The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy June 1968
At the end of March 1968, President Lyndon Johnson announced without fanfare or previous hint, that he would not be a candidate for re-election as President of the United States in 1968. Johnson had barely survived a primary challenge from Senator Eugene MacArthy and the emerging candidacy of Robert Kennedy was a challenge which he no longer welcomed. Johnson had also come to the conclusion privately that the war in Vietnam was not winnable, and whoever was the next American president would be the first to preside over an American military defeat.
Robert Kennedy offered the advantages of youth, which appealed to the increasingly active younger voters in America; the legacy of his slain brother Jack, not yet stained by knowledge of his numerous extramarital affairs; and a large campaign chest. Although he had a late start, he gained momentum rapidly, aided by his calming speech delivered ad-lib in Indianapolis on the night of Martin Luther King’s death (widely credited with preventing rioting there of the kind which broke out in so many other cities), and the steadily deteriorating situation in Vietnam.
After winning the California primary, Kennedy was shot as he transited the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel, dying the next morning. The shock was profound. Besides the fact of murder coming once again to the Kennedy family, there was the developing belief that the American political and electoral system was being manipulated by the elimination of candidates through political assassination. To many people, Kennedy’s assassination was the latest in a series of murders committed by unknown entities intent on controlling who the American people could choose as their President.
The fact that his assassin happened to appear to be of Arab descent (he was Palestinian) helped feed this belief. That Kennedy was an anti-Vietnam war, anti-draft, pro-civil rights candidate also threw suspicion on the far right, the law and order claimants who believed any dissent to be un-American. With Kennedy dead and Lyndon Johnson out of the race the Democratic Party was without a leading, charismatic candidate for the nation’s highest office. The possibility of a link became Kennedy’s murder and that of Martin Luther King two months earlier was immediately the target of speculation.
The assassination of Robert Kennedy and its aftermath at the Democratic National Convention revealed a nation in which fear was becoming a dominant factor. Fear of civil rights, of a defeat in Vietnam, of an increase in lawlessness, and of the rising influence of the Arab world on America’s oil supply displaced what little optimism over the nation’s future remained.