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Career until 1960 Robert Kennedy was born on November 20, 1925, in Brookline, Massachusetts, the seventh child of Joseph P. Kennedy and Rose Kennedy. While growing up, he was raised amidst the competitive yet loyal Kennedy family culture. Kennedy served briefly in the Navy and underwent the officer training (V-12) at Bates College, then went on to attend Harvard. He was a three-year letterman for the football team and graduated in 1948. He then enrolled at the University of Virginia School of Law, and earned his degree in 1951. Following law school, Kennedy managed his brother John's successful 1952 Senate campaign. Kennedy began his career at the end of 1951 working for the Internal Security Division of the Department of Justice, which investigates Soviet agents. In December 1952, at the behest of his father, he was appointed by Republican Senator Joe McCarthy as assistant counsel of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. He resigned in July 1952, but "retained a fondness for McCarthy." After a spell as an assistant to his father on the Hoover commission, Kennedy rejoined the Senate committee staff as chief counsel for the Democratic minority in February, 1954. When the Democrats gained the majority in January 1955 he became chief counsel. Kennedy was a background figure in the televised McCarthy Hearings of 1954 into the conduct of McCarthy. Kennedy soon made a name for himself as the chief counsel 1957-59 of the Senate Labor Rackets Committee under chairman John L. McClellan. In a dramatic scene, Kennedy squared off against Jimmy Hoffa during the antagonistic argument that marked Hoffa's testimony. Kennedy left the Rackets Committee in late 1959 in order to run his brother John's successful Presidential campaign. Attorney general After the 1960 election, he was appointed Attorney General by President Kennedy. As Attorney General, he continued his crusade against organized crime, often at the resistance of FBI head J. Edgar Hoover. Convictions against notorious organized crime figures rose by 800% during his term. Kennedy was relentless in his pursuit of Teamster's President James Hoffa resulting from widespread knowledge of Hoffa's corruption in financial and electoral actions, both personally and organisationally. Kennedy also began seriously to enforce civil rights and equal opportunity for African-Americans. He expressed the Administration's commitment to civil rights during a 1961 speech at the University of Georgia Law School: "We will not stand by or be aloof. We will move. I happen to believe that the 1954 Supreme Court school desegregation decision was right. But my belief does not matter. It is the law. Some of you may believe the decision was wrong. That does not matter. It is the law." In September 1962, he sent U.S. Marshals and troops to Oxford, Mississippi, to enforce a Federal court order admitting the first African American student, James Meredith, to the University of Mississippi. Riots ensued during the period of Meredith's admittance, which resulted in hundreds of injuries and two deaths. Yet Kennedy remained adamant concerning the rights of black students to enjoy the benefits of all levels of the educational system. The Office of Civil Rights also hired its first African American lawyer, Thelton Henderson, and began to work cautiously with leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. Robert Kennedy saw voting as the key to racial justice, and collaborated with Presidents Kennedy and Johnson to create the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, which helped bring an end to Jim Crow laws. As his brother's confidante, Kennedy oversaw the CIA's anti-Castro activities after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, and he also helped develop the strategy to blockade Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis instead of initiating a military air strike that might have led to nuclear war. He later negotiated with the Soviet Union to remove the missiles. The assassination of JFK The assassination of President Kennedy was a brutal shock to the world, the nation, and of course to Robert and the rest of the Kennedy family. It left him the leader of the Kennedy family. As Kennedy was introduced prior to the showing of a memorial film dedicated to JFK at the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey thousands of delegates and others broke into thunderous applause for 22 minutes. Kennedy remained as Attorney General for President Johnson, but the bad blood between them forced him to make new plans, running in New York for the U.S. Senate. Senator for New York Soon after President John F. Kennedy's assassination, Robert Kennedy left the Cabinet to run for a seat in the United States Senate, representing New York. President Johnson and Robert Kennedy were often at severe odds with each other, both politically and personally, yet Johnson gave considerable support to RFK's campaign, as he was later to recall in his memoir of the White House years. His opponent in the 1964 race was Republican incumbent Kenneth Keating, who attempted to portray Kennedy as an arrogant carpetbagger. Kennedy emerged victorious in the November election, helped in part by LBJ's huge victory margin in New York. In June 1966, Kennedy visited apartheid-ruled South Africa accompanied by his wife, Ethel Kennedy, and a small number of aides. At the University of Cape Town he delivered the Annual Day of Affirmation Speech. A quote from this address appears on his gravestone at Arlington National Cemetery. ("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...")* During his years as a senator, Kennedy also helped to start a successful redevelopment project in poverty-stricken Bedford-Stuyvesant in New York City, visited the Mississippi Delta as a member of the Senate committee reviewing the effectiveness of 'War on Poverty' programs and, reversing his prior stance, called for a halt in further escalation of the Vietnam War. As Senator, Robert endeared himself to African Americans, and other minorities such as Native Americans and immigrant groups. He spoke forcefully in favor of what he called the "disaffected," the impoverished, and "the excluded," thereby aligning himself with leaders of the civil rights struggle and social justice campaigners, leading the Democratic party in a pursuit of a more aggressive agenda to eliminate perceived discrimination on all levels. Kennedy supported busing, integration of all public facilities, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and anti-poverty social programs to increase education, offer opportunities for employment, and provide health care for African-Americans. Kennedy's presidential campaign was powered by an aggressive vision for civil freedom and justice, the expansion of social development programs beyond Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society programs, active minority participation in American politics, and outright opposition to serious social problems such as poverty, corruption in the judiciary, and racism. Here Kennedy was a remarkable contrast to his brother. JFK had been thwarted in his effort to persuade the politicians of the Southern states to accept civil rights legislation, and had been unwilling to appear arrogant to Southerners. JFK had introduced a major tax-cut legislation to propel the economy, and had trimmed and transformed the workings of the U.S. government. RFK's dedication to a major expansion of government-funded welfare institutions and social development and justice initiatives exceeded, and expanded upon, the undertaking's of John F. Kennedy's New Frontier. The administration of President Kennedy had backed U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia and other parts of the world, in response to Soviet-sponsored Communist aggression. Robert Kennedy vigorously supported President Kennedy's earlier efforts, yet ultimately committed himself against the war in Vietnam — even though President Kennedy had increased military support for South Vietnam, and had envisioned a major U.S. commitment to defending Southeast Asia and the Indochina region from Communist aggression. Many critics alleged that Kennedy's switch in position was to reap advantage during the hotly contested Democratic primaries. His supporters responded that Kennedy had long opposed the escalation of military activities in Southeast Asia. By these comparisons, it is easier to portray Robert Kennedy, instead of John F. Kennedy, as a truer icon of American liberalism and the modern political ideals of the Democratic Party. It is worth mentioning, however, that circumstances had changed in the time between the brothers' assassinations; civil rights legislation had passed through Congress, the Vietnam War had escalated with dubious success, and Johnson had implemented the Great Society programs. Presidential candidacy and assassination
Assassination
Personal life In 1950, he married Ethel Skakel, who would eventually give birth to 11 children: Kennedy was a loyal son, brother, and family man. Despite the fact that his father's most ambitious dreams centered around his elder brothers, Robert was fiercely loyal to Joseph, Joe Jr. and John. His competitiveness was admired by his father and elder brothers, while his loyalty bound them more affectionately closer to each other than most brothers are. Robert bore the brunt of his father's dominating temperament and was often the target of the patriarch's oppressive lectures. Working on the campaigns of John Kennedy, Robert was more involved, passionate and tenacious than the candidate himself, obsessed with every detail, fighting out every battle and taking workers to task. Central to Kennedy's politics and personal attitude to life, and its purpose, remained the heritage of Kennedy's Catholicism. Throughout his life, he made constant reference to his faith having informed every area of his life and having given him the strength to re-enter the political landscape following the assassination of his elder brother. Yet his was by no means an unresponsive and staid faith, but rather the faith of a Catholic Radical — perhaps the first successful Catholic Radical in American political history. Following the assassination of JFK in 1963, he took Jackie, Caroline, and John Jr. under his wing, treating them as if they were his own. Kennedy was easily the most religious of his brothers. Whereas John F. Kennedy maintained an aloof sense of his faith Robert Kennedy approached his duties to mankind through the looking glass of his Catholicism. In the last years of his life, he found great solace in the metaphysical poets of ancient Greece, most especially in the writings of Aeschylus. At his announcement of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., Kennedy quoted these lines from Aeschylus in a speech which was to become one of his most memorable moments: "He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart. And in our own despair, and against our will, comes Wisdom by the awful Grace of God". Kennedy owned a home at the well-known Kennedy Compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts on Cape Cod, but spent most of his time at his estate in Virginia, known as Hickory Hill, located just outside Washington, D.C. His widow, Ethel, and his children continued to live at Hickory Hill after his death in 1968. Ethel Kennedy now lives full time at the family's vacation home in Hyannis Port. His pallbearers included Robert McNamara, John Glenn, Averell Harriman, C. Douglas Dillon, Kirk Lemoyne Billings (schoolmate of John F. Kennedy), Stephen Smith (husband to Jean Ann Kennedy), David Hackett, Jim Whittaker, John Seigenthaler Sr., and Lord Harlech. Honors
Writing Considered an eloquent speaker generally, RFK also wrote extensively on politics and issues confronting his generation: Quotes "Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly." "The problem of power is how to achieve its responsible use, rather than its irresponsible and indulgent use- how to make people of power live for the public, rather than off the public." "Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital, quality for those who seek to change a world which yields most painfully to change." "The sharpest criticism often goes hand in hand with the deepest idealism and love of country." "How do you tell if Lyndon is lying? If he wiggles his ears, that doesn't mean he's lying. If he raises his eyebrows, that doesn't mean he's lying. But when he moves his lips, he's lying." (On President Johnson) "Men without hope, resigned to despair and oppression, do not make revolutions. It is when expectation replaces submission, when despair is touched with the awareness of possibility, that the forces of human desire and the passion for justice are unloosed." (Berkeley, Oct-22-1966) "There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream of things that never were and ask why not." (RFK quoting Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw) "Few will have the greatness to bend history; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation ... It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is thus shaped. 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." South Africa, 1966 "At the University of Natal in Durban, I was told the church to which most of the white population belongs teaches apartheid as a moral necessity. A questioner declared that few churches allow black Africans to pray with the white because the Bible says that is the way it should be, because God created Negroes to serve. "But suppose God is black", I replied. "What if we go to Heaven and we, all our lives, have treated the Negro as an inferior, and God is there, and we look up and He is not white? What then is our response?" There was no answer. Only silence." (Article for LOOK Magazine following visit to South Africa, 1966)* "Fear not the path of truth for the lack of people walking on it." June 6th, 1968 (From the last speech he gave) Bibliography | |||||||||||||||
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