Cape Cod Times
June 2, 2018
The bullets that mowed down Robert F. Kennedy 50 years ago this week cut short a personal and political transformation that had energized the Democratic Party and given hope to large segments of America during a period of great turmoil.
For those who knew and loved the 42-year-old senator and former attorney general — as well as those who have studied him, emulated him and admired him from afar — RFK’s death did more than kill the hope he would succeed his assassinated older brother John F. Kennedy in the Oval Office.
Kennedy’s murder in a Los Angeles hotel delivered a serious blow to progressive and liberal causes, exacerbated a yawning racial divide and quite possibly delayed the United States’ exit from Vietnam, they say.
“I think we would’ve been a very different country today,” said Larry Tye, of Cotuit, author of The New York Times best-seller “Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon.”