Civil Rights Events

Robert Kennedy Assassination

“Now it’s on to Chicago and let’s win there!” The senator had won the California primary, a crucial step before the Democratic National Convention just two months away in Chicago. In the early morning hours of June 5, 1968, Kennedy held up his index and middle finger, flashing a “V” for victory sign at the crowd, and departed the stage of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles to the sound of chants.

Within minutes, cheers gave way to screams (Shalby 1).

RFK’s assassination took place shortly after midnight on Wednesday, June 5, 1968, as RFK walked through a crowded food preparation area (better known as the kitchen pantry) in the Ambassador Hotel on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, CA. This hotel was closed in 1989 and torn down in 2005. Six public schools, named the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools, now stand on the site.

The alleged assassin, Sirhan B. Sirhan, a 24-year-old Palestine-born non-Muslim with Jordanian citizenship, was one of approximately 77 persons in the pantry waiting for RFK to pass through on his way to a press conference. When the senator entered, Sirhan pulled out an eight-shot .22 caliber revolver, pointed it at the senator and fired eight times (Wilkes 3).

Wikipedia offers this detail.

He was on his way to another gathering of supporters elsewhere in the hotel. Reporters wanted a press conference, and campaign aide Fred Dutton decided that Kennedy would forgo the second gathering and instead go through the hotel's kitchen and pantry area behind the ballroom to the press area. Kennedy finished speaking and started to exit when William Barry stopped him and said, "No, it's been changed. We're going this way." Barry and Dutton began clearing a way for Kennedy to go left through swinging doors to the kitchen corridor, but Kennedy was hemmed in by the crowd and followed maître d'hôtel Karl Uecker through a back exit.

Uecker led Kennedy through the kitchen area, holding his right wrist, but frequently releasing it as Kennedy shook hands with people whom he encountered. Uecker and Kennedy started down a passageway narrowed by an ice machine against the right wall and a steam table to the left. Kennedy turned to his left and shook hands with busboy Juan Romero, just as Sirhan Sirhan stepped down from a low tray-stacker beside the ice machine, rushed past Uecker, and repeatedly fired an eight-shot .22 Long Rifle caliber Iver Johnson Cadet 55-A revolver.

Kennedy fell to the floor, and bodyguard William Barry hit Sirhan twice in the face while others, including writer George Plimpton and football player Rosey Grier, forced him against the steam table and disarmed him, as he continued firing his gun in random directions. Five other people were wounded in addition to Kennedy: William Weisel of ABC News, Paul Schrade of the United Automobile Workers union, Democratic Party activist Elizabeth Evans, Ira Goldstein of the Continental News Service, and Kennedy campaign volunteer Irwin Stroll.

After a minute, Sirhan wrestled free and grabbed the revolver again, but he had already fired all the bullets and was subdued. Barry went to Kennedy and placed his jacket under the candidate's head, later recalling: "I knew immediately it was a .22, a small caliber, so I hoped it wouldn't be so bad, but then I saw the hole in the Senator's head, and I knew". Reporters and photographers rushed into the area from both directions, contributing to the confusion and chaos. As Kennedy lay wounded, Juan Romero cradled his head and placed a rosary in his hand. Kennedy asked Romero, "Is everybody OK?" and Romero responded, "Yes, everybody's OK." Kennedy then turned away and said, "Everything's going to be OK." This moment was captured by Life photographer Bill Eppridge and Boris Yaro of the Los Angeles Times and became the iconic image of the assassination. There was some initial confusion concerning who was shot, one witness believing that the primary victim was Kennedy's campaign manager and brother-in-law Stephen Edward Smith. Another witness stated that a female in a polka-dot dress had exclaimed repeatedly, "We killed him," before running away. Video footage of the witness's testimony can be seen in the Netflix series “Bobby Kennedy for President.”

Kennedy's wife Ethel was three months pregnant; she stood outside the crush of people at the scene seeking help. She was soon led to her husband and knelt beside him. He turned his head and seemed to recognize her. Smith promptly appeared on television and calmly asked for a doctor. Friend and journalist Pete Hamill recalled that Kennedy had "a kind of sweet accepting smile on his face, as if he knew it would all end this way". After several minutes, medical attendants arrived and lifted Kennedy onto a stretcher, prompting him to whisper, "Don't lift me", which were his last words, as he lost consciousness shortly after. He was taken a mile away to Central Receiving Hospital, where he arrived near death. One doctor slapped his face, calling, "Bob, Bob", while another doctor manually massaged his heart. After obtaining a good heartbeat, doctors handed a stethoscope to Ethel so that she could hear his heart beating.

After about 30 minutes, Kennedy was transferred several blocks to the Hospital of the Good Samaritan to undergo surgery (Assassination 4-5).

These are the recorded words of Mutual Broadcasting System reporter Andrew West:

Senator Kennedy has been … Senator Kennedy has been shot! Is that possible? It is possible, ladies and gentlemen! It is possible! He has … Not only Senator Kennedy! Oh my God! … I am right here, and Rafer Johnson has hold of the man who apparently fired the shot! He still has the gun! The gun is pointed at me right this moment! Get the gun! Get the gun! Get the gun! Stay away from the guy! Get his thumb! Get his thumb! Break it if you have to! Get the gun, Rafer [Johnson]! Hold him! We don’t want another Oswald (Kilgore 1).

Another eye-witness, Ivor Davis:

Suddenly, I heard balloons popping. One, two, three, four, five and six.

Then screams. I stepped into the pantry — and there on the concrete floor lay the candidate. Blood gushed from a head wound.

The scene was sheer bedlam.

“Get the gun,” yelled a radio newsman.

“Give him air,” screamed Ethel, cushioning her husband’s head on a straw hat on the floor.

“Not again,” shrieked a Bobby supporter (Davis 4-5).

Sirhan [had been] … seized by bystanders, wrestled to the floor and turned over to police when they arrived (Wilkes 3).

… No fewer than five physicians were in attendance at the California presidential primary, including a trauma surgeon. Within minutes of the shooting, the senator was already receiving medical care. RFK was in a semi-conscious state, lying on the kitchen floor for 17 minutes as paramedics were en route. His left eye was shut, his right eye open, but with the pupil shifted to the right. Kennedy was still able to move all four of his limbs.

But then Kennedy began to lose consciousness, prompting one of the doctors, a radiologist named Stanley Abo, to examine the senator’s head wound. A small blood clot had formed at the site of the bullet hole, so Abo inserted his finger into the hole to disrupt the clot. “With that action, the clot dislodged, blood flowed freely from the bullet hole, and Kennedy’s consciousness briefly improved,”…

By 12:32 am, RFK was on a stretcher and on his way to LA’s Central Receiving Hospital, arriving at 12:45 am. He was immediately cared for by Dr. V. Faustin Bazilauskas. At this stage, Kennedy’s gaze became fixed, he wasn’t breathing, and his pulse was almost impossible to detect. The medical staff hooked him up to an IV, inserted an oral airway, placed a respirator mask on his face, and started compressions, which went on for 10 minutes. They also gave him some adrenaline and other medications. Eventually, the senator’s blood pressure returned. It soon became obvious to Bazilauskas and his colleague Dr. Albert Holt that they weren’t able to offer the care required to treat Kennedy’s injuries, so they transferred him to the Good Samaritan Hospital. … the delay in getting the senator to the appropriate hospital was the biggest mistake made that evening—a problem caused when the initial call for ambulance was made, and the nature of Kennedy’s injuries was not fully disclosed.

“If the dispatcher had known the injury was a gunshot to the head, the ambulance driver would likely have been instructed to bypass the smaller hospital and go directly to the nearby 400-bed Good Samaritan Hospital,”…

… the delay ultimately didn’t have an effect on the final outcome.

Once at the ICU unit of the new hospital and placed under the care of Drs. Paul A. Ironside and Hubert Humble, RFK was disrobed so that his other two wounds could be inspected. He had a gunshot wound on the right side of his back, with X-rays showing a bullet lodged in his neck; the injury was not considered life threatening. He also had a wound on his right shoulder, but no other bullets were found lodged within his body.

The senator was now in very bad shape, and he was no longer responding to pain. At 2:45 am, Kennedy was transferred to the operating room where he received an emergency craniotomy. In 1968, doctors did not have the benefit of modern medical tools such as computed tomography (CT) scans, but they did have X-rays, and they were able to perform brain surgery, and in a manner similar to how it’s still done today.

Over the course of the three hour and 45 minute long craniotomy, the doctors worked to remove as many bits of bone and bullet fragments as possible. After the surgery, RFK regained some motor activity on the right side of his body, as shown by his response to a pin prick.

…

RFK remained relatively stable in the hours following the surgery, but by 6:00 pm on June 5, about 12 hours after the craniotomy, his condition began to deteriorate. The pressure in his brain began to rise, his electroencephalogram readings became flat, and he stopped breathing. Kennedy never regained consciousness, and he was pronounced dead at 1:44 am local time on June 6, 1968 (Dvorsky 2-4).

Here are additional recollections of individuals who were present at the hotel.

Boris Yaro had arrived at the Ambassador Hotel at 10:30 the night of June 4. The Los Angeles Times reporter was off-duty and hoping to grab a photo of Kennedy. Hours later, after Kennedy took the stage and addressed the crowd, Yaro shouted at the senator to hold up two fingers. He missed the shot.

Yaro saw an opening to the kitchen. Maybe now he’d get his chance.

Gunshots rang out.

Six people were wounded by the gunfire. Only one would die.

“The reaction I had was, ‘My God, not again.’”

Yaro saw Kennedy slip to the floor as bystanders grabbed the shooter and slammed his hand down on a freezer top, knocking the gun loose.

“I reached out and picked up that revolver,” Yaro said. “I remember the grip was still warm.”

William Barry, Kennedy’s bodyguard and a former FBI agent, grabbed the gun. Rosey Grier, the football player, reportedly sat on the gunman until police arrived.

Kennedy was on his back, drenched in blood. Yaro took six frames.

He headed to The Times’ office. He turned over his film and, after describing what he had seen to the reporter writing the story, went into the darkroom to see the images.

There, in the darkness, he wept (Shalby 1-2).

Juan Romero is 17, working as a busboy. He hears that Bobby Kennedy has won the California Democratic primary in a bid for the presidency of the United States. Romero rushes to the food service area Kennedy is passing through and reaches out to congratulate the man he had met the night before while delivering room service.

And then the shots, the screams, the commotion.

Kennedy goes down, flat on his back, a ghostly look in his eyes. Romero crouches to help, and the black-and-white photographs freeze forever the image of a young immigrant laborer at the side of fallen American aristocracy.

…

He’d grown up in Mexico, moved to the U.S. at 10, began getting into trouble while going to Hollenbeck Middle School and then Roosevelt High in Boyle Heights. His unfailingly strict stepfather worked at the Ambassador and helped Romero get a job as a busboy to keep him off the street. Romero lifted a pair of rosary beads from the glove compartment of his mother’s car and carried them in his pocket to ward off the temptation to miss school or be late for work.

Bobby Kennedy, candidate for the Democratic nomination for president of the United States, checked into the hotel at the end of the California primary. Romero, who recalled homes in Mexico with photos of the pope and of John F. Kennedy, badly wanted to meet a Kennedy. He told other busboys he’d do anything for them if they let him take a room service call from the candidate.

Romero and a waiter knocked at the door, then pushed two food carts into the room. Several people were present. Kennedy stood at a bay window, finished up a phone call and turned to the visitors.

“He said, ‘Come on in, boys,’” Romero recalls, the memory bringing a smile to his face.

“I remember staring at him with my mouth open, and I see him shaking the hand of a waiter and then reaching out to me. I remember him grabbing my hand and he gave me a two-handed shake,” said Romero.

“He had piercing blue eyes, and he looked right at you. You knew he was looking at you and not through you … I remember walking out of that room … feeling 10 feet tall, feeling like an American.… I didn’t feel like I was Mexican, and I didn’t feel like I was a busboy, and I didn’t feel like I was 17 years old. I felt like I was right there with him.”

The next night, when Kennedy won the primary and made his victory speech at the Ambassador, Romero pushed through the crowd, eager to congratulate him, and to shake his hand once more.

He reached out, and the bullets tore into Kennedy. Romero took out his rosary beads and tried to press them into Kennedy’s hand (Lopez 1-2, 4-5).

SMCC student, Vince Dipierro:

"I couldn't eat for two days. I still get a sick feeling when I'm near the place where he was shot . . . when they brought me home from the first FBI interrogation, there were five police cars parked in front of my place. I felt like a star witness! As it turned out I was the only one who actually saw the first fatal shot fired at Robert Kennedy."

It all started as Vince, a part time Ambassador Hotel waiter, was standing five feet from Kennedy: Sirhan's sickly smile, a smiling girl in a polka dot dress, a quickly raised pistol, and bang! bang! bang! bang! and bang! Fifth Shot. It was the fifth shot that, according to FBI investigators, could have hit Vince in the neck if he hadn't been knocked to the floor by the men wounded on each side of him. "I was scared and numb, never so scared in my life. I trembled for the next two days, couldn't work for ten days. I was still upset when I went back to work." …

… "Sirhan knew exactly what he was doing. That smile on his face; he thought he was making a hero out of himself. He deserves the death penalty. "You know, I'll never forget the feel of Kennedy's blood as it splattered gently on the side of my face. Like someone had dipped his hand in warm water and flicked his fingers at me . . . and the ten hours of questioning by the LAPD and the FBI . . . the lie detector test a month later ... to prove that I had really seen the girl in the polka dot dress . . . and the four days in court as a prosecution witness." … (RFK 1-2).

"I have those dreams of seeing Bobby’s body fall down," Corbett said Tuesday. "It’s very strong, and it doesn’t go away. Despite 50 years behind me, I still replay those memories in slow motion."

Dick Corbett was Kennedy’s presidential campaign head of finance. Corbett remembers passing rows of stainless steel work tables littered with dirty dishes and Kennedy shaking the hand of a skinny busboy.

Then, a small man with a .22-caliber revolver stepped out from behind a rack of trays.

Corbett was standing over Kennedy’s right shoulder and saw the gun but didn’t react. It didn’t seem real. By the time the shooter was done, Kennedy was hit three times — once behind his ear, once in his chest and once in the back of his neck. Three other people also had been hit.

Kennedy crumpled to the floor, and the busboy — Juan Modesto [actually Romero], now 67 and living in Modesto, Calif. — found himself cradling Kennedy’s bleeding head in his hands. Corbett remembers bending down and loosening Kennedy’s tie. Blood and the smell of gunpowder was everywhere.

Kennedy was pronounced dead at 1:44 a.m. at Good Samaritan hospital. The family wanted somebody they knew and trusted to remain with the body as an autopsy was performed.

"So I stayed in the morgue, in the basement, the whole night. I watched the coroner perform the autopsy," Corbett said. "The smell of embalming fluid still turns my stomach."

Two days later, Corbett was part of the funeral train that traveled from St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York to Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

…

"It was a complete change in my life. All the starry-eyed excitement of youth, when you are following somebody who had such an important cause, just dimmed. Bobby’s death killed me" (Fanning 1-3).

Sirhan’s California state court trial for the murder of RFK began on Feb. 13, 1969, and ended two months later on Apr. 17, when the jury found Sirhan guilty. The trial judge imposed a death sentence, reduced to life imprisonment by the California Supreme Court in 1972. Incarcerated now for 51 years, Sirhan is still serving that sentence.

The official government version of the RFK assassination—the stated view of the FBI, the Los Angeles Police Department and prosecutors in the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office—is that Sirhan was the lone assassin, that Sirhan fired all the shots in the pantry and that there was no conspiracy. According to the official narrative of the assassination, therefore, a single assassin acting alone slew RFK.

However, for persons who have scrutinized the facts surrounding the RFK assassination, or examined the quality of the official investigation, the official account lacks credibility.

Today, it is evident that there are glaring weaknesses in the official account—particularly its no-conspiracy contention. Major discrepancies exist between the official account and the actual evidence. The official probe of the murder was substandard and amounted to a cover-up. There is ballistics and autopsy evidence establishing the existence of a conspiracy (Wilkes 3).

Critics of the police investigation have alleged the following. There had been a second shooter, possibly a woman in a polka-dot dress or the man allegedly seen accompanying her, both supposedly seen with Sirhan several days earlier. Sirhan may have been hypnotized. At least 13 shots had been fired; Sirhan’s pistol had had no more than 8 bullets. The three bullets that had struck Kennedy had come from behind him, not from the front of him.

A 2018 medical research team from Duke University School of Medicine, after reviewing a number of sources while conducting its review of the assassination -- including eyewitness accounts, various medical records, and the autopsy report itself – did concluded that Sirhan’s bullets struck Kennedy and that he was the lone shooter.

… many people witnessed the shooting. Much has been made of the fact that the assassin approached Kennedy from the front, but the gunshot wounds were in the back. Several witnesses documented that Kennedy’s head was turned to his left as he was shot, which explains the trajectory of the bullets. In addition, witnesses claim that Sirhan came no closer than a foot from Kennedy when the shooting occurred, but the autopsy report estimates that the gun was within inches of the skin based on the presence of gunpowder in the wound. The same witnesses did not see another shooter. Despite concern over the trajectory of the bullet and controversy about gunpowder on the skin, there was never clear evidence of conspiracy and Sirhan was ruled the lone gunman (Dvorsky 6).

You may read a detailed argument for a second shooter by accessing https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Robert_Kennedy_Assassination.html

Inside St Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, before 2,100 people wearing black, the last surviving Kennedy brother, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, began his unannounced eulogy for Bobby.

“On behalf of Mrs. Kennedy, her children, the parents and sisters of Robert Kennedy, I want to express what we feel to those who mourn with us today in this Cathedral and around the world,” the young senator from Massachusetts said on June 8, 1968. “We loved him as a brother, and as a father, and as a son.”

…

“He gave us strength in time of trouble, wisdom in time of uncertainty, and sharing in time of happiness. He will always be by our side,” Ted Kennedy said at the funeral. “Love is not an easy feeling to put into words. Nor is loyalty, or trust, or joy. But he was all of these. He loved life completely and he lived it intensely.”

…

“My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it,” he said. “Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will some day come to pass for all the world. As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him.”

He paused, regaining his composure to quote Bobby a final time: “Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not” (Mettler 1, 2, 4).

Works cited:

“Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.” Wikipedia. Web. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Robert_F._Kennedy#Assassination

Davis, Ivor. “The Night Bobby Kennedy Was Shot – An Eyewitness Account 50 Years Later.” The Wrap. June 5, 2018. Web. https://www.thewrap.com/night-bobby-kennedy-died-eyewitness-account-ivor-davis/

Dvorsky, George. “New Medical Analysis Shows What Really Happened on the Night Robert F. Kennedy Was Assassinated.” Gizmodo. June 19, 2018. Web. https://gizmodo.com/new-medical-analysis-shows-what-really-happened-on-the-1826949062

Fanning, Ed. “Dick Corbett of Tampa, Witness to RFK Assassination, Still Feels the Loss Every Day.” Tampa Bay Times. June 5, 2018. Web. https://www.tampabay.com/news/Dick-Corbett-of-Tampa-witness-to-RFK-assassination-still-feels-the-loss-every-day_168875497

Kilgore, Ed. “The Powerful Myth of Would-Be President RFK, 50 Years Later.” Intelligencer. June 5, 2018. Web. http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/06/the-50th-anniversary-of-robert-f-kennedys-assassination.html

Lopez, Steve. “Column: 50 Years Later, the RFK Busboy Still Waits on Someone to Follow in Kennedy’s Footsteps.” Los Angeles Times. June 2, 2018. Web. https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-lopez-rfk-busboy-20180602-story.html

Mettler, Katie. “‘Those He Youched’: Ted Kennedy’s Heartbreaking Eulogy for His Slain Brother, Bobby.” The Washington Post. June 8, 2018. Web. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/06/08/those-he-touched-ted-kennedys-heartbreaking-eulogy-for-his-slain-brother-bobby/?noredirect=on

“RFK Assassination Eyewitness Recalls Horror Of June 6,1968.” California Digital Newspaper Collection. April 30, 1969. Web. https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=CRS19690430.2.15&e=-------en--20--1--txt-txIN--------1

Shalby, Colleen. “The Assassination of Robert Kennedy, as Told 50 Years Later.” Los Angeles Times. June 4, 2018. Web. https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-na-robert-f-kennedy/

Wilkes Jr., Donald E. “The Real Story of the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.” Flagpole. June 19, 2019. Web. https://flagpole.com/news/news-features/2019/06/19/the-real-story-of-the-assassination-of-robert-f-kennedy

Civil Rights Events

Robert Kennedy

Presidential Campaign

“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.”

In 1968, America was a wounded nation. The wounds were moral ones; the Vietnam War and three summers of inner-city riots had inflicted them on the national soul, challenging Americans’ belief that they were a uniquely noble and honorable people. Americans saw news footage from South Vietnam, such as the 1965 film of U.S. Marines setting fire to thatched huts in the village of Cam Ne with cigarette lighters and flamethrowers, and realized that they were capable of committing atrocities once considered the province of their enemies. They saw federal troops patrolling the streets of American cities and asked themselves how this could be happening in their City upon a Hill (Clarke 2).

Fifty years ago this week [2018], Robert Kennedy declared his candidacy for president. In the wake of Sen. Eugene McCarthy’s strong showing in the New Hampshire primary, Kennedy’s candidacy was not greeted with universal acclaim — that would grow over time. Although some considered it a political crusade, to others, it smacked of rank political opportunism.

Over the years, the perception of Kennedy as a candidate and his place in the liberal tradition of the Democratic Party have been framed more by the untimely end of his crusade than by the decision to embark on it in the first place. But there are clear lessons that prospective candidates can draw from Kennedy’s vacillation and eventual campaign. To triumph, candidates must plunge in, innovate, inspire and unify their parties — things Kennedy only partially succeeded in doing.

As early as 1962, Kennedy was considered a future presidential candidate. But when anti-Vietnam War activist Allard Lowenstein approached him about running in September 1967, Kennedy declined, despite growing disenchantment with his party’s positions on inner cities and Vietnam. Lowenstein then persuaded McCarthy to run, setting up a future conflict between the McCarthy and Kennedy camps (Bradshaw 1).

Bobby deputed his brother [Ted] to meet with McCarthy. If he would agree to add poverty amelioration to his agenda, RFK might remain on the sidelines. But McCarthy “just was basically uninterested” in the deal, Teddy reported.

Edward Kennedy urged his brother to wait until 1972 to try to restore Camelot. Johnson would be in retirement, and the path back to the White House for the Kennedys might be clearer. Moreover, both Teddy and his sister-in-law Jackie feared for Bobby’s safety on the presidential campaign trail. “A feeling of dread” is how Teddy’s chief of staff described the senator’s premonition of doom (Perry 3).

Over the winter of 1967-1968, Kennedy agonized over whether to run or to wait. Some advisers, including his brother Ted, argued that challenging an incumbent from one’s own party was madness and would lead to a GOP victory in the general election. Others countered that Kennedy was the only candidate who would halt the Vietnam War and address the poverty and race issues articulated by the Kerner Commission (Bradshaw 2).

One might have thought that Ethel Kennedy—who knew that during her husband’s term as attorney general the telephones at Hickory Hill, the Kennedys’ home in McLean, Virginia, had rung with threats such as “We know where your kids go to school and we know how they get there” and “Do you know what hydrochloric acid can do to your eyes?”—would be the last person to want Bobby to run (Clarke 4). But she did.

Kennedy and his advisers were concerned that had he been the first to challenge President Lyndon B. Johnson, he would have exacerbated the perception that he was ruthless, in part because of the longtime feud that existed between Johnson and Kennedy. But his late entry into the contest triggered consternation and grumbling anyway, because McCarthy had become the darling of the left and student activists, both constituencies Kennedy saw as naturally his. Detractors labeled him “Bobby come lately,” and infuriated columnist Murray Kempton cabled Ted Kennedy, “Your brother’s announcement makes clear that St. Patrick did not drive all the snakes out of Ireland.”

Kennedy’s vacillation owed both to political and policy calculations. Pushing him to run was concern about potential damage to the United States if policies were not changed. More selfishly, he wondered if passing on a run might freeze him out of the White House until at least 1980 should Johnson win reelection — as the professional political operators on Kennedy’s team assumed — and anoint his preferred successor in 1972, presumably Vice President Hubert Humphrey (Bradshaw 2-3).

Kennedy was concerned that, if he ran, an increasingly unstable Lyndon Johnson might “wag the dog,” provoking an international crisis or even starting a war to upstage the challenger’s candidacy. In late 1967, as Kennedy was completing Thirteen Days, his account of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, he had told Adam Walinsky, “You know, we had 13 people in that room [the Cabinet Room in the White House], and if any one of 8 of them had been President, we would have had a nuclear war.” During the same conversation, he said, “The problem is that if I run against Johnson, I don’t know what he’s going to do.” Kennedy told Walinsky that Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, who had also served in J.F.K.’s administration and who initially did not encourage Bobby’s running in 1968, stoked his fears, perhaps on purpose, by recounting conversations during which Johnson had spoken about possible, and frightening, countermoves against North Vietnam and China. The fear that Johnson’s obsessive hatred for him might prompt Johnson to act irrationally had also inhibited Kennedy’s criticism of the president’s Vietnam policies. “I’m afraid that by speaking out I just make Lyndon do the opposite,” he once told the Village Voice reporter Jack Newfield. “He hates me so much that if I asked for snow, he would make rain, just because it was me” (Clarke 3).

But it was political calculation that initially kept Kennedy out of the race. He cited Johnson’s ability to control events; the fickle nature of opinion polls — which showed him ahead of Johnson for most of 1967; and the adverse mathematical calculations for delegate selection. This latter element was important in the pre-reform era of fewer primaries and party boss control. Kennedy concluded that a winning campaign “simply could not be put together” and said as much publicly in early 1968.

But then, as Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote, the Tet offensive, launched by the North Vietnamese in late January, “changed everything” for Kennedy, altering his careful calculations about both politics and the greater good. When the administration rejected Kennedy’s idea of a commission to investigate the U.S. commitment in Vietnam, Kennedy reversed himself (Bradshaw 3).

Richard Nixon, who had lost the presidency to J.F.K. in 1960, watched Kennedy’s announcement from a hotel room in Portland, Oregon. John Ehrlichman, one of several aides in the room with Nixon, later wrote, “When it was over and the hotel-room TV was turned off, Nixon sat and looked at the blank screen for a long time, saying nothing. Finally, he shook his head slowly. ‘We’ve just seen some very terrible forces unleashed,’ he said. ‘Something bad is going to come of this.’ He pointed at the screen, ‘God knows where this is going to lead.’ ” Meanwhile, by one account, Kennedy was telling Nicole Salinger, the wife of J.F.K.’s press secretary Pierre Salinger, “I’m sleeping well for the first time in months. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but at least I’m at peace with myself” (Clarke 3).

Kennedy's plan was to win the nomination through popular support in the primaries. He delivered his first campaign speech on March 18 at Kansas State University, where he had agreed to give a lecture honoring former Kansas governor and former Republican Presidential candidate Alfred Landon. At Kansas State, Kennedy spoke to a crowd of 14,500 students. In his speech, Kennedy apologized for early mistakes and attacked President Johnson's Vietnam policy saying, "I was involved in many of the early decisions on Vietnam, decisions which helped set us on our present path," but he added that "past error is not excuse for its own perpetration." Later that day at the University of Kansas, Kennedy spoke to another crowd of 19,000. He said, "I don't think that we have to shoot each other, to beat each other, to curse each other and criticize each other, I think that we can do better in this country. And that is why I run for President of the United States."

Kennedy went on to campaign in the Democratic primaries in Indiana, Washington, D.C., Nebraska, Oregon, South Dakota, and California. His speeches emphasized racial equality, non-aggression in foreign policy, and social improvement. His campaign attracted support among America's youth, while it did not engender support from the business community. Businesses leaders criticized him for the tax increases that would be necessary to fund Kennedy's proposed social programs. During a speech given at the Indiana University Medical School, Kennedy was asked, "Where are we going to get the money to pay for all these new programs you're proposing?" Kennedy referred to the medical students and said "From you."

Although he enjoyed support from many in the anti-war movement, Kennedy did not express support for an immediate withdrawal of U.S. military personnel from Vietnam or an immediate end to the conflict. He said that he wanted to end the conflict by strengthening the South Vietnamese military and reducing corruption within the South Vietnamese government. He supported a peace settlement between North and South Vietnam.(1968 2-3).

“Black Bobby,” as his own family once called him in reference to the brooding, bitter, pragmatic enforcer who scoffed at liberals as impractical, even weak, dreamers—had evolved into a sad-eyed and genuinely empathetic champion of Americans who had been left behind: black people living in squalid urban ghettos, Latino immigrants laboring for pennies in California’s vineyards, poor white residents of Appalachian coal towns that had long ago been stripped to their veins.

At frantic rallies and in frenzied motorcade swings through black and Latino neighborhoods, Kennedy transformed into something bordering between Christ-like and celebrity. “The crowds were savage,” one of his advisers remembered. “They pulled off his cufflinks, tore off his clothes, tore ours. In bigger towns with bigger crowds, it was frightening.” Kennedy would stand in an open-topped convertible, a young aide kneeling with his arm wrapped around the candidate, who wore a weary half smile as residents reached out to touch his limp arms and hands or tear off a piece of clothing as a keepsake. “It was like he wasn’t there,” another aide observed. “His stare was vacant.”

Bobby veered sharply between preaching a message of reconciliation and lobbing bruising attacks on those representing wealth, privilege and power (he was never so effective as when those attacks were aimed at his nemesis, President Johnson). To the black and brown voters who composed the base of his support, he seemed a savior. But to many middle-class white Democrats, Kennedy’s rallies and motorcades were unsettling. In their heat and intensity, they seemed eerily of a piece with violent antiwar protests and urban riots that defined that most disorderly time. “You have to turn it down,” implored Ted Sorensen, a longtime Kennedy family confidant. “We can’t,” Bobby replied. “It’s too late.”

The myth of Kennedy’s interracial appeal was born in Indiana, where the candidate trounced his cooler, more professorial rival, Eugene McCarthy. In the immediate aftermath of the primary, the influential political columnists Robert Novak and Rowland Evans noted that in Gary, “while Negro precincts were delivering about 90 percent for Kennedy, he was running 2 to 1 ahead in some Polish districts.” Such findings quickly formed the basis of Bobby’s image as a candidate of racial reconciliation. He was a tough, Irish Catholic Democrat with unimpeachable credentials as a Cold Warrior and law enforcer. But he was also the preferred candidate of the urban ghetto—a truth speaker on racial and economic injustice. “Kennedy’s Indiana Victory Proves His Appeal Defuses Backlash Voting,” one headline declared.

Historians and political scientists see the matter differently today. Kennedy’s own vote counters later conceded that he lost 59 out of 70 white precincts in Gary. While Kennedy’s internal polls showed him faring better than might be expected among former supporters of George Wallace’s bid for the Democratic nomination four years earlier, he nevertheless struggled to retain working-class, white ethnic voters and relied instead on robust turnout in minority neighborhoods for his electoral cushion.

… Kennedy and his team instinctively understood that their real base was among people of color. As early precincts from Gary reported on May 7, opening up a wide gap in what early returns had shown to be an unexpectedly close race against McCarthy, Ethel Kennedy, the candidate’s wife, crowed, “Don’t you just wish that everyone was black?”

What does seem clear is that Kennedy struggled with educated white professionals, a group central to the Democratic Party’s ambitions in 2018 and beyond. The journalist David Halberstam attributed much of the problem to style. Kennedy’s motorcades and rallies captured the very fever that many suburbanites hoped to quell. “There would be two minutes of television each night of Robert Kennedy being mauled, losing his shoes, and then there would be 15 free—that was painful—minutes of Gene McCarthy talking leisurely and seriously about the issues” (Zeitz 5-6).

In primary after primary that year, Bobby was showing an ability to reach beyond his comfort zone and across normal political boundaries. … In Nebraska, an impressive 51.7% of Democratic Cornhuskers pulled their levers for Bobby, compared with McCarthy’s 31.2%, Humphrey’s 7.4%, and 5.6% for former president Lyndon Johnson. Even in South Dakota, Humphrey’s birthplace, the results were encouraging: 49.5% for Bobby, 30.1% for the vice president, and 20.4% for McCarthy (Tye 2).

Kennedy was successful in four state primaries: Indiana, Nebraska, South Dakota, and California; as well as Washington D.C. McCarthy won six state primaries: Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Oregon, New Jersey, and Illinois. Of the state primaries in which they campaigned directly against one another, Kennedy won three (Indiana, Nebraska, and California) while McCarthy was only successful in one (Oregon) (1968 4).

Heading into the Oregon primary, Bobby rued that “it’s all white Protestants. There’s nothing for me to grab a hold of.” On the eve of the ballot, the candidate turned to his aide, Joe Dolan, and observed, “You think I’m going to lose.” “I know you are,” replied Dolan. “We don’t have blacks and Chicanos, and we do have gun nuts.” (Kennedy became an early gun safety supporter after his brother’s assassination, a position that was no more popular in certain pockets then than it is now.) (Zeitz 7).

The Oregon primary posed several challenges to Kennedy's campaign. His platform, which called for an end to poverty and hunger, and which focused on minority issues, did not resonate with Oregon voters. The Kennedy campaign pointed out that McCarthy had voted against a minimum wage law and repeal of the poll tax in the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The McCarthy campaign responded with charges that Kennedy illegally taped Martin Luther King, Jr. as United States Attorney General. On May 28, McCarthy won the Oregon primary with 44.7 percent; Kennedy received 38.8 percent of vote.

After losing momentum in Oregon, Kennedy hoped to take the California and South Dakota primaries on June 4. The demographics of California appeared to be right for his voter-appeal. But McCarthy's California campaign was well-funded and organized and a defeat would have been a serious blow to his hopes of winning the nomination. Kennedy had some disadvantages in the South Dakota primary. McCarthy was a Senator in neighboring Minnesota and Humphrey had been raised in South Dakota.

On June 1, during the final days of the California campaign, Kennedy and McCarthy met for a televised debate. The debate turned out to be a draw, but after the debate, undecided voters favored Kennedy over McCarthy by a 2 to 1 margin. Kennedy's campaign was nothing if not energetic and on June 3, Kennedy traveled to San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, and Long Beach. He told Theodore H. White on June 4 that he believed that he could sway Democratic Party leaders with wins in both California and South Dakota (1968 5-6).

Kennedy won the South Dakota primary, beating McCarthy, 50 percent to 20 percent of the vote.

In the California primary, … Bobby was buoyed by unprecedented turnouts and majorities in black and Mexican American districts. He won 46.3% of the vote, compared to McCarthy’s 41.8% and 12% for an unpledged slate headed by Thomas C. Lynch. The trend was encouraging enough for Bobby to go on TV and quietly claim victory, for journalists and friends gathered across the hall at Los Angeles’ Ambassador Hotel to start the party, and for America to imagine what it might be like to have another Kennedy in the White House (Tye 3).

The Netflix documentary, “Bobby Kennedy for President,” opens with bracing—almost jaw-dropping—footage of Bobby campaigning in open-topped convertibles throughout California. It was days after his defeat in Oregon, and he was in the fight of his life. The crowds are interracial, to be sure, but upon close examination, they are composed of people of color in sharp disproportion to the state’s population in 1968. We don’t know how Kennedy might have fared among working-class whites if he had survived into the fall. But it’s fair to say that he was one of the first national Democrats in the aftermath of the Voting Rights Act to solidify the loyalty of black and Latino voters in large and meaningful numbers (Zeitz 5-7).

… in the words of Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Kennedy had run "an uproarious campaign, filled with enthusiasm and fun... It [had been] … also a campaign moving in its sweep and passion." Indeed, he [had] challenged the complacent in American society and [had] sought to bridge the great divides in American life - between the races, between the poor and the affluent, between young and old, between order and dissent. His 1968 campaign [had] brought hope to an American people troubled by discontent and violence at home and war in Vietnam. … (Robert 3).

…

… Bobby Kennedy ran for president at the high-water mark of white backlash, in a year when America seemed at war with itself. It’s possible that no candidate—even one so apparently hard-wired for the challenge—could have bridged racial and class divides. (Another candidate, Richard Nixon, knew how to profit from them.)

…

… Ultimately, the 1968 election results were painfully close, with Nixon taking 43.4 percent of the popular vote to 42.7 percent for Humphrey and 13.5 percent for George Wallace. It’s not impossible to believe that he [Kennedy] might have shaved off enough points from Wallace among white-ethnic and blue-collar workers in key East Coast and Midwestern states to win the race.

…

… Robert Kennedy in his final years had indeed transformed himself into a rare and noble voice for America’s forgotten communities. He preached a vital message of reconciliation and appealed to people’s better nature. There’s much to admire, and even venerate, in that legacy (Zeitz 12-13).

Works cited:

“1968: Robert Kennedy’s Presidential Campaign.” Live Journal. April 9, 2018. Web. https://potus-geeks.livejournal.com/955716.html

Bradshaw, Chris. “What Robert Kennedy’s Presidential Campaign Can Teach Democrats for 2020.” The Washington Post. March 18, 2018. Web. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2018/03/18/what-robert-kennedys-presidential-campaign-can-teach-democrats-for-2020/

Clarke, Thurston. “The Last Good Campaign.” Vanity Fair. May 1, 2008. Web. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2008/06/rfk_excerpt200806

Perry, Barbara A. “What If Bobby Kennedy Had Skipped the 1968 Race, as Brother Teddy Advised?” The Hill. Web. https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/389741-what-if-bobby-kennedy-had-skipped-the-1968-race-as-brother-teddy-advised

“Robert F. Kennedy.” John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. Web. https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/the-kennedy-family/robert-f-kennedy

Tye, Larry. “Robert Kennedy Was a Raw Idealist Cut Down Just When the Presidency Seemed within Reach.” USA Today. June 5, 2018. Web. https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/06/05/robert-f-kennedy-died-presidency-reach-column/672530002/

Zeitz, Joshua. “The Bobby Kennedy Myth.” Politico Magazine. June 5, 2018. Web. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/06/05/rfk-bobby-kennedy-myth-legend-history-218593

Civil Rights Events

Poor People's Campaign

 “I choose to identify with the underprivileged. I choose to identify with the poor. I choose to give my life for the hungry. I choose to give my life for those who have been left out…This is the way I’m going.” -- Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Civil Rights Movement had led to landmark legislation. Public opinion had shifted to support Civil Rights, and King had a Nobel Prize. And yet the tide was rolling out again rapidly. At the time of his death, King faced a fierce backlash — including from many of his former allies — for his criticism of the war in Vietnam, and of the ravages of economic inequality.

On the other hand, younger, more radical activists had grown tired of the Civil Rights mainstream’s ongoing commitment to nonviolent resistance as white supremacists continued to maim and kill, and much of the general white populace persistently rejected integration in practice even while praising it in theory. The younger activists wanted to shift energies toward building black self-determination under the banner of “Black Power.” In the midst of all this conflict, the man Nina Simone referred to as the King of Love was murdered, and conflagration spread across America (Perry 1-2).

Dr. King and his organization were embarking on one of their boldest projects yet, a Poor People’s Campaign that would bring a multiracial coalition to the nation’s capital to demand federal funding for full employment, a guaranteed annual income, anti-poverty programs, and housing for the poor. Announcing their new initiative, King said, “The Southern Christian Leadership Conference [SCLC] will lead waves of the nation’s poor and disinherited to Washington, D.C., next spring to demand redress of their grievances by the United States government and to secure at least jobs or income for all.”

The idea for the Poor People’s Campaign had been sparked by Senator Robert Kennedy, in a simple message passed by Marian Wright (later Marian Wright Edelman) to King months earlier. At the close of a conversation between Kennedy and Wright, the senator had said, “Tell Dr. King to bring the people to Washington.”

If Kennedy’s comment provided a final catalyst, the seeds of the Poor People’s Campaign can be found a year earlier in the Mississippi Delta. In June 1966 King and his closest associate, Reverend Ralph Abernathy, were visiting a Head Start daycare in Marks, Mississippi, a tiny town in Quitman County—the poorest county in the country. It took them a moment to notice that the bright-eyed children were malnourished. At lunchtime, the teacher brought out a brown paper bag of apples and a box of crackers.

When she cut an apple into quarters, and gave one slice, and four or five crackers, to each of the waiting, hungry students, King and Abernathy exchanged solemn glances. This was all the children had for lunch, they realized with shock. Neither man had ever seen poverty like this. Dr. King began weeping, and had to leave the classroom. That night, lying on a motel bed and staring at the ceiling, King said, “Ralph, I can’t get those children out of my mind.”

For the next year, King weathered setbacks in Chicago, challenges to his leadership from the emerging advocates of the Black Power movement, questions about the relevance of nonviolence in the face of increasing urban rebellions, and a storm of controversy over his stand against the war in Vietnam. But the issue of poverty never left his mind (Dellinger 1-2).

One day in early December 1967, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. laid out his vision for the Poor People’s Campaign, his next protest in Washington, D.C.,: “This will be no mere one-day march in Washington, but a trek to the nation’s capital by suffering and outraged citizens who will go to stay until some definite and positive active is taken to provide jobs and income for the poor.”

… Seeing how poverty cut across race and geography, King called for representatives of American Indian, Mexican-American, Appalachian populations and other supporters to join him on the National Mall in May 1968. He sought coalition for the Poor People’s Campaign that would “demand federal funding for full employment, a guaranteed annual income, anti-poverty programs, and housing for the poor” (Diamond 1).

"For King and many others, there's a very depressing realization in 1965 that what they thought would represent victory turns out not really to represent anywhere near the degree of fundamental change that they previously had imagined it would," David Garrow, author of Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference said in an interview with American Radio Works.

According to Stanford University's Martin Luther King Research and Education Institute, King believed that African Americans and other minorities would never truly achieve full citizenship until they had economic security (Desmond-Harris 4).

As a first step in building the power needed to achieve the goal of a radical redistribution of political and economic power King, along with other leaders of the poor …, helped work out the major elements of the platform for the Poor People’s Campaign of 1968. An important aspect of the Campaign was to petition the government to pass an Economic Bill of Rights as a step to lift the load of poverty.

$30 billion annual appropriation for a real war on poverty

Congressional passage of full employment and guaranteed income legislation [a guaranteed annual wage]

Construction of 500,000 low-cost housing units per year until slums were eliminated

The Campaign was organized into three phases. The first was to construct a shantytown, to become known as Resurrection City, on the National Mall between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. With permits from the National Park Service, Resurrection City was to house anywhere from 1,500 to 3,000 Campaign participants. Additional participants would be housed in other group and family residences around the metropolitan area. The next phase was to begin public demonstrations, mass nonviolent civil disobedience, and mass arrests to protest the plight of poverty in this country. The third and final phase of the Campaign was to launch a nationwide boycott of major industries and shopping areas to prompt business leaders to pressure Congress into meeting the demands of the Campaign.

Although Rev. Dr. King was assassinated on April 4, on April 29, 1968, the Poor People’s Campaign went forward. It began in Washington where key leaders of the campaign gathered for lobbying efforts and media events before dispersing around the country to formally launch the nine regional caravans bringing the thousands of participants to Washington: the “Eastern Caravan,” the “Appalachia Trail,” the “Southern Caravan,” the “Midwest Caravan,” the “Indian Trail,” the “San Francisco Caravan,” the “Western Caravan,” the “Mule Train,” and the “Freedom Train.”

The efforts of the Poor People’s Campaign climaxed in the Solidarity Day Rally for Jobs, Peace, and Freedom on June 19, 1968. Fifty thousand people joined the 3,000 participants living at Resurrection City to rally around the demands of the Poor People’s Campaign on Solidarity Day. This was the first and only massive mobilization to take place during the Poor People’s Campaign (Vision 2-4).

Lenneal Henderson , a student at University of California, Berkeley, was one of the activists who traveled to Resurrection City.

I was raised in the housing projects of New Orleans and San Francisco, and my parents were very strong community advocates. I also witnessed the Black Panther Party emerge in Oakland in 1966. Stokely Carmichael's call for Black Power focused on the need to transform our communities first in order to get ourselves out of poverty.

I took a Greyhound bus from San Francisco. But I diverted to New Orleans to see my relatives. I was there when King was assassinated and the very next day, I got back on the Greyhound bus and headed to Washington. From the perimeter of the town, I could see the flames and the smoke of the city going up and the rioting that was taking place. It was pretty sobering. I stayed with a family in D.C. until the Resurrection City was ready to move into (Diamond 2).

At its peak, the number of protestors reached nearly 7,000 but still far short of the expectation of 50,000 people (Cho 1).

Lenneal Henderson:

Life in the camp was kind of frenzied; it was very, very busy. There were things going on every day, there were people going back and forth, not only organized demonstrations, but to meet with agencies like the Department of Agriculture, Labor and [Housing and Urban Development]. I went to about seven or eight different agency meetings.

I went to some meetings of the D.C. government, and I also went to meetings of D.C.-based organizations that were part of the coalition of the Poor People's Campaign like the United Planning Organization and the Washington branch of The National Urban League. At the camp, we also had something called The University, which was a sort of spontaneous, makeshift higher education clearing house that we put together at the camp for students who were coming from different colleges and universities both, from HBCUs and majority universities (Diamond 2).

[Jesse] Jackson became mayor of the encampment, which was called Resurrection City. Conditions were miserable.

"You know, what I remember I suppose the most about it was that we set the tents up at the foot of Lincoln's memorial," he [Jackson] says. "It seemed to rain without ceasing and became muddy and people were hurt, and we were still traumatized by Dr. King's assassination. Then while [we were] in the Resurrection City, Robert Kennedy was killed."

The demonstrators were discouraged and disheartened, says Jackson, so he tried to give them hope through words.

"I am. Somebody," he told protestors. "I am. God's child. I may not have a job, but I am somebody" (Lohr 2).

Lenneal Henderson:

I was there all 42 days, and it rained 29 of them. It got to be a muddy mess after a while. And with such basic accommodations, tensions are inevitable. Sometimes there were fights and conflicts between and among people. But it was an incredible experience, almost indescribable. While we were all in a kind of depressed state about the assassinations of King and RFK, we were trying to keep our spirits up, and keep focused on King’s ideals of humanitarian issues, the elimination of poverty and freedom. It was exciting to be part of something that potentially, at least, could make a difference in the lives of so many people who were in poverty around the country.

I saw Jesse Jackson, who was then about 26 years old, with these rambunctious, young African-American men, who wanted to exact some vengeance for the assassination of King. Jackson sat them down and said, "This is just not the way, brothers. It's just not the way." The he went further and said, “Look, you've got to pledge to me and to yourself that when you go back to wherever you live, before the year is out you're going to do two things to make a difference in your neighborhood." It was an impressive moment of leadership (Diamond 3).

Resurrection City closed June 19, 1968.

Henderson recalled: The closing was sort of unceremonious. When the demonstrators’ permit expired on June 23, some [members of the House of] Representatives, mostly white Southerners, called for immediate removal. So the next day, about 1,000 police officers arrived to clear the camp up of its last few residents. Ultimately, they arrested 288 people, including [civil rights leader and minister Ralph] Abernathy (Diamond 3)

… regarding the Poor People’s March and demands for economic equity, it’s … important to note the following: it is the simple profound statement that the reason people are treated differently by those in power is generally for profit. So that would include racism and economic inequities. King was attempting to change that equation by striving to give workers more power. He was about to threaten the profit accumulation by taking a forthright stance on the side of economic equity for the black community overall. This was compounded by his planning to bring the massive civil rights community and activists with him to Washington to make these economic demands. King was stepping on dangerous ground. It is not ironic that he was killed in Memphis while demanding rights for garbage workers (IBW21 4).

Perhaps part of the reason we don't talk as much about the Poor People's Campaign when commemorating King's life is that there's no real consensus about whether it was a success.

The demonstrations fizzled out when the encampment's permit expired on June 24, 1968, shortly after a confrontation between police and some of the inhabitants of Resurrection City led to a tear gas attack on the remaining people there. Some refused to leave, and a total of 288 protesters were jailed — making July 13 the anticlimactic official end of the campaign.

In a 2014 reflection on the effort, NPR dubbed it "a dream unfulfilled," noting that many participants deemed it a failure because they didn't see immediate changes. And there's no question that the demands were never met, and that Americans continue to live in poverty

The other view is that of SCLC co-founder Rev. Joseph Lowery, who said that as a result of the effort, "the nation became conscious of the fact that it has an expanding poor population."

As a historian assessing the campaign, [Michael] Jeffries said he chooses to defer to organizer Marian Wright Edelman, who saw it as a success. "She has said the campaign itself and the pressure that was bought to bear on the federal government resulted in major federal investment and, at minimum, nationwide nutrition programs. Food stamps. School lunches. Did it end poverty? Obviously not. Was it ever going to? No. But did it succeed in bringing attention to poverty in American and did it result in some federal intervention to alleviate the terrible conditions that so many were facing in America? Yes, it did" (Desmond-Harris 8).

Lenneal Henderson:

Even though the Economic Bill of Rights we were pressing for was never passed, I think it was successful in many ways. For one, the relationships that those folks built with one another carried on way beyond 1968 (Diamond 4).

Works cited:

Cho, Nancy. “Poor People’s Campaign (December 4, 1967 – June 19, 1968).” BlackPast. November 22, 2009. Web. https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/poor-peoples-campaign-december-4-1967-june-19-1968/

Dellinger, Drew. “The Last March of Martin Luther King Jr.” The Atlantic. April 4, 2018. Web. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/04/mlk-last-march/555953/

Desmond-Harris, Jenee. “The Poor People's Campaign: the Little-Known Protest MLK Was Planning When He Died.” Vox. April 4, 2016. Web. https://www.vox.com/2015/1/18/7548453/poor-peoples-campaign-mlk

Diamond, Anna. “Fifty Years Later, Remembering Resurrection City and the Poor People’s Campaign of 1968.” Smithsonian Magazine. May 2018. Web. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/remembering-poor-peoples-campaign-180968742/

“Dr. King’s Vision: The Poor People’s Campaign of 1967-68.” Poor People’s Campaign. Web. https://www.poorpeoplescampaign.org/history/

IBW21. “King’s Poor People’s Campaign.” The Institute of the Black World 21st Century. September 4, 2018. Web. https://ibw21.org/commentary/kings-poor-peoples-campaign/

Lohr, Kathy. “Poor People's Campaign: A Dream Unfulfilled.” NPR. June 19, 2008. Web. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91626373

Perry, Imani. “For the Poor People’s Campaign, the Moonshot Was Less Than a Triumph.” The New York Times. July 16, 2019. Web. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/16/us/for-the-poor-peoples-campaign-the-moonshot-was-less-than-a-triumph.html