Robert Kennedy: a life cut short, a lasting legacy

[RedEarth]

Forty years ago today, the dream died again. Robert Kennedy, gunned down in a Los Angeles hotel kitchen, clutched a rosary handed to him by a busboy as he bled from a head wound. Amid shrieks of despair, his wife, Ethel, comforted him as his life ebbed away.

His brother, President John Kennedy, was killed less than five years before. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated two months earlier. By June 1968, violence from the inner cities to Vietnam was tearing the country apart, and had robbed the nation of three of its most inspiring leaders.

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The double blow of the King and Kennedy assassinations remains a raw wound for many who worked with them or were inspired by them. "We saw two bright lights snuffed out, our hopes and dreams shattered," recalled John Seigenthaler Sr., the former NBC anchor's father, who worked for Kennedy when he was attorney general.

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Ethel Kennedy, in a brief interview, said she hoped the 40th anniversary of her husband's death this week will highlight two aspects of his legacy - his focus on poverty and his ability to attract young people into politics and public service.

Many voters this year say Barack Obama reminds them of John or Robert Kennedy, and Ethel Kennedy did not shy from that comparison. Wearing an Obama button at the recent RFK Journalism Awards in Washington, she said her husband and Obama "were cut from the same cloth - they reached out to people and inspired them."

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To grasp Kennedy's appeal, it's important to understand the chaos and divisions of 1968. Riots convulsed more than 100 cities after King was killed, and Army troops patrolled the nation's capital. Casualty rates in Vietnam soared much higher than in Iraq today, and the war and draft had alienated many young people.

Kennedy called the war immoral, and took responsibility for some of its early planning as his brother's closest adviser. He visited the poorest corners of America, broke bread with Cesar Chavez and striking farmworkers in California, and told black and white audiences that racial injustice was a stain on the country, but that lawlessness could not be tolerated.

http://origin.mercurynews.com/ci_9486358