Robert Kennedy declared victory in California Democratic primary near midnight tonight 1968 ...

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Robert Kennedy declared victory in California Democratic primary near midnight tonight 1968, Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles—“I think we can end the divisions within the United States….We are a great country, an unselfish country and a compassionate country.”

Link to tweet

[MerryHolidays]

1. Lord, what could we have been with RFK.

Miss you, dear Bobby.

[electric_blue68]

24. The path that became closed to us 😔😔😔

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[sinkingfeeling]

2. I adored Bobby. Still cry hearing his recorded voce.

[electric_blue68]

25. Certain recordings, certain photos... +Abraham, Martin, and John....

My sis and I went to an exhibit a few years pre covid.

It included the Kennedy's. May have been history, part of 'The '60's', history and photo journalism etc.

There were Campaign Photos, AND a little ? cassette player playing. A,M & J.
😥

[Jilly_in_VA]

3. One of the saddest days of my young life

1968 was the year everything went straight to hell. Everything. MLK, Bobby, Chicago, Nixon getting elected---so much more. My personal life pretty much went to hell too but I won't speak of that. I think I cried more that year than in any year up until then.

[electric_blue68]

23. My life was relatively ok (except for my mom's oft terrible asthma [eggshells]) But '68 was like...

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being a helpless tennis ball if you had any sense of justice, equality, fairness, compassion etc being smashed about by horriffic, heinous events!!!!!

I was 15.

[niyad]

4. What could have been. . .The ongoing horror in 1968 marks, for me at least,

the turning point. We could have been on a path of striving to be better, instead we are here.

[electric_blue68]

26. You ARE soooo right. We lost so much time trying improve things

[Boomerproud]

5. Indescribable loss.

To the generations since, Bobby and Martin Luther King have become just words in history books. Frozen in time. 😥

[electric_blue68]

28. When whomever makes "History" come alive! I'd hope younger gens would get a sense of what it felt...

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like for us!

lt was/is truly a incalculable loss!

[crickets]

6. .

[Polybius]

7. What would have happened if he didn't get shot?

Realistically, would he have won the nomination? If yes, would he have beaten Nixon? If yes, who's the 1972 Republican nominee?

[former9thward]

11. He might have had a possibility of being VP.

Humphrey had most of the delegates to win the nomination. Kennedy had no realistic path to win. In 1968 very few states had primaries. Most of the states were controlled by the "establishment". It is possible Humphrey could have picked RFK for VP and with that it is certainly possible they would have won.

[Polybius]

12. I am really curious about the 1972 election had they won in 1968

It's almost certain that Nixon would not run again, having lost two times. Who did the Republicans like in that time period?

[former9thward]

15. Rockefeller or Reagan would be good possibilities.

Rockefeller was governor of NY and a future VP. Reagan was governor of CA and a future president.

[electric_blue68]

27. Even if he wasn't added to the ticket...His voice and passion for fainess would have continued to...

electrify people!

[moondust]

8. 1968

A year that will live in infamy.

Tet Offensive

MLK

RFK

RMN

I learned something new about Nixon just last night from Woodward & Bernstein on with Anderson Cooper.

~
Nixon’s campaign paid Muskie’s chauffeur $1,000 a month to photograph internal memos, schedules and strategy documents.

Another trick included stealing Muskie’s staffers’ shoes left in the hotel hallways to be polished, then throwing the shoes in the dumpster.
~
https://www.businessinsider.com/woodward-and-bernstein-richard-nixon-watergate-40th-anniversary-2012-6#the-senate-watergate-committee-uncovered-several-instances-of-sabotage-directed-toward-edmund-muskie-a-democratic-presidential-candidate-5

GQP corruption only got worse after Watergate.

[Hekate]

32. Add to that, the Chicago police riots at the DNC

[electric_blue68]

34. My family and I watched it on TV while we were on Summer Vacation...

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So horrible!

Remember Sen Abraham Ribbacoff at the podium saying "If Robert Kennedy _______ _______ we wouldn't have Gestapo Tatics on the streets of Chicago!".

I was furious when we went out to dinner during the time Edward Kennedy was giving RFK's tribute at the Democratic Convention!

I saw it some years later.

[Jilly_in_VA]

66. I remember

just how red, almost PURPLE, Daley's face got when Ribicoff said that, too. He was almost apoplectic! I wish that man had had a stroke right then and there. Evil bastard.

[electric_blue68]

67. We were watching B&W TV but, boy, the Rage on Daley's face!!!

[moondust]

36. Yup.

Awful mess.

I also forgot the My Lai massacre, shortly after the Tet offensive, when First Lieutenant William L. “Rusty” Calley, Jr., and his platoon murdered at least 300 Vietnamese civilians (and perhaps as many as 500) at a small South Vietnamese sub-hamlet called My Lai.

[keep_left]

9. Apropos, Lawrence O'Donnell wrote a book about the events of 1968.

Playing with Fire: The 1968 Election and the Transformation of American Politics

It's definitely worth a read.

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/playing-with-fire-lawrence-odonnell/1125762009

[electric_blue68]

29. Ah...

[electric_blue68]

57. I'm going to have to check that out.. love Lawrence O'Donnell

[jalan48]

10. Unlike Humphrey, the eventual nominee, Kennedy had come out in opposition to the war.

[PlanetBev]

13. I was 17 at the time and in college

I had a final the next day, so I went to sleep after he was declared the winner. Next morning, I was awakened by my mother running down the hall yelling “Kennedy’s been shot!” She heard it on the radio and at first thought they were doing a reenactment of 1963.

My 10 year high school reunion was held at the Ambassador Hotel in June 1978, in the same ballroom where RFK made his acceptance speech. I asked one of the waiters waiter to take me through the kitchen where Bobby was shot. The kitchen passage was so narrow that it was easy to see how Bobby didn’t have a chance when he walked by Sirhan Sirhan. I went to high school with Ira Goldstein, a cub reporter who was in the kitchen and shot in the leg. Seems like yesterday, but also a million years ago.

[electric_blue68]

30. Woah....

[former9thward]

14. Paul Schrade, an auto worker union official, who was escorting RFK says Sirhan did not shoot him.

Schrade was shot in the head and said it was physically impossible for Sirhan to have made the shots that killed RFK. The shots that killed Kennedy came from the front and Sirhan was in the back. He says another shooter was responsible.

"Who was this guy they were covering up? Who was so important for the district attorneys to keep covering up for 52 years that shot RFK?" Schrade told KGET in the story this week. "I don't excuse him for what he did, but I don't excuse the LAPD and the district attorneys for 52 years of saying he's guilty when he is not."

https://people.com/politics/paul-schrade-survived-rfk-assassination-okay-with-sirhan-sirhan-parole/

[electric_blue68]

35. Yes. I've heard Mr Schrade! And there were ?12 bullet holes in the walls...

only 8 in Sirhan's gun!


I still want the frikkin' Truth!!!

[Just A Box Of Rain]

16. I was a ten-year-old volunteer for Bobby Kennedy

I'd go into the Los Angeles headquarters and fold, stuff, and stamp envelopes so the adults could attend to other business.

My mom did not have the heart to wake me that night. She said in her later years that breaking the news to me the next morning was the hardest thing she'd ever had to do as a parent. She knew I'd be crushed, and she was right.

I still have not gotten over it, truth told...as I'm fighting back tears as I type this.

My dad, a talented documentary filmmaker, ended up making the tribute film The Unfinished Journey of Robert F. Kennedy , which aired on ABC.

It was a beautiful film, but so hard for me to watch.

We could have had a very different world.

[nolabear]

18. 💔

[electric_blue68]

33. Oh, a bit envious I am...

wow working in his campaign!

While my dad started dragging me along to put local races flyers under our neighbors apt doors when I was 13? ('66). By '67 I'd turned against the War.

In NYC I listened to Barry Gray (radio) at late night who had so many of JFK'S and then RFK'S people on.

I was so going to work for Bobby when his Campaign came to NYC/NYS!!!



In fact when I worked for Mayor John V Lindsay reelection in '69 (a genuine Liberal Republic) when I was 16---
that 5th Ave HQ had been Bobby's in '68.

[Just A Box Of Rain]

37. I had the lowest possible position in RFK's campaign: unpaid envelope stuffer.

Nothing glamorous or especially important, but I gave it my all.

I actually became a very proficient envelope stuffer. Fast.

Yet another skill I've acquired in my lifetime that is now antediluvian. LOL

I remember John Lindsay. Imagine if he was father of today's Republican party.

Oh well.

[electric_blue68]

38. Aw, it doesn't matter! You worked in his campaign! I've ....

stuffed envelopes, too, for campaigns!

Hey, I got to stuff bigger Info packets in manilla envelopes! 😄

Later did GOTV phone calling a few times.
Did some faxxing.

Handed out ?Clinton/Gore flyers on an extra cold NYC day near the end of The Marathon Race!

Times I designed my own text, and drawings flyers for the Pres races in ? '00's (pre Obama), and taped them up in my nabe, and a couple of college campuses.

My 2 biggest things were helping to decorate the NY Hilton Big ballroom for Clinton/Gore '92. Then watched people walking in, and the seeing earliest returns onward.
What a night!!!

In '96 they gave me $ to buy supplies so that I designed and painted a C/G 12 x 3 ft banner.
A Bridge to the Twenty First Centurary.

But I had the nastiest sinus what ever cold, finally had to see a doc. Said I had a touch of pnuemonia!

Didn't make it to the rally! 😔

[Just A Box Of Rain]

41. I also worked for McGovern in 1972 (at 14)

The campaign HQ was a bike ride away from my home.

Worked a lot of hours.

Unofficially, I often went over to the Nixon HQ, which was just around the block, and collected "Nixon Now More than Ever" buttons.

Then I'd take a small piece of white tape and cover the "w" in "Now."

Which made for: "Nixon No More than Ever" buttons. LOL

[electric_blue68]

42. Ah... got some McG campaign stories... later for those!

[electric_blue68]

44. Baaaahahahaaaaaaaaaa 👏😂 ...

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Veddy good! Very clever! 😄

My sis told me they used to go around to the Nixon NYC campaign place, which was tight around the corner or so, and to do gentle havoc of some sort. She doesn't remember.

I did some volunteering.

The best thing was one of last of the big labor rallies for McG. I have very grainy b&w photos I blew up front my negatives that have McGo... (cut off from blow up) podium in front w Ted Kennedy speaking, behind him McG, John Lindsay, and others. Then one w McGovern at the podium.

But ohhh, boy I remember going to the hotel around 6pm, and seeing the empty ballroom with the big projected image on screen and all those States already for called for Nixon.




I was so discouraged I switched from political campaigning to single issues work until Clinton ran.

[electric_blue68]

74. In my current moving elsewhere situation I packed some of my Campaign Buttons...

some McGovern, a Humphrey button, renewable energy buttons from the friggin early '80s if people had listened to us then(!!!), Lindsay, Obama.

???My Clinton/Gore, and Hillary buttons seem to have been elsewhere and not w me.

I'm an artist, and former professional graphic design & old fashion paste up & mechanicals person -
so Visuals are my thing! 😄

Put visuals and political interest togthers and you get Campaign Buttons, and Posters!
The Obama poster was Brilliant !!!

My most treasured was given to me by my uncle
Kennedy for President. (JFK)

[electric_blue68]

39. Cool you remember Lindsay! ....

I'm bummed out bc I just realised in my struggle of moving for m one place to another (storage, taking, and garbage) in a pile of stuff in a cabinet I left the thank you
letter from the Linsday Campaign for a special project we did .

Damn! 😔

[electric_blue68]

59. As far as Lindsay goes... it probably would have been a pretty different Republican Party

[electric_blue68]

53. Oh, I Forgot to mention your dad's documentary! Pretty sure I must of seen it...

... as I watched just about all of the documentaries about RFK post June '68.

I'll have to search on line for it.

[Just A Box Of Rain]

54. The scene that really stick in my mind

is a long sequence of Bobby's funeral train traveling across the country, with people lining the route saying goodbye. Really emotional.

It has been a very long time since I watched it myself.

I can't say that time has mitigated that pain.

[electric_blue68]

55. Yes...The Train... Omg that was SO Intense, so poignant....

I was mostly glued to the TV as it happened.

Unfortunately I also had to study for my HS end of the year tests!
I was so resentful I had to take any time away from watching, witnessing it.


And when the crowd oitside of ?Philadelphia started singing "The Battle Hymn of The Republic". Woah... sigh.

[electric_blue68]

56. And yeah, time hasn't really mitigated the pain. It's in a little memory box...

that's pretty easily sprung open!

Imagine the first several years taking a transit bus down 5th Ave in NYC where I live and passing St Patrick's where his casket laid, and they had a service.

My friend and I stood on line in the heat for ?4+ hours to view it.

[Just A Box Of Rain]

61. I found it on YouTube

The transfer is "stretched" out of the original aspect ratio, and has tracking errors and suffers from interlacing issues and poor color, so a lot going against it on "technical levels," but if one can get past that, still a remarkably powerful film.

I saw in the comments that a viewer liked the powerful emotional response of this film to the 1964 tribute film for JFK that was shown at the Democratic convention (which is often called the "Camelot film). That was also my father's work.

[electric_blue68]

63. Thanks for finding it. And wow your dad did the '64 JFK film...

!??!!!

Wow. l I must have seen some of that in some later
documentary.

I do remember the scene of RFK standing at the '64 Dem Convention getting ready to ? introduce your dad's tribute film ...the applause going on and on and... !

[Just A Box Of Rain]

64. My dad also made the Making of the President (1960) that chronicled the Kennedy-Nixon campaign.

That won the Emmy for television program of the year and my father also won an individual Emmy for his work on the film.

He had a repeat with the Making of the President (1964).

He was a great cinematic artist and a strong lifelong Democrat.

[electric_blue68]

68. Wow was probably too young to see that. I'll have to look for that too.

[Just A Box Of Rain]

70. 57 years later the Making of the President (1960) might not seem as groundbreaking

as it did when it first aired in 1963.

At the time, there had never been anything like it on network television.

It was one of those programs that revolutionized the medium, but that might not be obvious in retrospect.

[electric_blue68]

72. Ah, interesting, makes sense. TV was still pretty young then.

[Just A Box Of Rain]

77. And for the most part television documentaries were very static in their natures.

There were exceptions, Murrow's crew did some excellent work, but in-the-main such programs were in-studio, plodding, and formulaic.

Dad was part of a group that was inspired by the same new lightweight 16mm cameras and Nagra sound recorders that inspired the French New Wave filmmakers and Cinéma vérité. They were disruptors.

[electric_blue68]

78. Ah! And I probably saw more of his, and others works eventually... than the former

kind. Since I really wasn't watching documentaries much except for animal related ones.

[electric_blue68]

75. Took a quick look. Will be watching it over next few days.

[nolabear]

17. I know one of the doctors who treated him.

I didn’t know this until a couple of weeks ago. He later went into psychiatry and has been a friend and teacher of mine for years. I’m trying to figure out how to ask him about it. What a terrible thing.

I was thirteen when he died. My mother died that March, then Dr. King, then Bobby. I think it sealed those tragedies together forever in my mind and in part made me the Mississippi liberal I always was.

If only…can you imagine? But no. Guns stopped that.

[Just A Box Of Rain]

20. I'm sorry to read that your mom was among those lost in 1968

[nolabear]

48. Thank you. It was a year of despair. And yet we carried on.

Kind of makes me hope we will now too.

[electric_blue68]

21. Good graciousness! 😮 So sorry you lost your mom that March before all the national crap hit the fan

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[nolabear]

49. Thank you. Strange days, those. But here we are!

I occasionally wonder how she’d have turned out. She did love the Kennedys.

[electric_blue68]

50. Yw. Not unusual to wander that way in thought. Strange times then & now. But...

we're here as you said. 👍

[electric_blue68]

40. Oh, woah, that's also intense finding out about the doctor!

[electric_blue68]

58. How on Earth after all these years did you suddenly find out that this doctor was part of that?!

[nolabear]

65. We were working on a diversity project where we teach.

We were talking about history and he was making a point about something else and brought it up. I was amazed. He’s over eighty now and going strong.

[electric_blue68]

69. Just... woah!

[Raine]

19. I was in high school watching the returns that night and saying "He's going to be President"

little did I know what would happen moments later.

[electric_blue68]

22. {hug} 😔

[Hekate]

31. About the time my transistor radio battery died & I went to bed discouraged that my candidate lost

But never suspecting what was going to happen very shortly after.

I was 20.

[CTyankee]

62. I was so hoping he would survive the attack...I had no idea of how badly he was shot.

I remember going to bed hopeful he would pull through, getting up a few hours later to check and saw some footage of Bobby and family members throwing around a football with family, filmed way before he ran for office...and I knew he was gone and there was no hope. Our second Kennedy, hope of a nation, also dead and gone from gun violence. Again.

[electric_blue68]

73. Hmmm, not sure I knew, or we the public paying attention knew how bad it was...

[LessAspin]

43. Momentum

Bobby was tapping into something. Unfortunately we'll never know how far he could have taken it. He certainly had momentum building...

Link to tweet

[electric_blue68]

76. Yes, and the fact that he brought such different groups of people togther

[electric_blue68]

45. My dad's little transistor radio's batteries didn't run out, so...

It was tucked under my pillow since we were in NYC. So asleep we all were.

But around 4AM I woke up w the strangest stomachache, I'd ever had. Other than "butterflies", I didn't get many. Now I didn't have any "bad vibes", and just turned ithe radio on. It had already happened not by much, though.

I didn't get anymore sleep that early, early morning.

I dragged my somnolent self around our usually rambunctious Music & Art HS - which instead was in a rather subdued state. I had to refrain in the locker room from yelling at someone making some kind of crack.
I think I went somewhere after school where a few of us had to practice for a class presentation. Who the fuck wanted to do that!

Finally at home after staring at the TV images, and listening to the radio I fell asleep. Transistor tucked away.
And that same damn stomach ache, around the same damn time....

Only this time the radio had Frank Mackowitz saying....

"...He was 42...".

WAS?!!!?!. NOOoooooooo...


So much for sleep again!

And while the memories were/are tucked away in a little memory box they're still so vivid, and hurtful...
it's so easy for them to just pounce out!
Nope, never got over it. 😔

[nini]

46. I will never get over how I felt the next day

My heart is still broken💔

[electric_blue68]

60. I know exactly how you feel. 😔 {hug}

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[electric_blue68]

47. Then there was the St Patrick's viewing, the funeral, the procession to...

NYC Train Station, The Train to DC, and grave site over the next several days..

Good graciousness, still way vivid on recall.

[ecstatic]

51. I don't want to imagine what it must have been like

To experience what happened with JFK and RFK and MLK. What a crazy and emotional time that must have been. Worse than 2020.

[electric_blue68]

71. You don't have to imagine u can see from our responses, and Big Emotions...

how devastating it was...


and took us on a different timeline, what with Nixon's election etc.
Let sigh...

[H2O Man]

52. Recommended.