Background and career
Robert Francis Kennedy (November 20, 1925 – June 6, 1968), also known by his initials RFK, was an American politician and lawyer. A member of the Democratic Party, Kennedy served as the 64th United States attorney general from 1961 to 1964, and as a U.S. senator from New York from 1965 until his assassination in 1968. Like his brothers John F. Kennedy and Ted Kennedy, he is considered an icon of modern American liberalism in the 21st century. Born into the prominent Kennedy family in Brookline, Massachusetts, Kennedy attended Harvard University, and later received his law degree from the University of Virginia. He began his career as a correspondent for The Boston Post and as a lawyer at the Justice Department, but later resigned to manage his brother John's successful campaign for the U.S. Senate in 1952. The following year, Kennedy worked as an assistant counsel to the Senate committee chaired by Senator Joseph McCarthy. He gained national attention as the chief counsel of the Senate Labor Rackets Committee from 1957 to 1959, where he publicly challenged Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa over the union's corrupt practices. Kennedy resigned from the committee to conduct his brother's successful campaign in the 1960 presidential election. He was appointed United States attorney general at the age of 35, one of the youngest cabinet members in American history. Kennedy served as John's closest advisor until the latter's assassination in 1963. Kennedy's tenure is known for advocating for the civil rights movement, the fight against organized crime, and involvement in U.S. foreign policy related to Cuba. He authored his account of the Cuban Missile Crisis in a book titled Thirteen Days. As attorney general, Kennedy authorized the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to wiretap Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference on a limited basis. After his brother John was assassinated, he remained in office during the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson for several months. Kennedy left to run for the U.S. Senate from New York in 1964 and defeated Republican incumbent Kenneth Keating, overcoming criticism that he was a "carpetbagger" from Massachusetts. In office, he opposed U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War and raised awareness of poverty by sponsoring legislation designed to lure private business to blighted communities (i.e., Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration project). Kennedy was an advocate for issues related to human rights and social justice by traveling abroad to eastern Europe, Latin America, and South Africa, and formed working relationships with Martin Luther King Jr., Cesar Chavez, and Walter Reuther. During the 1968 presidential election, Kennedy became a leading candidate for the Democratic nomination for the presidency by appealing to poor, African American, Hispanic, Catholic, and young voters. His main challenger in the race was Senator Eugene McCarthy. Shortly after winning the California primary around midnight on June 5, 1968, Kennedy was shot by Sirhan Sirhan, a 24-year-old Palestinian, in retaliation for his support of Israel following the 1967 Six-Day War. Kennedy died 25 hours later. The following year, Sirhan was convicted and sentenced to death by gas chamber for Kennedy's assassination, but was later commuted to life in prison with the possibility of parole in 1972. Like his brother, Kennedy's assassination continues to be the subject of widespread analysis and numerous conspiracy theories.
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. Robert described his position in the family hierarchy by saying, "When you come from that far down, you have to struggle to survive." His parents were members of two prominent Irish-American families that were active in the Massachusetts Democratic Party. All four of Kennedy's grandparents were children of Irish immigrants. 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 amassed a fortune and established trust funds for his nine children that guaranteed lifelong financial security. Turning to politics, Joe Sr. became a leading figure in the Democratic Party and had the money and connections to play a central role in the family's political ambitions. During Robert's childhood, his father dubbed him the "runt" of the family and wrote him off. He focused greater attention on his two eldest sons, Joseph Jr., and John. His parents involved their children in discussions of history and current affairs at the family dinner table. "I can hardly remember a mealtime," Kennedy reflected, "when the conversation was not dominated by what Franklin D. Roosevelt was doing or what was happening in the world. ...Since public affairs had dominated so much of our actions and discussions, public life seemed really an extension of family life."
Kennedy was raised at the Kennedy Compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts; La Querida in Palm Beach, Florida; and Bronxville, New York; as well as London, where his father served as the U.S. ambassador to the Court of St James's from 1938 to 1940. When the Kennedy family returned to the United States just before the outbreak of World War II in Europe, Robert was shipped off to an assortment of boarding schools in New England: St. Paul's, a Protestant school in Concord, New Hampshire; Portsmouth Priory, a Benedictine Catholic school in Portsmouth, Rhode Island; then, in September 1942, to Milton Academy, a preparatory school near Boston in Milton, Massachusetts, for 11th and 12th grades. Kennedy graduated from Milton in May 1944. Kennedy later said that, during childhood, he was "going to different schools, always having to make new friends, and that I was very awkward ... [a]nd I was pretty quiet most of the time. And I didn't mind being alone." At Milton Academy, Kennedy 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. 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. 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". As a teenager, Kennedy worked as a clerk at the Columbia Trust Company in East Boston, a bank his father had once presided over. While Kennedy found the daily office routine tedious, he enjoyed commuting on the Boston subway, which provided his first sustained contact with those he termed "common folk". His duties included collecting rent from Boston tenement houses, an experience biographers note exposed him to the conditions of urban poverty, including observations of large families living in overcrowded, poorly ventilated flats and residents sleeping on fire escapes.
Six weeks before his 18th birthday in 1943, Kennedy enlisted in the United States Naval Reserve as a seaman apprentice. 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 University in Cambridge, Massachusetts from March to November 1944. He was relocated to Bates College in Lewiston, Maine from November 1944 to June 1945, where he received a specialized V-12-degree along with 15 others. During the college's winter carnival, Robert built a snow replica of a Navy boat. He returned to Harvard in June 1945, completing his post-training requirements in January 1946. Kennedy's oldest brother Joseph Jr. died in August 1944, when his bomber exploded during a volunteer mission known as Operation Aphrodite. Robert was most affected by his father's reaction to his eldest son's passing. He appeared completely heartbroken, and his peer Fred Garfield commented that Kennedy developed depression and questioned his faith for a short time. After his brother's death, Robert gained more attention, moving higher up the family patriarchy. On December 15, 1945, the United States Navy commissioned the destroyer USS Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., and shortly thereafter granted Kennedy's request to be released from naval-officer training to serve aboard Kennedy starting on February 1, 1946, as a seaman apprentice on the ship's shakedown cruise in the Caribbean. On May 30, 1946, he received his honorable discharge from the Navy.
Throughout 1946, Kennedy became active in his brother John's campaign for the U.S. House seat vacated by James Michael Curley; he joined the campaign full-time after his naval discharge. Schlesinger wrote that the election served as an entry into politics for both Robert and John. In September, Kennedy entered Harvard as a junior after receiving credit for his time in the V-12 program. He worked hard to make the Harvard Crimson football team as an end; he was a starter and scored a touchdown in the first game of his senior year before breaking his leg in practice. He earned his varsity letter when his coach sent him in wearing a cast during the last minutes of a game against Yale. Kennedy graduated from Harvard in 1948 with a bachelor's degree in political science. In September 1948, he enrolled at the University of Virginia School of Law in Charlottesville. 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. He graduated from law school in June 1951, finishing 56th in a class of 125.
Upon graduating from Harvard, Kennedy sailed on the RMS Queen Mary with a college friend for a tour of Europe and the Middle East, accredited as a correspondent for The Boston Post, filing six stories. Four of these stories, submitted from Palestine shortly before the end of the British Mandate, provided a first-hand view of the tensions in the land. He was critical of British policy on Palestine and praised the Jewish people he met there, calling them "hardy and tough". Kennedy predicted that "before too long", the United States and Great Britain would be looking for a Jewish state to preserve a "toehold" of democracy in the region. He held out some hope after seeing Arabs and Jews working side by side but, in the end, feared that the hatred between the groups was too strong and would lead to a war. In June 1948, Kennedy reported on the Berlin Blockade. He wrote home about the experience: "It is a very moving and disturbing sight to see plane after plane take off amidst a torrent of rain particularly when I was aboard one." In September 1951, a few months after Kennedy graduated from law school, The Boston Post sent him to San Francisco to cover the convention that concluded the Treaty of Peace with Japan.
