#rfk

For the first three weeks of April, Kennedy crisscrossed the country, drawing huge throngs, trying to prove his popularity to the bosses who controlled the Democratic convention. “The crowds were savage,” recalled John Bartlow Martin, who was traveling with him as an adviser. “They pulled his cufflinks off, tore his clothes, tore ours. In bigger towns, with bigger crowds, it was frightening.” In Kalamazoo, Michigan, a housewife reached in the car and calmly removed Kennedy’s right shoe, which she displayed to reporters as a trophy of war. Kneeling on the seat of the car, his arms around Kennedy’s waist as the convertible inched along, Bill Barry desperately clung to the candidate as the crowds grabbed at him. “Not so tight,” Kennedy was heard to cry. “You’re going to break my back.” Barry’s knees were bloody; Ethel gave him a rubber kneepad. One over-heated woman yanked Kennedy’s head down by his tie; another pulled him out of the car altogether, breaking his tooth on the curb. Kennedy’s shyness would seize him at the beginning of a motorcade or mass rally. He would grimace, tight lipped, before plunging into a crowd—the same grim face he wore before diving into icy rapids. As the crowd closed in around him, he would just let his body go limp. “It was like he wasn’t there,” observed Peter Fishbein, a young aide who traveled with the candidate. “His stare was vacant.” Once, when their car was nearly rolled by a wildly impassioned crowd in California, Fishbein looked at Kennedy, who was limply waving and looking far away. “Even for him, it could be scary,” said Fishbein. -Evan Thomas, 'Robert Kennedy: His Life"

"In 1967, RFK went to visit poor black families in the Mississippi River delta.  There he interacted directly with children whose bellies were distended by starvation. His daughter Kathleen remembers him walking in upon his return home, 'ashen-faced' and agitated, and trying to convey what he saw to his children as they ate dinner: 'The children are covered with sores and their tummies stick out because they have no food. Do you know how lucky you are? Do you know how lucky you are?  Do something for your country.' The wife of an aide remembered an exchange with him the following day: ‘You don’t know what I saw! I have done nothing in my life! Everything I have done was worthless!’ He was so shaken, so self-deprecating about his life. Mississippi was the worst thing, he needed to dedicate his life to this.” -Evan Thomas, 'Robert Kennedy: His Life'

-Evan Thomas, 'Robert Kennedy: His Life'

whole plane watching the knicks game except for one guy watching bobby kennedy for president

Bobby Kennedy on the beach with his dog Freckles

Jack and Bobby in discussion