kennedy’s California Story

• Convicted for the assassination in 1969, Sirhan Sirhan has been up for (and denied) parole 15 times. Currently incarcerated at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in Otay Mesa near San Diego, he is next eligible for parole in 2021.

posted by zooropa (41 comments total)

.

I wanted to keep the FPP strictly factual, but I wanted to share my personal feelings here in the comments.

I wasn't alive in 1968. I was born seven years later. But it's Robert Kennedy's death that hits me the hardest as I read about it. I know he wasn't a saint or hippie. The historical fact is that he was a political pitbull. I get that and understand it.

At the same time, I believe that things would have gone vastly different had he been elected President in 1968. Maybe it's wishful thinking, but I believe this country would've been spared having to learn the meaning of words like Vietnamization, "peace with honor," and Watergate. RFK was a symbol of hope for many people and however flawed they ultimately prove to be, symbols matter.

In any case, I held it together while putting the FPP together right up until I saw this photo in one of the NYT stories. Then I lost it and started weeping in the cafe where I'm writing this. The photo was taken just before he finished his speech and RFK just appears so real, it's heartbreaking. No myths, no historical shades of gray, no faded memories. He's so close you could touch him. And yet ... he's gone.

"Some men see things as they are, and ask why. I dream of things that never were, and ask why not." - Robert F. Kennedy
posted by zooropa at 10:54 AM on June 5, 2018 [32 favorites]

I was in Grade Three, suburban Toronto. I remember school pretty much stopping, TVs getting rolled into classrooms ... because, in retrospect, I guess the teachers needed to watch. And when I went to bed that night, he was officially still alive, so there seemed to be hope.

But then, next morning, the paper was late (which NEVER happened). And when it finally did show up -- the headline was abrupt and to the point:

RFK DEAD
posted by philip-random at 11:04 AM on June 5, 2018 [5 favorites]

My thoughts and feelings echo zooropa's. This is the one that always punches me in the gut, these are the tears I can never tamp down, this is the moment I lose hope over.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 11:10 AM on June 5, 2018 [1 favorite]

He had delivered his moving, improvised speech in Indianapolis the night MLK was murdered just two months earlier:

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 to 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. For those of you who are black--considering the evidence there evidently is that there were white people who were responsible--you can be filled with bitterness, with hatred, and a desire for revenge. We can move in that direction as a country, in great polarization--black people amongst black, white people amongst white, filled with hatred toward one another.

Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and to replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand with compassion and love.

For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and distrust at the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I can only say that I 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. But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to go beyond these rather difficult times.

My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He wrote: "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 division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black.

So I shall ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, that's true, but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love--a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke.

We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times; we've had difficult times in the past; we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; it is not the end of disorder.

But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings who abide in our land.

Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.

Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.

posted by Barack Spinoza at 11:19 AM on June 5, 2018 [31 favorites]

A lot died with him.
posted by Gelatin at 11:24 AM on June 5, 2018 [9 favorites]

The Washington Post published a couple of articles last week and yesterday about various people's doubt (including RFK Jr.) that Sirhan Sirhan was the only shooter.
posted by mubba at 11:27 AM on June 5, 2018 [3 favorites]

So much sadness, so many might have beens.

LA Times columnist Steve Lopez talked again to Juan Romero, the busboy from the iconic photograph.
posted by mogget at 11:39 AM on June 5, 2018 [5 favorites]

His early years in public life are often skipped over. He was no angel. Bobby Kennedy worked for Joe McCarthy. He tried to take down Jimmy Hoffa. JFK put him in charge of the plot to overthrow Fidel Castro. He authorized FBI surveillance on MLK, but is credited with preventing a riot after King’s death.
posted by Carol Anne at 11:59 AM on June 5, 2018 [5 favorites]

mogget, that Juan Romero article was lovely.
posted by sjswitzer at 12:02 PM on June 5, 2018 [1 favorite]

My favorite poet was Aeschylus...

I can't even begin to imagine the sort of trashing a politician would be put through today were they to utter a line like that in public. Howls of "elitism" and the like.

I was 10 when both MLK and RFK were killed. 1968 was a long, hard year, even to young me. And, yeah, even at that age, it just seemed like that was the end of...something important.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:06 PM on June 5, 2018 [10 favorites]

He was no angel. Bobby Kennedy worked for Joe McCarthy. He tried to take down Jimmy Hoffa. JFK put him in charge of the plot to overthrow Fidel Castro. He authorized FBI surveillance on MLK...

One of these things is not like the others:

In 1964, Hoffa was convicted in Chattanooga, Tennessee, of attempted bribery of a grand juror, and was sentenced to eight years. Hoffa was also convicted of fraud later that same year for improper use of the Teamsters' pension fund, in a trial held in Chicago. Hoffa had illegally arranged several large pension fund loans to leading organized crime figures. Hoffa spent the next three years unsuccessfully appealing his 1964 convictions and began serving his sentences in March, 1967 at the Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary in Pennsylvania.

On December 23, 1971, less than five years into his 13-year sentence, Hoffa was released from the Lewisburg, Pennsylvania prison, when President Richard Nixon commuted his sentence to time served. Following his release, Hoffa was awarded a Teamsters' pension of $1.7 million, delivered in a one-time lump sum payment. This type of pension settlement had not occurred before with the Teamsters. Suspicion was soon raised of a deal for Hoffa's release connected with the IBT's support of Nixon in 1972. It was alleged that a large sum of money, estimated to be as high as $1 million, was paid secretly to Nixon.

posted by Atom Eyes at 12:17 PM on June 5, 2018 [15 favorites]

Hell, forget elitism because of classical poets, even just this line:

"We have certain obligations and responsibilities to our fellow citizens"

would get him trashed today with cries of "SOCIALISM!"

There's an almost 7 hour video on YouTube that's ABC News live coverage on the night of the assassination and though fascinating for many reasons, the 18 minutes (which just covers the California primary victory) gives you a better sense of the excitement of what his campaign meant than just about anything I've ever read.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 12:19 PM on June 5, 2018 [6 favorites]

He had delivered his moving, improvised speech in Indianapolis the night MLK was murdered just two months earlier:

Eh, that's a very "not all white people / please don't riot (even though you have good reason to, though I won't say so explicitly)" sort of speech.

He authorized FBI surveillance on MLK, but is credited with preventing a riot after King’s death.

Yeah.

My condolences to those who feel this loss more deeply though. I, too, suspect the US would be better off had RFK survived. He seemed to be a little bit better than most politicians of his background in his position. Maybe not a lot, but a little bit.
posted by eviemath at 12:19 PM on June 5, 2018 [6 favorites]

I remember where I was when I heard President John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy had been assassinated. 1968 was the saddest year of all.
posted by y2karl at 12:30 PM on June 5, 2018 [2 favorites]

Last weekend I was with a troop of Boy Scouts visiting Philadelphia. Explaining the murder of RFK was difficult and uncomfortable, because it reminded me how wasteful and hateful and disruptive it was: my younger son asked why he was killed and I had no reason.
posted by wenestvedt at 12:43 PM on June 5, 2018 [2 favorites]

Mr. Rogers RFK Assassination Special

If Daniel Tiger asking about shootings doesn't make you tear up, nothing will.
posted by benzenedream at 12:44 PM on June 5, 2018 [13 favorites]

And then today, the creators of Crimetown, one of my favorite shows from last year, released a new podcast "The RFK Tapes" that's going to delve into the investigation around the assassination and the conspiracy theories that surround it - including the idea that Sirhan was a "programmed" assassin.

Listened to the first episode today and I'm not sure how I feel about it, the idea, etc. I get the wanting to explore conspiracy's because they can be fascinating - help lay sense/purpose - to waste, etc. But this one has always seemed clear to me.

And of course, can't think of all the awfulness attached to the killings in the 60's (and boy do we seem tame right now even with the current instability) without thinking of Hunter:

"And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”

posted by drewbage1847 at 1:00 PM on June 5, 2018 [14 favorites]

benzenedream > If Daniel Tiger asking about shootings doesn't make you tear up, nothing will.

As a child, Mr. Rogers was one of my heroes. As a parent of a 5-year-old, he's still one of my heroes. I gasped when I heard Daniel Tiger ask Lady Aberlin, "What does assassination mean?"

But it was Mr. Rogers's ending monologue that made me tear up.

“I’m really grateful to be able to work with you, and I feel like that it is work together, you know, in caring for our children. I always say to the children, 'You've made this day a special by just your being you.’ And you have. I care deeply about you and your families. I hope you know that."

Yes, Mr. Rogers. Thank goodness we do.
posted by zooropa at 1:04 PM on June 5, 2018 [9 favorites]

BBC World Service's podcast The Documentary did an excellent episode a couple of weeks ago: “The Day Hope Died: Remembering Robert Kennedy” (.mp3 link) narrated by Stephen Sackur. He interviews aides and RFK's daughter Kerry. If I'm remembering correctly, Kerry Kennedy said that one of her first reactions as an eight year old was to worry about the safety of the assassin.
posted by XMLicious at 1:14 PM on June 5, 2018 [2 favorites]

I remember where I was when I heard President John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy had been assassinated.

I was born at the end of the 60's, so I was not aware of any of it at the time, but in retrospect I think that era should be called the Age of Assassination:

1963 - Medgar Evers, Ngô Đình Diệm, JFK
1965 - Malcom X
1967 – Che Guevara
1968 - MLK, RFK

So many deaths in five years. It must have been terrifying.
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 1:35 PM on June 5, 2018 [4 favorites]

I was in junior high. After the assassinations of President Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Bobby's death was a Thing That Happened. It was shocking, but not as shocking as it should have been. My Girl Scout troop was going on a trip that included Washington, DC, and we went into the city for museums, and also to see his funeral cortege.

I would have been a Viet Nam war protester anyway, but these murders and the riots of the 60s shaped my view of the US.

In retrospect, I'd have to say that Bobby's assassination affected me more than King's because of racism. I grew up white in a white area of town, with mostly white classmates in my Catholic schools, though in Ohio, there were a lot of Black people. The picture from King's hotel balcony, the pictures from JFK's motorcade, the picture of Bobby on the hotel kitchen floor, and the pictures of rioting at home and war in Viet Nam are a very big part of my consciousness, with the addition of the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

I miss that idealism and grand vision; we had it again with Obama, for a little while, but the rebound is hellish
posted by theora55 at 1:44 PM on June 5, 2018 [1 favorite]

was born at the end of the 60's, so I was not aware of any of it at the time, but in retrospect I think that era should be called the Age of Assassination:

Perhaps more precisely, the Age of Assassinating Leftists.
posted by rhizome at 1:48 PM on June 5, 2018 [6 favorites]

Bora Horza Gobuchul, because I was younger and insulated by racism, the deaths of Medgar Evers, Ngô Đình Diệm, Malcom X, Che Guevara, did not penetrate as much, but, yes, it was terrifying. The war in Viet Nam was on the news every night in the early 70s and we felt it. Especially in my family with 1 brother in the war and the other resisting the draft. In many ways, it's better, but we are still at war in Afghanistan, though it rarely makes the news, and over 125,000 Iraqi civilians, as well as thousands of Iraqi and allied soldiers, died because Bush-Cheney chose to go to war. It's still terrifying.
posted by theora55 at 1:54 PM on June 5, 2018 [3 favorites]

Thank you for the podcast link, drewbage1847.

I was born in 1967, so was too young - or not alive - to know this killing, or the others.
posted by doctornemo at 2:01 PM on June 5, 2018

Ugh, Guevara was in the midst of his, what, third attempt at a violent revolution when he was killed?
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 2:02 PM on June 5, 2018 [3 favorites]

was born at the end of the 60's, so I was not aware of any of it at the time, but in retrospect I think that era should be called the Age of Assassination:

Perhaps more precisely, the Age of Assassinating Leftists.

And ten years later, Harvey Milk.

I think we don’t like to talk about this era of politically motivated killings because they worked.
posted by The Whelk at 2:22 PM on June 5, 2018 [28 favorites]

(I watched that documentary on Netflix and after the assassination there’s a man on the street interview who says “it seems like a pattern, you try to do something for poor people, and you get shot.”)
posted by The Whelk at 2:27 PM on June 5, 2018 [15 favorites]

If you read the Kennedy tapes those lunatics were talking only about the logistics of invading and nuking Cuba to hell for what seems like two weeks in my memory before RFK, the only moderate voice to that point, brought up the idea that there might be way more nukes in Cuba than the aerial surveillance suggested.

I can't recommend that book enough. Maybe my reading is wrong but as far as I'm concerned the whole world owes him a lot for that.
posted by Barry David at 2:36 PM on June 5, 2018 [5 favorites]

I was too young for this particular 'flashbulb moment' in history but I can definitely recognize it's significance and how it shapes history. Such a loss. And how knows how American History would have shifted had he endured.
posted by Fizz at 2:44 PM on June 5, 2018 [1 favorite]

Ed Kilgore of NYMag raises a good point, that RFK's nomination was far from certain. The party was already terribly divided. The country even more so. Not mentioned here was that there was a good chunk of the nation which was simply tired of the Kennedys, that they didn't move on from Jack's assassination quickly enough, that they were too entitled and privileged, or both. Bobby's idealism was largely a response to Jack's death and Bobby's subsequent search for meaning, and it's fascinating to think of what that he could have accomplished by marrying that idealism to his brute political skill. Indeed, it could have been a brighter Camelot -- but first he needed to get there. Bobby could have become the philosopher king, but could just as easily have become a national punchline. In death, however, his saintliness was assured, one which the man himself may not have warranted. Still -- those ideals were as close to being achieved through him as by anyone, and what a different path America and the world would have taken. Instead, we had more bloody senselessness, chaos in place of justice, tragedy in place of glory. 'Twas ever thus.
posted by Capt. Renault at 2:47 PM on June 5, 2018 [6 favorites]

“What is objectionable, what is dangerous about extremists is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant. The evil is not what they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents.” - RFK

Most people never change or grow or truly learn. He did, and I continue to try to live up to that example. I wonder "what if?" more about RFK than anyone else we lost during these times. I wasn't alive then. My mother told me that his death was the last straw. When he died hope seemed to die with him. Rest in peace.
posted by xammerboy at 4:39 PM on June 5, 2018 [3 favorites]

I'd Like to Think Bobby Kennedy Would Have Saved Us From What We've Become
It is the great unknowable after 50 tumultuous years.

posted by TedW at 4:48 PM on June 5, 2018 [2 favorites]

Mr. Rogers RFK Assassination Special

I believe Bobby Kennedy was a man who sincerely tried to live by his faith, but Fred Rogers - it Fred Rogers wasn't a saint I don't know who was.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:50 PM on June 5, 2018 [7 favorites]

My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He wrote: "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."

I love that he said this. Not only is he neither pandering nor talking down, he is talking to them as equals and adults, no faux folksiness, which we've been drowning in since basically Reagan.
posted by entropicamericana at 6:35 PM on June 5, 2018 [9 favorites]

I was alive for all those assasinations. JFK, I was kept home from school because my mother had bad vibes about that day. I remember my sister and I making ourselves a plate of sandwiches, Roman Meal bread, butter and Dundee marmalade. We lived in East LA. We’d eaten our sandwiches when mother let out the most terrifying scream. I was afraid but my sister and I went running to our mother ready to do whatever damage small girls could do. ‘The President has been shot!’ She tried to light a votive candle which was in her bedroom and her hands were shaking. She told me to light it. I had never lit a match before. I lit the second match and just touched it to the witch and the glass the candle was in blew up. We managed to get the flame out. Walter Cronkite announced the death of the president. LA basically shut down. Crying children walked home early before lunch even. I remember even a boy who had bullied me crying as he walked. My step-father came home. He’d just started as a social worker. The office closed. He knew the stores would close so he stopped somewhere for food, and booze. I was in this weird, numb state.
Everyone in my neighborhood loved President Kennedy. It was an intensly Catholic Mexican American neighborhood. Kennedy may have been White, but Mexicans have always liked Irish people. Ireland bought Mexican gasoline when other countries boycotted it, La Brigada San Patricio which fought for Mexico against the US. JFK was loved.
By the time Bobby got killed I was 16. We were living not far from Crescent City. My parents had gone and voted in the primary. They came home and we all ate dinner, watched the news and the California Primary results. Of course my parents had voted for Bobby. We settled in with our snacks and even some beer. Bobby won of course and was going to give his victory speech.
He was shot on live TV. I and hundreds of thousands of people saw it live.
It’s not like I’d never seen death before, but everyone pretty much knew this was different.
There were so many assasinations in those years. RFK was no angel. Others have posted the things he did which weren’t good. The thing is he gave people hope. Hope may be more dangerous when it is suddenly dashed. I honestly don’t know how these assasinations didn’t kick off a civil war.
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 7:37 PM on June 5, 2018 [19 favorites]

From RFK's speech at the University of Cape Town on June 6, 1966 - exactly two years to the day before his death:

"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, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."
posted by New Frontier at 10:38 PM on June 5, 2018 [6 favorites]

I was born that day, so I’ve always felt a strange and numinous affinity for RFK, despite the multiple gulfs – social, political, ethical, religious, generational – that cleave my life from his. Thanks for the post.
posted by adamgreenfield at 8:16 AM on June 6, 2018 [2 favorites]

I remember where I was when I heard President John F. Kennedy... had been assassinated.

Since 1974, my aphorism has been Everybody can remember where they were when John F. Kennedy was shot but nobody knew where they were the morning after Nixon resigned.

Man, Seattle was far less than half of its current population then and yet the Comet Tavern went through 9 kegs that night.
posted by y2karl at 9:47 AM on June 6, 2018 [3 favorites]

Thanks to that Mr. Rogers I think I'm going to calling when I have to cancel fun plans because the world is too shitty, "I can't go to X and Lady Elaine's picnic; I'm feeling too Daniel Tiger."
posted by MCMikeNamara at 10:04 AM on June 6, 2018 [2 favorites]

I just realized that both George Plimpton and Rosey Grier were there at the killing.
posted by doctornemo at 1:43 PM on June 6, 2018 [1 favorite]

I was born in 1958, and I think being a child during the 60s meant growing up feeling that the world was a very violent and terrifying place. In addition to the political assassinations, there were also the Richard Speck murders, the Manson murders, and the shooting from the tower at the University of Texas. I found out that Bobby Kennedy had died when I heard my mother talking softly to my older brother in the morning, and then I heard my brother cry and cry. That memory makes me tear up even now.

As a side note, if you’re interested in the Texas tower shooting, watch the documentary The Tower on Netflix. It is excellent.
posted by FencingGal at 6:47 PM on June 6, 2018 [1 favorite]