Robert Francis Kennedy, the son of Joseph Patrick Kennedy and Rose Fitzgerald, was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, in 1925. His great grandfather, Patrick Kennedy, had emigrated from Ireland in 1849 and his grandfathers, Patrick Joseph Kennedy and John Francis Fitzgerald, were important political figures in Boston. Kennedy's father was a highly successful businessman who later served as ambassador to Great Britain (1937-40).
Kennedy went to Harvard University but his studies were interrupted by the Second World War. In November 1944 he joined the United States Navy but the war finished before he was called into action. He returned to Harvard and graduated in 1948. This was followed by a law degree from the University of Virginia.
In 1950 Kennedy married Ethel Shakel and their first child, Kathleen, was born on 4th July, 1951. Joe McCarthy, the controversial senator from Wisconsin, was asked to be the child's godfather. Over the next few years Ethel gave birth to eleven children.
In 1951 Kennedy joined the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice but resigned the following year to help his brother, John F. Kennedy, in his successful campaign to be elected to the Senate. Kennedy returned to legal work in 1953 when Joe McCarthy appointed him as one of the 15 assistant counsels to the Senate subcommittee on investigations.
Kennedy's first task was to research Western trade with China. He discovered that Western European countries accounted for around 75 per cent of all ships delivering cargo to China. In an interview with the Boston Post Kennedy argued that: "it just didn't make sense to anybody in this country that our major allies, whom we're aiding financially, should trade with the communists who are killing GIs".
In a speech in the Senate Joe McCarthy praised Kennedy's research. He also controversially called for the United States Navy "to sink every accursed ship carrying materials to the enemy and resulting in the death of American boys, regardless of what flag those ships may fly."
On 29th July, 1953, Kennedy resigned from McCarthy's office. There is some dispute about why he took this action. In his book, The Enemy Within, Kennedy claimed he resigned because he "disagreed with the way that the Committee was being run". However, other accounts suggest that it was the result of a dispute with Roy Cohn. When McCarthy supported Cohn in the dispute, Kennedy resigned.
In 1954, after the demise of Joe McCarthy, Kennedy rejoined the Senate's permanent subcommittee on investigations. The following year he became chief counsel and staff director and in 1957 was appointed as head of the team investigating the Trade Union movement. Kennedy emerged as a national figure when his investigation of James Hoffa was televised.
Hoffa was eventually charged with corruption. Kennedy claimed that Hoffa had misappropriated $9.5 million in union funds and had corruptly done deals with employers. However, the jury found Hoffa not guilty. George Meany, president of the AFL-CIO, did not agree with the verdict and Hoffa and the Teamsters Union were expelled from the association.
When John F. Kennedy was elected he appointed his brother as U.S. Attorney General. The first issue he had to deal with was civil rights. The Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) began to organize Freedom Rides in an attempt to bring an end to segregation in transport. After three days of training in non-violent techniques, black and white volunteers sat next to each other as they travelled through the Deep South.
James Farmer, national director of CORE, and thirteen volunteers left Washington on 4th May, 1961, for Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi. Governor James Patterson commented that: "The people of Alabama are so enraged that I cannot guarantee protection for this bunch of rabble-rousers." Patterson, who had been elected with the support of the Ku Klux Klan added that integration would come to Alabama only "over my dead body."
The Freedom Riders were split between two buses. They travelled in integrated seating and visited "white only" restaurants. When they reached Anniston on 14th May the Freedom Riders were attacked by men armed with clubs, bricks, iron pipes and knives. One of the buses was fire-bombed and the mob held the doors shut, intent on burning the riders to death.
The surviving bus travelled to Birmingham, Alabama. A meeting of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee decided to send reinforcements. This included John Lewis, James Zwerg, and eleven others including two white women. The volunteers realized their mission was extremely dangerous. Zwerg later recalled: "My faith was never so strong as during that time. I knew I was doing what I should be doing." Zwerg wrote a letter to his parents that stated that he would probably be dead by the time they received it.
During the Freedom Riders campaign Robert Kennedy was phoning Jim Eastland “seven or eight or twelve times each day, about what was going to happen when they got to Mississippi and what needed to be done. That was finally decided was that there wouldn’t be any violence: as they came over the border, they’d lock them all up.” When they were arrested Kennedy issued a statement as Attorney General criticizing the activities of the Freedom Riders.
Kennedy sent