An American Tragedy: The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy and the Night That Changed History
Robert (Bobby) Francis Kennedy (RFK) was born in Brookline, Massachusetts during the mid-twenties, son of Joseph Kennedy and Rose Fitzgerald whose families were prominent Irish-American clans actively involved in the Democratic party in Massachusetts.
RFK was the seventh of nine children with Jack Kennedy (JFK) being the second oldest who later become the 35th President of the United States. Both men were tragically assassinated about five years apart. John F. Kennedy in 1963 and Bobby Kennedy in 1968.
In 1943, Kennedy enlisted in the United States Navy Reserve as a seaman apprentice just before turning eighteen years of age. The death of his older brother Joseph Jr. during Operation Aphrodite severely impacting the Kennedy family. In February 1946, he served on the newly commissioned destroyer the USS Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. In May 1946, he received his honorable discharge from the Navy.
In 1960, JFK won a very tight and controversial election at the time against Vice President Richard Nixon. The forty-three-year-old President nominated his younger brother Bobby Kennedy to be Attorney General (AG) of the United States. At the time, the selection of RFK as AG was an extremely controversial nomination for his lack of experience and his young age of thirty-five.
As AG, Kennedy developed a strong crusade against organized crime in the United States resulting in significant number of convictions of high-level crime figures. He also had major investigations against Jimmy Hoffa who at the time was the president of the Teamsters Union. RFK created a task force called the “Get Hoffa” squad of investigators and federal prosecutors. During the mid-sixties, Hoffa was convicted of conspiracy, wire and mail fraud and misusing the Teamsters’ pension fund.
Kennedy was also very instrumental in anti-Castro activities before and after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, he helped formulate a strategy of a naval blockade around the island as oppose to military strikes against Cuba which many believe averted a nuclear war with the Soviet Union.
On November 22nd, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald. JFK’s murder had a profound impact on him and his entire family. RFK even asked the head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) if they had anything to do with his brother’s assassination in which the CIA denied any involvement.
In 1964, after a ten-month investigation, the Warren Commission concluded that John Kennedy was assassinated by lone gunman that acted alone named Lee Harvey Oswald. At the time, RFK accepted the conclusion from the Warren Commission report close to nine hundred pages long but later in private challenged the Commission’s findings.
Nine months after his brother’s assassination, Kennedy resigned his position as Attorney General in order to run for the U.S. Senate representing New York. RFK still lived in Massachusetts and was viewed as a “carpetbagger.” At the end, New Yorkers ignored the rhetoric from the Republican incumbent and voted Kennedy into office.
In March 1968, Kennedy decided to challenge the incumbent democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ) after discussing it with friends and family. On June 04th, 1968, Kennedy won both the California and South Dakota primaries. After giving a speech in front of his supporters at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, RFK turned towards the kitchen of the hotel and shook hands with those employees working in that area. A man later identified as Sirhan Sirhan, a twenty-four-year-old Palestinian shot Kennedy three times at close range twice in the back and once in the head using a Iver Johnson .22 caliber revolver while wounding five others.
The assassin was wrestled to the ground by numerous people in the kitchen. A busboy who had just shaken RFK’s hand heard the gunshots and quickly held the Senator’s head while he laid on the floor in a pool of blood. Kennedy asked him if everyone was ok. The busboy answered yes while cradling his head and placed a rosary in his hand. Kennedy’s last words were, “don’t lift me.” He was rushed to a local hospital and was later pronounced dead twenty-six hours after the shooting.
It appears Sirhan’s motive to kill Kennedy was his pro-Israeli stance which he saw as harmful to the Palestinian people. In April 1969, he was convicted by a jury for first-degree murder and was sentenced to death. However, three years later his sentence was commuted to life in prison in California. In 2017, RFK Jr. visited Sirhan in a correctional facility in San Diego and left the meeting believing there was a second shooter involved with the death of his father. He wanted the investigation reopened by local authorities. In January 2022, the California Governor denied Sirhan’s latest bid for parole and will not be eligible again until 2026.
Unfortunately, assassins do change the course of history as was the case with Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, JFK, RFK, MLK and other important political figures. Many times, luck and circumstances play a major factor as with Reagan and Trump who survived the would-be assassins’ bullet by a millimeter at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. If RFK would never have gone into the kitchen area of the Ambassador hotel, he most likely would have won the Democratic Presidential nomination and defeated an unpopular Richard Nixon in November of 1968.
The Kennedy ‘curse’ has been well documented in history with many wondering what would have been if Bobby Kennedy never entered the hotel’s kitchen after giving his speech. Nixon would have lost two presidential elections to the Kennedy’s and never would have resigned in disgrace over the Watergate scandal. The unpopular Vietnam war would have ended sooner saving countless lives that died unnecessarily with Nixon in power. History is full of moments where an assassination changes the political landscape of a country and 1968 was no different.
RFK was the change the country wanted from LBJ; unfortunately, the American people settled for the lies and coverups of Richard Nixon.
History always tends to repeat itself.
