Robert F. Kennedy Born in Brookline

Summary

Robert Francis Kennedy was born on November 20, 1925, in Brookline, Massachusetts, into the large political family of Joseph P. and Rose Kennedy. After wartime service in the U.S. Navy, he graduated from Harvard University and the University of Virginia School of Law. Kennedy managed his brother John F. Kennedy's successful 1952 Senate campaign and later became chief counsel to a Senate committee investigating labor racketeering. President Kennedy appointed him U.S. attorney general in 1961. In that position he played important roles in federal civil-rights enforcement, organized-crime prosecutions, and administration deliberations during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Kennedy was elected to the U.S. Senate from New York in 1964 and increasingly spoke about poverty, racial injustice, and the Vietnam War. He sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1968 and was fatally shot after winning the California primary.