June 6, 1968 - Bobby Kennedy Assassinated -

[otohara]

http://www.cs.umb.edu/jfklibrary/e060868.htm

Let's take a break from Reagan and remember Bobby...

"Some men see things as they are and say why.
I dream things that never were and say why not."

[BlackVelvetElvis]

1. Thanks for the reminder

That was a damn eloquent eulogy. It never fails to bring me to tears.

[hedda_foil]

2. The last day of Democracy.

The day the music died.

5 years after Jack. 2 months after Martin. And then there were none.

[madrchsod]

3. my god how different things would be

he was truly the man of the future, he was my generation`s champion.

[WillyT]

4. Miss Him Much ...

Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy addresses a civil rights rally outside the Justice Department Building, 1963.



Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy in the White House Rose Garden following President Kennedy's meeting with leaders of the civil rights movement, 1963.



Outside Stockton, California, 1967.





RFK touring a riot-scarred Washington, D.C.
in the aftermath of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King's assassination, 1968.



RFK on the campaign trail, 1968.


Damn, I miss him alot!!!

[MarianJack]

7. Remember...

...how he went and talked to the African American community (I think in Indianapolis) when Martin was shot? Such courage.

I remember Sammy Davis jr. (4 years before he publically kissed nixon's ass on national TV) saying that Bobby was the best man to bridge the gap between black & white.

Do you also notice that he's actually listening to the people in these pictures and actually gives a damn about them?

[otohara]

14. Wonderful Pictures - Thanks for Posting

I miss him, his brother, MLK, Paul Wellstone.

[anarchy1999]

21. A sweet, gentle kick up.

We loved you, RFK, so sad me didn't get to know you.

[MarianJack]

5. I Still Cry for Bobby!

Especially when I hear "Abraham, Martin & John".

What a great president he would have been! It would have absolutely KILLED nixon to lose to 2 Kennedys!

[salonghorn70]

6. June 6, 1968

It was the summer before my junior year at UT-Austin. I was a strong Kennedy supporter. I was 20 years old. Right after Kennedy gave his speech, I turned the tv off and went to bed. I just could not believe it when I turned the tv on the next morning. The sadness is still with me. He was very special. There was so much hope in him. So much caring. A leader who dreamed of the future.

[MarianJack]

10. One of the WORST moments of my life...

...was when my mother woke me up with the news that he had died. It was just a few days before my 13th birthday!

1968. Martin & Bobby die and tricky dickie gets elected president (needless to say, unlike *). What a tragic year!

[Bluzmann57]

11. I was nine years old

and my mom woke me up gently with the horrible news. See, my mom and dad were big time admirers of JFK and RFK, and they passed it along to their children. I understood this one more so than JFK and I cried. We were also admirers of Dr. King, which put us in a huge minority in the small town where we lived . Kind of a shitty year if you ask me. I remember riding my bike and getting cat calls of "N***** Lover" and asking my parents what that was supposed to mean. Gawd RFK is missed. What a different world we'd have now if only...

[leftofthedial]

8. now THAT's what cable news should be covering wall-to-wall

Someone let us know when it's safe to turn on the TV again.

One more gipper post-mortem wank and I'm gonna blow lunch.

[DemoTex]

9. They had to kill him ...

... he was too good. They killed him because he was so good. Really.

[ConsAreLiars]

12. Bobby Kennedy on MLK murder

transcript and audio here: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/robertkennedyonmartinlutherking.html

If you can, listen to the audio. He spoke the truth and he spoke from the heart.

[justjones]

16. Where have men like RFK gone?

It is a blessing and a curse not to be alive during the era of JFK, MLK, and RFK. A blessing because I can't imagine living through the violence and unbelievable hate which engulfed our country and resulted in the assasination of all three leaders.

Just listening to this recording, I am inspired by the words of RFK, so I am positive this inspiration would have been ten-fold if I were alive at the time. For such hope to end in death would have been absolutely devastating.

A curse because I have yet to feel inspired in the same sense as I imagine people felt under the leadership of JFK and RFK. I missed out.

Did the vision of America RFK talks about in the recording die with him? Where has it gone? Because it sure does feel like we are headed in the exact opposite direction, if we aren't already there today.

[BlackVelvetElvis]

13. I still have the local newspaper from that day

June 6, 1968: "Kennedy Remains Critical After Surgery; Man Jailed Identified as a Jordan Native".
Also on the front page, other headlines:
"Uncertainty Looms Over Campaign"
"Bullet Fragment Still in Brain"
"Johnson Says He is Praying"
"Someone Gave Him a Rosary"
"Restless Crowd Waits...And Cheers Turn to Tears"
"Kennedy's Stand on Israel Considered Possible Motive"

I'm glad my folks kept this for me.

[Norquist Nemesis]

15. I'd hoped the news would have mentioned this.

I heard it once...and it was only a passing comment. :( I've pretty much stayed away from the news/TV as much as possible since Saturday (and will until all this love-fest has run its course)

[Octafish]

17. A great man.

Robert F. Kennedy would have made an outstanding President.

Here's a great resource for his speeches:

http://www.rfkmemorial.org/RFK/rfk_speeches.htm

An excerpt from just one:

Address of Senator Robert F. Kennedy: Day of Affirmation
University of Capetown, South Africa

June 6, 1966

..."There is," said an Italian philosopher, "nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things." Yet this is the measure of the task of your generation and the road is strewn with many dangers.

First is the danger of futility; the belief there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills -- against misery, against ignorance, or injustice and violence. Yet many of the world's great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man. A young monk began the Protestant reformation, a young general extended an empire from Macedonia to the borders of the earth, and a young woman reclaimed the territory of France. It was a young Italian explorer who discovered the New /world, and 32 year old Thomas Jefferson who proclaimed that all men are created equal. "Give me a place to stand," said Archimedes, "and I will move the world." These men moved the world, and so can we all. Few will have the greatness to bend history; but each of us can work to change a small portion of the events, and in the total of all these acts will be written the history of this generation. Thousands of Peace Corps volunteers are making a difference in the isolated villages and the city slums of dozens of countries. Thousands of unknown men and women in Europe resisted the occupation of the Nazis and many died, but all added to the ultimate strength and freedom of their countries. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage such as these that the 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.

"If Athens shall appear great to you," said Pericles, "consider then that her glories were purchased by valiant men, and by men who learned their duty." That is the source of all greatness in all societies, and it is the key to progress in our own time.

CONTINUED...

http://www.rfkmemorial.org/RFK/affirmation2.htm

[anarchy1999]

18. Interestingly enough, I have never gotten over this moment in time.

I never will.

What could have been...........

[anarchy1999]

19. Here truly today and through this week is the man we should be remembering

My heart breaks for what we lost.

[Michael Harrington]

20. It's been downhill since then.

Ignorance, selfishnes and cruelty have been extolled and enshrined.

Our national motto has gone from "E Pluribus Unum" to "Fuck you! I Got Mine!"

[Minstrel Boy]

22. streaming RFK hip-hop tribute

by NYC scholar Jamey Hecht.

I've posted this a couple of times since I discovered it, but if you've missed it:

http://www.jameyhecht.com/RobertFKennedy.html

Audio streams when you open the page. Listen, follow the lyrics and pictures. It's well done.

[Snellius]

23. I remember that day as the day the "revolution" really began

I was in Berkeley, which up until then, despite its dissent, had always marched on the right side of the street and stopped for stop lights along the way. But I, with my friends, distinctly remember that day -- after his brother, after King -- as the day when everyone looked around and said "We don't give a shit anymore. We've got nothing else to lose." We didn't stop for stop lights anymore.

[liberalitch]

24. Actually.... it was on June 16, 1968

Bummer as it was!

[VOX]

26. No -- he was shot on June 5, and died on June 6, 1968

The California primary election that year was actually on June 4, but RFK was gunned down after midnight, June 5. He died the following day.

http://www.geocities.com/verisimus101/rfk/assasination.htm
June 4, 1968, was an important but nerve-wracking day for Robert Francis Kennedy, senator from New York. . A week earlier he had lost a vital race for West Coast votes in the state of Oregon to Senator Eugene McCarthy in the Democratic Primary, dampening the spirit of the Kennedy campaign. But, now, here in California, his supporters foresaw good things to come. With its 174 delegates as the prize, California was a very strategic ballot box for any one of the nominees to walk away with, and, best for RFK, it was believed to be a "Kennedy state". Taking a California victory into the Democratic Convention in Chicago would be powerful. And it was really no secret that the Democratic Party itself preferred Kennedy to win, for if anyone could beat Republican Richard M. Nixon in the upcoming Presidential run it would be a Kennedy. That had been proven in 1960.
<snip>
Concluding his speech with a victory sign and the words, "…now on to Chicago, and let’s win there!" the house once again broke loose. "We want Bobby! We want Bobby!" sang the house. Grinning, he turned towards the side door that would take him through a food preparation area, a short cut to where the press was waiting in the Colonial Room beyond. It was now 12:15 a.m., June 5.
<snip>
At 2 a.m., June 6, the crowd spotted Mankiewicz leaving the hospital, looking rather stolid, heading for the makeshift press room. It hushed. Then came the announcement they dreaded: "Senator Robert Francis Kennedy," Mankiewicz’s voice cut the airwaves, "died at 1:44 a.m. today…He was 42 years old."

[anarchy1999]

25. Can we all please keep this up on the front page today? Let's bring

just a little sanity to our world, can we?

[Minstrel Boy]

27. Robert Kennedy's last audible words:

"Is everybody okay?"

How do we answer?

[VOX]

28. I had worked for Eugene McCarthy, but was eager to support RFK...

I was a freshman at Cal State Northridge, and had been volunteering at the McCarthy headquarters in Westwood. But since Bobby won the California primary, I easily thought, Okay, RFK is now the one to carry the torch.

I was lying in bed, just watching the late primary coverage, listen to Bobby speak and conclude with saying "On to Chicago!" What unfolded next was incomprehensible and sad beyond belief.

As agonizing as JFK's murder was, I always felt that Bobby's assassination truly changed the direction of politics in this country, and set in motion a chain of events that has let to the right wing being in control today.

That day in June, 1968 remains a line of demarcation between light and darkness in America.

[GreenPartyVoter]

29. Yes, a better man to remember.