On June 5, 1968, Robert F. Kennedy was shot by Sirhan Sirhan at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California and pronounced dead the following day.
Kennedy, a United States senator and candidate in the 1968 Democratic Party presidential primaries, won the California and South Dakota primaries on June 4. He addressed his campaign supporters in the Ambassador Hotel's Embassy Ballroom. After leaving the podium, and exiting through a kitchen hallway, he was mortally wounded by multiple shots fired by Sirhan. Kennedy died at Good Samaritan Hospital nearly 25 hours later. His body was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
Sirhan, a Palestinian who held strong anti-Zionist and pro-Palestinian beliefs, testified in 1969 that he killed Kennedy "with 20 years of malice aforethought"; he was convicted and sentenced to death. Due to People v. Anderson, his sentence was commuted to life in prison in 1972 with a possibility of parole. As of April 2023, his parole request has been denied 17 times.
Kennedy's assassination prompted the Secret Service to protect presidential candidates. In addition, it led to several conspiracy theories. It was the final of four major assassinations in the United States that occurred during the 1960s.
Background
Robert F. Kennedy was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, in 1925. In 1948, he visited Palestine and wrote six dispatches for The Boston Post. He dismissed the possibility of the Jewish state becoming communist as "fantastically absurd", and called it the "only stabilizing factor remaining in the near and middle East". In 1960, John F. Kennedy, Robert's elder brother, was elected the president of the United States and appointed Robert as U.S. attorney general. During his tenure, Robert served as John's close advisor and was associated with various decisions during the Kennedy administration. According to author Matthew A. Hayes, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Robert acted as a "de-facto Chief of Staff, Presidential Agent and Intermediary for his brother" and was an "indispensable partner" in its successful resolution. In November 1963, President Kennedy was assassinated, and Robert was deeply affected by it. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson assumed the presidency and retained almost all prominent Kennedy advisors, including Robert as attorney general.
In 1964, polls showed that various Democrats wanted Kennedy to be Johnson's running mate in that year's presidential election. Kennedy instead organized his senatorial campaign in New York, challenging Kenneth Keating, an incumbent Republican senator. During a campaign speech, Kennedy declared his support for Israel, stating that in the event of an attack, "we will stand by Israel and come to her assistance". He won the election; during his congressional career, he supported civil rights and opposed Johnson's policies regarding the Vietnam War.
The 1968 presidential campaign has been referred to as one of the most volatile campaigns in American history. There was strong opposition to the ongoing Vietnam War; and it was a period of social unrest, with riots in major cities. Allard K. Lowenstein, a Democratic politician, organized a "Dump Johnson" movement to prevent Johnson's nomination as the presidential candidate, and asked Kennedy to run instead. Kennedy refused, asserting that he did not want to split the Democratic Party. Eugene McCarthy, a U.S. senator from Minnesota, then emerged as the leader of the "Dump Johnson" movement and entered several state presidential primaries. In late January 1968, the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, in the view of historian Lloyd Gardner, "shattered hopes that the war could be won within a reasonable period of time—if ever—and broke open the cracks in the Democratic coalition".
On March 12, 1968, in the New Hampshire Democratic primary, McCarthy nearly defeated Johnson with 42 percent to Johnson's 49 percent of the votes. Four days later, Kennedy announced his presidential campaign. On March 31, Johnson announced that he would not seek the presidency. Four days later, civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, leading to further riots in several cities. The same day, Kennedy gave a speech in Indianapolis, saying: