Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy
On June 5, 1968, presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was mortally wounded at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Earlier that evening, the 42-year-old junior senator from New York was declared the winner in the South Dakota and California 1968 Democratic Party presidential primaries during the 1968 United States presidential election. He was pronounced dead at 1: 44 a.m. PDT on June 6, about 26 hours after he had been shot. Sirhan Sirhan was convicted of murdering the senator and sentenced to death. His sentence was commuted to life in prison in 1972. Kennedy and Huey Long of Louisiana are the only two sitting United States Senators to be assassinated.
About Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in brief
On June 5, 1968, presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was mortally wounded at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Earlier that evening, the 42-year-old junior senator from New York was declared the winner in the South Dakota and California 1968 Democratic Party presidential primaries during the 1968 United States presidential election. He was pronounced dead at 1: 44 a. m. PDT on June 6, about 26 hours after he had been shot. The shooter was 24- year-old Sirhan Sirhan. Sirhan was convicted of murdering the senator and sentenced to death. His sentence was commuted to life in prison in 1972. Kennedy and Huey Long of Louisiana are the only two sitting United States Senators to be assassinated. Kennedy entered the race for the Democratic Party’s nomination for president on March 16, four days after Senator Eugene McCarthy received a large percentage of the vote in the New Hampshire primary. His death prompted the United States Secret Service to protect presidential candidates. Vice President Hubert Humphrey was also a presidential candidate; he went on to win the Democratic nomination but ultimately lost the election to Republican candidate Richard Nixon. The run-up to the 1968 presidential election under President Lyndon B. Johnson was a period of great social unrest. There were riots in major cities amid Johnson’s attempts to introduce anti-poverty and anti-discrimination legislation, and there was significant opposition to the ongoing Vietnam War. The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
on April 4, 1968,. led to further riots in several cities. At the time, the government provided Secret Service protection for an incumbent president, but not for presidential candidates for the 1968 election. Kennedy’s only security was provided by former FBI agent William Barry and two unofficial bodyguards: Olympic gold medalist Rafer Johnson and former football player Rosey Grier. He ended his speech by stating: “My thanks to all of you for your support.” Kennedy was 22 years old in 1948 when he visited the British Mandate of Palestine and wrote dispatches for The Boston Post about the trip and its effect on him. During his stay, he wrote that he grew to admire the Jewish inhabitants of the area, and he became a strong supporter and advocate for Israel when he Became a Senator. He served in that post from January 1961 until his resignation on September 3, 1964, in order to run for election to the U.S. Senate. His first attempt at elective office scored a tight race win in an otherwise landslide Democratic Party year. The statewide results gave Kennedy 46 percent and McCarthy 42 percent. Four hours after the polls closed in California, Kennedy claimed victory in the state’s Democratic Party primary by phone with South Dakota Senator George McGovern. At approximately 12:10 p.m. PDT, he addressed his supporters in the Ambassador hotel’s Embassy Room ballroom in the Mid-Wilshire district of Los Angeles, California. He spoke by phone by phone to McGovern by phone at the time.
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