Original subtitles

As soon as the first news came out that President Kennedy was murdered, people

began to gather and stand, just stand.

It was much the same all across the country, a wave of shock.

48 hours later, the man Dallas police said shot the president, Lee Harvey

Oswald, was himself killed by Jack Ruby.

This bizarre sequence of double killings raised great questions. Who actually

fired the shots that killed Kennedy?

Why did Ruby shoot Oswald?

Was there a conspiracy?

Were right -wingers involved?

Was it a Russian plot?

A Cuban plot?

It was a terrible terrible blow Bobby certainly was a changed

man

Bobby

was under the terrible cloud of depression.

He was shocked and wounded in a way that no other person was. I mean, his whole

life was in the context of John Kennedy at that point.

Their partnership was the future of the country.

In fact, the world.

President Kennedy was murdered about two and a half months after I went to work

at the Justice Department.

The scent in the building was, of course, the deepest kind of loss.

And secondly, this not knowing what Johnson was going to be about as

He was a southerner, and his record had been thin on civil rights.

Then to realize that the man was committed to civil rights.

We believe that all men are entitled to the blessings of liberty.

Yet millions are being deprived of those blessings.

Not because of their own failures, but because of the color of their skin.

Resulting in historic legislation in the middle of 1964.

The Civil Rights Act of 64, the Economic Opportunity Act, which is the war on

poverty, also Medicaid, Medicare, and so on.

Integration leader Martin Luther King receives his pen, a gift he said he

cherish. Another group of pens is reserved for the Kennedys, and the

General is entrusted with a half dozen.

Lyndon Johnson made that happen, and he had not been president even for a year.

But that didn't take away from Robert Kennedy's opinion about Lyndon Johnson.

That president was a gentleman and a human being. This man is not.

He's mean, bitter, vicious, animal in many ways.

I think he's got this other side of him in his relationship with human beings,

which makes it very difficult unless you want to kiss his behind all the time.

The conflict between Lyndon Johnson and Robert Kennedy was not going to be

contained. Here suddenly was a new government, and Bobby felt he was going

reduced to a bureaucratic role as Attorney General with Johnson detuning

major litigations. I've seen what he can do and what he's done in the last three

months, and the fact that he's able to eat people up, and even people who are

considered rather strong figures.

Then he took a couple trips during those months to Indonesia and to Poland.

Attorney General Robert Kennedy, with his family, continues to enjoy riotous

receptions behind the Iron Curtain.

Hi,

General. How are you, Mr. President? You're a world traveler. Have you worn

Well, no, not too bad. Gosh, that's very, uh... It must have been exciting.

Well, you know, it just makes you feel so good about it. You know, I just think

it's just a damn inspiring thing for the United States.

Well, I'm sure glad you're back. Anybody needs a little invigoration ought to

leave Washington.

Oh, boy, what a difference.

Bobby wanted to do something useful.

He knew that he was not going to stay as Attorney General.

This is very, very ambitious.

Man, it's unbelievable, huh?

Mr. President, I just can't wrap my mind around that kind of ambition.

I don't know how to understand it. I don't either. There's a ruthlessness

it that just scares the hell out of me.

Well,

I've thought of my future over the period of the last few months, and some

people from New York and elsewhere have spoken to me about running in New York,

and it's a possibility that I'm considering, as I'm considering many

possibilities, whether I'll...

teach or whether I'll write or whether I'll go away for a period of time. I

haven't decided what I'm going to do other than finishing as Attorney

Do you believe that it's better for a true New Yorker to run for the Senate

for someone like yourself?

I think all things being equal, that it would be better to have a citizen of the

state of New York, an individual who had lived here for an extended period of

time, than somebody else.

Mr. Kennedy, would you tell us, sir, have you made up your mind as to whether

run for the United States? I have nothing to add other than what I've

Okay, okay.

What do you think of the informality of New York news conferences compared to

Washington? Very good.

Very good? Very good. Good luck.

From the Democratic Convention in Atlantic City, a roaring crowd cheered

Lyndon Baines Johnson was nominated by acclamation.

And now, it is my privilege and honor to introduce Robert Kennedy.

Thank you.

Mr. Cannon?

Just let it go for a little bit longer.

Robert Kennedy was one of the most prominent, eminent Americans.

And he, I think, understood that he had to use that influence and power.

New York State Republicans nominate Senator Kenneth Keating. The New York

senatorial race has drawn national interest, for opposing Mr. Keating is a

famous name.

Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, to win the nomination on the first ballot.

There have been cries of carpetbaggers, for Mr.

Kennedy took up residence in New York to run for the office.

Attorney General Robert Kennedy, newly announced candidate for the U .S. Senate

from New York, has leased this sprawling Glen Cove mansion for a family home and

a base of political operations.

In relationship to your coming from out of state, do you think that's all kind

of over with now?

Oh no, I think there'll always be people.

who won't vote for Bobby because they think he comes from Massachusetts.

But he spent the first 20 years of his life here in New York, and he went to

schools in New York.

And he hasn't stopped paying taxes in New York since he was five.

Sure, the Fulton Fish Market, what are your impressions? Oh, they have a lot of

fish.

I understand Bobby took time out from his duties as Attorney General to visit

the Fulton Fish Market and the Staten Island Ferry. Of course, these are only

two of the thousands of scenic attractions in New York.

They deserve to be high on any tourist list.

When Robert Kennedy ran for the Senate, I was in high school in New York.

I'm coming up the steps one morning at a very popular subway stop.

And there's Robert Kennedy at the top of the stairs.

And he shook my hand, and I was so unimpressed. He was small.

He was gray. I mean, gray.

Gray skin.

His handshake was limp.

I said, oh, my God, he's nothing like his brother. I was really like, oh, my

God. But his eyes, he fixed me with his eyes. His eyes were hypnotic, a shade of

blue I'd never seen, and very sad.

I mean, he was the saddest.

I'd ever seen in my life.

Then he got on the top of a car, had to speak. There were maybe 100 of us. The

question is that this is a question of democracy, and it's going to be voted on

by the people of the city of New York.

And he was terrible.

He was high -pitched. He was stuttering.

He was nervous.

I left saying, oh, my God, he will never amount to anything, ever, ever, ever.

That was my first impression.

If my opponent had his way, your work area started again.

Your area would have lost.

I stumbled on them.

Taxes, school.

It took him a while to get into it.

People thought he was going to lose.

Delighted to be here. I thought if I was coming back home, when I was there.

You know, as I was touring upstate, I kept seeing these signs saying, go back

home.

A carpetbagger go home, and now here I am.

One of the problems was he didn't really have the juice flowing because he

didn't really have anything against Keating particularly.

But then Keating attacked him for something he was supposed to have done

Attorney General, handling some Nazi assets in Switzerland.

I think if you can go through all of these kind of charges that he's made

against me, that I'm crooked, that I'm a...

Pro -Nazi, after my brother and brother -in -law were killed, and the other

statements that he's made, that I'm a liar, I stand on my record. I'm not

to get down in the gutter. So his juices began to flow.

He repeated these charges. You've been telling outright lies about him. He

wanted to discuss his record. Now I'm discussing it.

And apparently he doesn't like that.

They pick out some nitpicking little amendment.

He voted against federal aid to education. I don't think that's

There are many instances where his statements have been false.

He voted against it in 1961.

He voted against it in 1960. And he voted against it in 1957.

It was untrue. It was false.

He voted against housing on 23 different occasions.

I'm considerably annoyed.

We should be discussing education, housing, medical assistance for elderly,

immigration. It's deteriorating into a campaign of distortion.

Thank you, sir. Thank you.

I actually went to a couple of his campaign stops, and he got better and

and better.

People talked about it afterward. He was impossible to coach.

He was authentic. He hated to be scripted. He hated to be managed.

He was just himself.

I'm against complacency, and I'm against unemployment, and I'm against feeling

that we've gone far enough in this state or in this country. I think that we can

do better. I think we've accomplished a great deal, but we can do much, much

better.

And then he was at a thing with students at Columbia University, and it just

woke him up.

Mr. Kennedy.

Many of us have been wondering whether or not you were going to ever issue a

concise statement on your position in regards to the McCarthy hearings and the

purges of Senator Joseph McCarthy.

I worked for the committee for approximately six months.

I disagreed with what was happening on the committee.

So I went to Senator McCarthy, and I said that I disagreed with what they

doing, and I wasn't going to stay with the committee any longer. And I left.

Then, in February of 1954, I was the one that wrote the report on Senator

McCarthy and the Army -McCarthy hearings. I wrote that report.

And so that's my record. I believe at a rather young age I stood up on the

question of principle.

Mr. Kennedy, aren't you really using New York State as a kind of jumping -off

place for your own presidential ambitions?

First, let me say, I have really two choices.

Over the period of the last ten months, I could have retired.

My father has done very well, and I could have lived off him.

Somebody outside said, are you going to serve your whole six years?

I don't know where I'd go.

Frankly, I don't need the title.

Because I could be called general, I understand, for the rest of my life.

And I don't need the money, and I don't need the office space.

So I would just, I mean, frank as it is, and maybe it's difficult to

understand in the state of New York, I'd like to just be a good United States

Senator. I'd like to serve.

Mr. Kennedy, this pace, are you going to keep this up for two months?

I'm going to work hard to win.

How do you think I can win otherwise?

How do you think you're going to enjoy this?

Well, it's been pretty exciting so far.

President Johnson spent the day in New York State, stressing the qualities and

attractions of senatorial candidate Robert Kennedy, who was with him all the

way.

At times today, it seemed that Lyndon Johnson, who helped John Kennedy to

election in 1960, was himself getting some help from the Kennedy name and

In 45 days, he traveled over 15 ,000 miles to see the people of New York.

Some came just to see him. Many wanted to shake his hand.

A few didn't want to let go.

George Bernard Shaw once said, some people see things as they are and say,

I dream things that never were and say, why not?

The voice of the people was heard in the land.

An overwhelming mandate is handed to Lyndon Baines Johnson, who becomes 36th

President of the United States. In New York, Senator Keating couldn't overcome

the magic of the Kennedy name.

It was another sweep for the Kennedys in Massachusetts.

Although confined to the hospital since a plane crash earlier in the year,

Senator Edward M. Kennedy ran up a victory of landslide proportions to join

brother Robert on the floor of the Senate.

I told them to call you. I just listened to the old man Keating brag on you.

Listen, I pulled you through up here.

Oh, it's just out of this world. And I thought everything went better than we

had a right to expect.

Well, you did a great job.

We got a lot to be thankful for, Bobby.

Let's stay as close together as he'd want us to. That'd be fine. That'd be

Mr. President. Ain't nobody going to divide us. That's fine. That's fine. I'm

proud of you. Thanks very much. Thanks for your help. Thank you for calling.

Ain't a hell of a difference.

Bye.

After the election, we did a couple of films with him in New York.

He went around with a couple of his

kids singing Christmas carols in high schools, and we just filmed him doing

At one point, I'm filming Kennedy, and his eyes kind of glaze over.

And I thought, he's thinking about Jack.

That's it.

That's it.

I felt, I felt him torn.

I remember feeling it in the camera.

Look at your dog.

You've got to beat him before you get smart.

Good morning. Good morning. At noon today.

You coming out to lunch? Yes, I am. How's the department?

Are you still Assistant Attorney General?

Yeah.

Here's a Senator's message.

You look like a citizen.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

in the midst of the greatest upward surge of economic well -being in the

of any nation.

We see so much affluence around us all the time.

We have to have three cars. We have to have all of this equipment that's

advertised on television.

I think that we should step back and examine what we're trying to do and

we're trying to go.

The charismatic Malcolm X was scheduled to deliver a major policy address here

at the Audubon Ballroom. I remember hearing over my right shoulder the

He died for what he believed in.

In Vietnam, saturation bombing is being stepped up.

Landing craft brought the first actual ground combat fleet to enter the

We're marching today from Thelma to Montgomery to dramatize to our nation

the world the hundreds and thousands of Negro citizens of Alabama denied the

right to vote.

This is an unlawful assembly.

You are ordered to disperse. This march will not continue.

rather down the highway into Alabama than make a butchery of my pumpkin.

Yes, sir.

Whether it's the problem of the violence, whether it's the problem of

whether it's the problem that we have in Vietnam, we can do things. We can

accomplish things. We can make progress.

That's Bacon once wrote that it's left only to God and to angels to be lookers

-on.

Robert Kennedy was a very unorthodox senator.

He goes to the Senate floor.

He votes.

He goes to all of his committees.

The average Indian income is $1 ,500, 75 % below the national average.

He introduced bills.

It's desperately needed that we raise the minimum wage to $1 .50 an hour here

the state.

We've been discussing federal legislation, governing rifles, shotguns,

Handguns. An aftercare program for narcotic addicts. To focus attention on

poisonous fumes inflicted on the people who live in this area.

I was what's called a constituent case aide. I would take phone calls from

distressed New Yorkers.

I get a phone call from a single mom with two kids in Harlem.

My baby's toes are being gnawed on by rats every night. They wake up

The rats are eating.

I'm like, I can't.

I can't believe this is happening.

She goes, Mr.

Kennedy is my only hope.

I would get the name of the superintendent and the landlord.

I would call them up. This is William Arnone. I'm calling on behalf of Senator

Robert F. Kennedy.

There are rats in Mrs. Smith's apartment eating her children's toes.

What are you going to do about it? And I would get the same answer. You mean

Robert Kennedy cares about Mrs. Smith's kids?

Yes.

Invariably, I'd get a call the next day.

They have an exterminator. No more rats.

Thank God for Mr. Kennedy.

And at the same time, he goes to South America.

And he

goes,

of course, to South Africa.

the racial inequality of apartheid in South Africa.

Each time a man strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple

hope. It's really like there must be two Robert Kennedy doppelgangers both

operating at the same time because it couldn't be all done by one person.

We brought some drums, unfortunately, the house full of children, and then I

think my wife went shopping and so on, and I hate to think that she brought

that. He has an instinct to connect with people and I went with him to so many

different places to talk to people and listen to people and so I learned from

that and he learned from that.

One example was the grape strike in California.

Spanish word for strike. It is used because more than half the migrant

called a strike in the great vineyards around Delano.

Cesar Chavez, a self -styled social worker with an eighth grade education,

a revolutionary workers' movement.

It's a pleading for social change, for social justice to the farm worker and

his cause.

and we were organizing farm workers throughout the Central Valley of

The attitude that the growers had towards workers was one of serfdom, just

step up from slavery, you might say.

Mr. Pena, how much do you earn a year?

Oh, about $2 ,500 a year.

Do you have any money in the bank?

None.

How much have you been getting for a day's work?

Only $2.

$2 a day?

Yes.

Here for $20 a month.

Families of six and more live in one -room sheds made of corrugated sheet

These are employers that don't even provide their workers with a restroom,

a bathroom, with a toilet.

So we anticipated that there would probably be a big strike.

We're fighting for everybody.

Not just Delano. In all the country of the United States, not just Delano.

My children are not...

of course we were all committed to non -violence but a lot of times we did have

to face violence on the part of the growers they would come out with rifles

anything that matters and they would try to run us down with their cars we

really couldn't pick it because the police would come and they would put us

jail

In 1966, I got involved with Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta and the Grape

Strike. And we convinced the Agricultural Committee of the U .S.

hearing in Delano.

And Bob Kennedy was a member of that.

People had called me and said, would Robert Kennedy go to California for

hearings? Because it would be very helpful if he went.

So I walked into Kennedy's office, said very little, and he said, fine.

And I thought to myself, fine.

Doesn't he want to know what's the issue or something more?

So the day came, and we're on the plane together, and he turns to me and he

says, Peter, why am I dragging my ass all the way to California?

And I explained what it was, and he got there, and he's just going top speed in

about 30 seconds.

It's not just a question of wages.

It's a question of housing.

It's a question of education.

It's a question of living conditions.

It's a basic question of hope for the future.

And that's what this committee is dedicated to try to do something about.

We're going to try to improve not just your lives, but more importantly, the

lives of your children.

If I have reason to believe that there's going to be a riot started and somebody

tells me, that there's going to be trouble if you don't stop them, then

duty to stop them. And then you go out and arrest them?

Absolutely. And charge them?

Charge them. What do you charge them with?

Violating unlawful assemblage.

I think that that's the most interesting. Who told you that they're

riot? The men right out in the field that they were talking to said, if you

don't get them out of here, we're going to cut their hearts out. So rather than

let them get cut,

You remove the cause.

You'll find no police brutality here. You've had nobody say that we beat

or anything like that. This is not Selma, Alabama.

Senator, could I finish just my question here?

This is the most interesting concept, I think, that you suddenly hear or talk

about the fact that somebody makes a report about somebody's going to get out

order.

Perhaps violate the law and you go in and arrest them. They haven't done

anything wrong.

How can you go arrest somebody if they haven't violated the law?

They're ready to violate the law. In other words...

But I suggest in the interim

period of time, in the luncheon period of time, that the sheriff and the

district attorney read the Constitution of the United States.

Afterwards, we were able to get Bob to join us going through farmworker

looking at terrible housing and terrible working conditions.

When the senator came out with us, he had that gift of just being able to

connect with everybody.

Regardless of your station in life, you know, you were just treated as another

human being.

Then Bob said, I understand there's a picket line at the Giorgio Ranch. Where

it? He said, very close.

So we went out and picketed.

First time I ever was a politician picking any place.

The workers out there saying, viva Kennedy, Kennedy for Presidente.

Kennedy had never met Chavez, and they just started to talk.

And they're both speaking rather quietly.

And there's just a board amongst the workers.

There's a lot of support among the workers and a lot of support among the

community.

And this circle started around him, and then it got to be two deep, three, four,

five, six, seven circles of people around him. People in the back obviously

couldn't possibly hear what they were saying to each other. I don't know what

they said, and I was standing right there.

Everybody was just magnetized, just mesmerized that

this was happening.

That was it.

They were bound together.

Any time after 2 .15?

Is that all right?

Fine. It won't take very long.

Good. Thanks, Senator.

Bye.

Robert Kennedy's inner senatorial office somehow remains a place of calm in what

is otherwise a maelstrom.

Into his suite come more telephone calls than any other office on Capitol Hill.

More constituents, more mail, more invitations, more everything.

He keeps an almost daily touch with his younger brother and senior colleague,

Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts.

I get a feeling that there's a disillusionment in the United States,

concentration of Southeast Asia.

I think it's true. It's one of the prices of Vietnam.

The senator has genuinely tried to stake out new ground on basic public

policies. He has spoken out often on Vietnam, and he has taken a minority

position.

Some importance with the administration in connection with Vietnam.

Anti -war demonstrators protest U .S. involvement in the

Vietnam War in mass marches, rallies, and demonstrations.

Vietnam, why are we there?

We are there first because a friendly nation has asked us for help.

against the communist aggression.

I used to get over to Vietnam once in a while as chairman of the Asian Pacific

Affairs, and it was a terrible thing.

People forget that Johnson inherited the war from the Kennedys when we started

with President Eisenhower. But then Jack Kennedy, and I hate to say this, but he

was my man, my friend.

But he's the one that enlarged our presence in Vietnam.

Johnson kept Kennedy's entire cabinet.

Same cabinet was around.

Same generals were around.

And so Bobby was caught up in that little trap.

Bobby felt he couldn't just surrender it.

Obviously, we have a commitment in Vietnam that has to be... Captain, the

aggression has been committed by North Vietnam and by the communists, and I

think we have to meet that aggression.

But as the war went on, increasingly, he began to see that this was a disaster,

that this was not a war you could win.

I have serious reservations about the bombing of North Vietnam.

I do not feel that it's accomplishing a military purpose.

Now, Lyndon Johnson was determined that he was going to win that war.

This will make it necessary to raise the monthly draft call.

from 17 ,000 to 35 ,000 per month.

Robert Kennedy did not want to break with Lyndon Johnson.

I think that if anybody was going to say that the present situation in Vietnam

is just the responsibility of President Johnson, I think it would be very, very

unfair. He inherited a situation.

But he came to the point where he had no choice.

All of us are concerned about the casualties, the death and suffering of

young men in South Vietnam.

We are concerned about the effects of our military action on the people of

Vietnam.

I believe that there is a middle way, that an end to the fighting and a

settlement can be achieved.

I think that you ought to spend some time with your friend, Mr. Kennedy.

I think he's functioning in this Vietnam field a little bit over time. He and

some of his duties are very much against us. We are not in Vietnam.

To play the part of an avenging angel pouring death and destruction on the

and the factory and the home of thousands of Vietnamese.

Some will turn on their leaders and on their country and on our own fighting

men. We end the bombing, we go to the negotiating table.

Bobby says halt the bombardment and make it clear that we'll negotiate or we

won't wait long.

But nowhere, anytime can he give you one damn word from a noise.

That's misgivings about getting in a debate with that little piss in, but

see you.

We will spend this year for the economic development of South Vietnam $600

million.

But federal poverty assistance to the same number of people in the

New York area will be less than one sixth that amount.

The people of South Vietnam need this assistance but so do the people of the

united states

when

we met for the first time Bobby would ask people like me or other reporters to

show him around on a local level and talk to people on the stoop.

I liked his compassion for people who are not as well off as he is.

How do you feel about it, Senator? Well, I think the fact is that instead of the

situation improving, the situation actually across the country is getting

despite our federal programs.

There is more dilapidated housing, more run -down housing now than there was in

1960 or 1955.

And there are still people who are very, very poor and people unable to get jobs

and people who don't have a decent education and very little hope for the

and children who are hungry.

He would never think of blaming people for their own poverty the way some of

these swine today act about the poor.

There is today an alien land within our own borders.

Another America.

A young college graduate who taught in a ghetto school sums it up this way.

The books are junk, paint peels, the cellar stinks, the teachers call you

nigger, and the window falls on your head.

These other Americans, separated from society, remind us of their presence.

only when the city explodes in the desperate acts of defeated men.

How pushed around? How badly? In what way?

In all kind of ways. Look around you, people are picking on you.

They're stopping us on the street, kicking in the door, taking down the

station and kicking your teeth in.

Well, there's so many people on the street now. Oh, yeah.

Oh,

they've been doing it a long time.

Get your hands up, I said.

Drop that purse and get your hands up. Get your hands up.

It's cold.

We face in our city the gravest domestic crisis since the Civil War.

Four days of rioting, looting, and arson rocked the city of Detroit.

Dissatisfaction with the welfare system causes riots in the ghetto district of

Boston's Roxbury sector.

Rape riots rocked New Jersey's largest city, Newark, for five consecutive days

and nights.

Sergeant, you've just recently returned from Vietnam.

Could you tell us how it feels to have to come from one zone of combat in a

foreign land to one in your own land?

Not a good feeling.

Not one I'm kind of proud of, but it's the job, it's the duty.

They have to be done.

He thought the rioting wasn't a criminal expression.

It was a question of an anguished element of the country that had been so

treated and oppressed for 250 years.

It was a hunger.

There'd be millions and millions of dollars spent on rockets sent overseas

other countries, and here in their own country, you know, they're hungry,

they're out of jobs.

The situation, all the indications are that it's not going to get better.

People are still in despair, and despite the fact that you've locked so many of

these people up, it's not going to be enough. You can't lock up everybody. You

can't imprison everybody.

The real problem with violence is that we have never been violent. We have been

too nonviolent.

The people have a right. You're totally justified in going out into the streets,

taking up arms, and dealing with that situation.

Pillage, looting, murder, and arson have nothing to do with civil rights.

We will not tolerate lawlessness.

But just as surely, just as clearly, it is fruitless simply to quell the

explosions without attaching the roof.

And that's why I've suggested incentives to do construction work.

housing in plums, and all sorts of established factories and businesses

It therefore creates this partnership of business and the private enterprise

system, which I think has never been utilized before, and we've depended just

Washington, depended just on federal funds, which has been a mistake.

Senator Robert Kennedy and his staff have developed a new bipartisan program

aimed at breathing new life into the Bedford -Stuyvesant ghetto called the

Bedford -Stuyvesant Corporation.

The Bed -Stuy program, it was very controversial because he really believed

the federal government couldn't do it all. He didn't like the culture of

dependency that was emerging from the Great Society.

We don't want to destroy financially every city in the United States. We're

going to have to get people off welfare.

Welfare is not the answer. It destroys the individual and it destroys his

family. The only answer to that is to find jobs for people, make jobs

for people.

You can't just tell people to go to work if there are no jobs available.

But it was not easy because the local community did not trust him.

In fact, an elected official called him the blue -eyed white devil.

But you don't think it's an extension of a kind of liberal colonialism?

Of course it is. We're living in a colony, and every time these people feel

they want to do something for the black community, then they...

come in here and do it themselves.

They didn't never come in and say to a community organization or to the people

of the community, look, we would like to do something for the community. How

best can we do it? And this is what has got the black people fed up with the

whole society.

I remember the not great welcome Kennedy had received by a lot of the Bedford

-Stuyvesant leadership who essentially said to him, as I read in the newspaper,

that

Don't walk through our misery to a headline.

The question is, to what extent have you sought to involve the total community

of Bedford -Stuyvesant in this planning process?

I think that to have any success in Bedford -Stuyvesant is going to require

initiative and the imagination and the courage of the people who live in the

community.

The corporation's first target was 400 four -story buildings that were in

various stages of death and decay.

My dealings with him, he was straight up, straight at you, clear.

He was tough as nails.

Just the outreach that it took to assemble the group of leaders,

design people, very high profile heads of banks.

The renovation created jobs for 272 unskilled, unemployed residents, people

otherwise would have been on the streets.

I congratulate the people a bit that Stuyvesant.

We've been distressed by the divisions that have taken place in the United

States between blacks and whites.

The fact is that we can work together. The fact is that we can make a better

society. And the fact is that we will, and we'll have a better America for the

next generation of Americans.

Thank you very much.

He made it very clear that he wanted that office to do as much good

as possible, but that was not good enough. He needed to know that in the

world, this is how these programs were working or not working.

After two civil rights bills and the third year of the poverty bill's

the situation of the Negro in Mississippi is that he's poorer than he

has less housing, he's as badly educated, he's almost in despair.

We face now a major, major crisis in the Mississippi Delta.

We had a lot of problems going on in Mississippi at the time, so when I got

invited to testify, I was very glad to do it.

Here you have a number of people who've never had any skills, who are basically

illiterate in large part, who have little housing, absolutely no place to

jobs, and no hopes of getting any. I had not been a Robert Kennedy fan because I

had remembered him first from the McCarthy days.

Next. in the Justice Department and the taping of Martin Luther King.

So my image of him was not very strong, and obviously he was very much affected

by the loss of his brother, but my image of him was still not so wonderfully

positive. Take one example of a woman in Leflore County with six children,

absolutely no income. She has not worked. She was cut off welfare, and we

illegally. But she simply cannot feed her kids. Now, this problem has got to

faced. The single largest problem facing all of us in Mississippi right now is

how can people eat during the winter.

This is an urgent situation which must be looked into and which must be met.

And I asked him to go and see because nobody was going to believe that people

were starving in America or malnourished babies or bloated bellies in America.

And Kennedy was the first, along with Joe Clark, to agree to come.

It was really a great breakthrough because Robert Kennedy brought the

that was very important.

Senator Robert Kennedy, the rich man's son, has come to Mississippi, the

state in the Union, to see the rural side of poverty.

Senator, what do you make of the problem of poverty in this poorest state?

I think that considering we have a gross national product of some $700 billion

and that we spend $75 billion on armaments.

You would think that we could be doing more for those who are poor and

particularly for our children who have nothing to do with being born into this

world but don't have enough to eat. And what we have here, of course, is a

considerable amount of hunger. We have the children with distended stomachs.

the fact is that we're not doing what we should be doing in this country to deal

with this problem.

As we were walking from the one house to the other, Robert Kennedy says to me,

I've been all over the world, and I've never seen anything like this.

Robert Kennedy was not who I thought he was going to be.

He was listening and learning.

He was also very curious.

He didn't talk a whole lot, but he would ask a lot of questions.

Do you know anything about the poverty program?

No.

You ever heard of HCR?

No.

Nice to see you.

And I was very moved by how he related to children, the way in which he could

express emotions through touch.

And when he went into a place outside of camera range and tried to get a

response out of a young baby with a bloated belly.

It was filthy. It was dark and dank.

When he went outside in the sunshine, he was clearly shaken.

That's when all of my questions evaporated.

We connected, and I was very grateful that he came, that he saw, that he

empathized, and I also was confident that he would do something about it.

It was clear that he'd gone through a transformation.

He went back to Washington and said, you've got to get food down there.

It was totally shocking.

Robert Kennedy went home and had dinner with his children, and he was so upset

about it, he banged his fist on the table and said, you, and he pointed at

one of his children, you have to do something about this. His children tell

that story to this day.

Rural poverty likes to hide in the isolation of open space, the woods, the

hills.

Senator Kennedy is in the rural poverty counties of eastern Kentucky.

This is Senator Kennedy's first trip to this section of Kentucky.

He is, in a sense, fulfilling a mission set by his brother shortly before the

assassination in 1963.

Do you have friends?

Do you like school?

What are you learning in school?

Do you know how to add?

Do you know how to add?

Do you know two plus three?

What is that?

Lyndon Johnson declared war on poverty four years ago here in this same

Appalachian Hill country. But the president has been preoccupied much of

time since with Vietnam, and the poverty war is suffering from lack of funds and

waning interest in Congress.

So Robert Kennedy, in this tour of some of the most depressing pockets of rural

poverty in America, is re -declaring the war that Lyndon Johnson never finished.

We have a struggle that's taking place in Southeast Asia and Vietnam that's

taking a great part of the resources of this country.

And $30 billion.

Some of that money should be coming down here into eastern Kentucky to deal with

the problems and find jobs for people.

How many children?

I raised nine children.

I only have one. My baby is going to be 11 years old.

He's home with me now.

I've got one son who's home with me right now. I've not been for very long.

Do you have medical care for him?

No, I don't have anything for him. How much do you pay for school lunch?

$0 .30 a day. So that would be about $6.

I don't think that it's acceptable.

As I said before, with the gross national product that this country has,

the great amount of wealth that this country has, that we still have people

can't find jobs. We still have children who don't have enough to eat and don't

have clothes to wear. I think that's unacceptable in the country.

Did you get to see the senator?

Yes, sir, I did. How did you feel about it?

I was very pleased. I just got to lay my hand on him.

He was...

Something, I mean, you don't see every day around here.

Robert Kennedy, during those days, was one of the few politicians that could go

into the heart of the Deep South and Appalachia, where people were so poor.

He was a senator from New York.

But he became a political leader for all Americans.

There is no apparent end in sight to the Bobby phenomenon.

The weekly news magazines go to a cover story.

Others splash Bobby's face, his family, his fortune, and his brain trust.

He is a multi -plane public figure and one of America's most controversial.

He radiates political power beyond all reasonable measurements, primarily

because of what he might become, President of the United States.

It was a constant conversation.

Those of us in the office, we were split.

Some wanted him to run, some did not want him to run.

Do you think about running for president?

Does it occur to you?

Well, I suppose it occurs to every little boy.

But you're not a little boy anymore. That they can be president of the United

States. I went to Senator Kennedy several times and said, you'd be the man

could make the greatest difference to this country.

Ethel was for it.

Ethel was gung -ho.

Teddy was against it. A lot of people were against it. Do you bring us any

word on his presidential candidacy?

Oh, no. I think in our family,

we've seen in recent years that fate has a way of working itself on the

future of all of us.

There are a lot of us who are most enthusiastic about the idea.

Senator, I guess I've never told you, I really would like you to run.

No.

No.

The question was whether I'm running for president and how much I'm going to win

by.

He came over behind me, put his hand on my shoulder and said, I wish I could. I

wish I could. As long as President Johnson has anything to say about it,

Kennedy will never go anywhere.

Senator, you and President Johnson had some pretty stern disagreements. Do you

feel there is any way that the president could abbreviate your political career,

sir? I don't think he'd probably be interested in that.

I was even split. On the one hand, I said, he has to.

The country was coming apart.

The nation's largest peace demonstration was directed at the two principal

issues of the new left.

Repressive war abroad and racist poverty at home.

He's our best hope.

to keep the country together.

We can hardly have the position throughout the world that we want to

we must have, that we have this kind of turmoil and chaos and bloodshed in our

own country. And we can do something about it.

On the other hand, I did have this foreboding that it doesn't feel right.

There's something wrong.

This is not going to end well.