How would America have been different if Robert Kennedy had not been assassinated?
I think that Robert Kennedy’s murder creates more “what ifs” than the killing of his brother, John Kennedy. RFK was one of the last great white affluent liberals of that era. He hated poverty, inequality, discrimination, the Vietnam war, the Mafia and he was making moves, or had made moves as JFK’s Attorney General, to fix the problems associated with these issues. All deaths at the hands of a murderer are terrible, but I think Robert K’s death was particularly tragic. He was young (early 40s), full of hope and promise, and if given the chance, I believe would have scaled down, or even completely withdrew from Vietnam. He would have gone after the Mafia with even more vigour than he did as AG, and we would likely have picked up the torch from where Martin Luther King Jr. had left off. MLK Jr., remember, died only months before. Many Americans, both black and white, saw RFK and MLK Jr. as being cut from the same mold. Sure they were very different but both were heading in the same direc
