Bobby, We Still Miss You

Sen. Robert Kennedy: Forty-five years ago today he died

Print By Charles J. Dean
cdean@al.com al.com

on June 06, 2013 at 12:50 PM, updated June 06, 2013 at 12:51 PM

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama – Forty-five years ago today Sen. Robert F. Kennedy of New York died from gunshot wounds sustained at the hands of Palestinian national Sirhan Sirhan.



Kennedy's assassination came just two months after the murder of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and just 55 months shy of the assassination of his brother, President John F. Kennedy.



Robert Kennedy was shot as he walked through the kitchen of a Los Angeles hotel moments after winning the California Democratic presidential primary, a critical victory in his pursuit of the 1968 Democratic presidential nomination.



Kennedy's murder, coming as it did just a few months after King and the brutal killing of a second Kennedy in less than five years, shocked the nation.



Kennedy's death, coming less than a week before the fifth anniversary of the historic and successful desegregation of the University of Alabama, left only Gov. George Wallace as the surviving member of the three political leaders who had played leading rolls in the June 11, 1963 integration at UA – Wallace and the two Kennedy brothers.



Wallace himself was running for president in 1968, as an independent third party candidate running in large measure on the same themes he had given voice to in his schoolhouse door stand at UA almost five years before – distrust of centralize government, intellectuals, U.S. Supreme court rulings forcing the South to desegregate public services and institutions and scorn of what Wallace called the hippie culture.



Robert Kennedy and Wallace had spent much of their political lives on a collision course.



In April 1963 RFK had traveled to Montgomery to meet with Wallace and discuss what he might do regarding the expected effort to desegregate UA. Wallace had ordered state troopers to surround the Capitol ostensetively to protect Kennedy from a crowd that featured hostile and racist signs, such as "Koon Kissing Kennedy Go Home." At one point, on his way in to see Wallace, one trooper shoved a stick in his stomach."



As attorney general it was Kennedy's Justice Department that largely lead the effort to desegregate UA and the confrontation it would lead to with Wallace.



Ironically, like John and Robert Kennedy, Wallace would become the victim of an assassination attempt just four years after RFK was killed. Unlike the Kennedy's, Wallace would survive the attempt but he would never again be a force in national politics.