American Experience

RFK (17x1)

: 04, 2004

After an assassin's bullet took his brother's life, Robert F. Kennedy was bereft, not only of someone he loved, but of a role that had given meaning to his life. He had devoted himself to his glamorous brother John, suppressing his own ambitions for the sake of the Kennedy name. JFK's death plunged him into unremitting pain and grief, and left him struggling to find his own voice. In his suffering he began to empathize with impoverished Americans and others who were marginalized or disenfranchised — African-Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans. Just as he began to discover his own identity and move beyond the shadow of his brother, he, too, was assassinated.