In early 2009, the largest and most expensive public school complex in Los Angeles, California, will open for admission to the more than 4,200 students who are expected to attend it. The site is located on a tract of land that was once a playground for the rich and famous - the 500-room Ambassador Hotel - that served as host to presidents, foreign heads of state, and the eccentric. The playbill for the Cocoanut Grove Room included the likes of Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, and Rudolph Valentino, and served as the venue for the last Academy Awards ceremony before the start of World War II. The Ambassador's most famous moment, though, came in the first few minutes of June 5, 1968, when the heir apparent to the legacy of Camelot came face to face with his killer, and American history once again took a grand detour.
The death of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy coincided with the demise of this historic landmark. By the late 1960's, the Ambassador's Wilshire Boulevard address had become home to a growing number of gangs and drug lords, and the neighborhood entered into a tailspin that it was never able to pull out of. Like other urban environments, the problems in the area near the Hotel became so severe that there was simply no hope of turning the page back to its former glory. Perhaps it's fitting that this historic property has been converted to educational use, for humanity has so many lessons that are yet to be learned.
In the forty years since Robert Kennedy's death, the circumstances surrounding his shooting have, like those of his older brother, been surrounded by allegations of multiple gunmen, hidden accomplices, and secret conspirators. But unlike Dallas in 1963, the bottom line here has remained unchanged for the past four decades: a Palestinian immigrant named Sirhan Sirhan was wrestled to the ground in the Ambassador's pantry, pulling the trigger on his Iver Johnson .22 caliber revolver as fast as his finger could until it was broken by those who finally were able to subdue him. Conspiracy or not, Sirhan bears responsibility for the crime.
Kennedy had entered the presidential race late that year. Sen. Eugene McCarthy had embarrassed incumbent President Lyndon Johnson in the New Hampshire primary in early March of 1968, prompting LBJ to announce that he would not seek the nomination of the Democratic Party at its convention in Chicago in August. Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis in April, while hundreds of servicemen were dying in the jungles of Vietnam. Riots had broken out in American cities for the past three consecutive summers and, to some, it seemed that the very fabric of the nation was stretched to the ripping point.
But RFK had emerged as a symbol of hope, the embodiment of a belief that we could, in fact, move past the problems of the moment and into a future where America's greatest days still awaited us. Preaching a message of racial and economic justice, of social improvement at home and non-aggression abroad, he touched the deepest parts of our national psyche. Kennedy was mobbed everywhere he traveled. He shook hands until his fingers bled. People ripped his shirts and tore off his cufflinks, while his aides desperately clung to him to prevent his falling into the crowds that simply wanted to touch him. In the midst of so much hopelessness, his gift to the nation was the hope contained in his most famous quotation: “Some men see things as they are, and ask, “Why?” I dream things that never were, and ask, “Why not?”
After getting off to a slow start, his campaign began to take hold with victories in Nebraska and Indiana, but then came the first Kennedy loss in Oregon. A change in strategy focused on knocking McCarthy out of the race, and then concentrating his efforts on defeating Vice President Hubert Humphrey. His efforts paid off. On the same day that he won in California, Kennedy surprised Humphrey in South Dakota. Addressing his supporters in the early moments of June 5, RFK said, “The fact is that all of us are involved in this great effort. It's a great effort - not on behalf of the Democratic Party - but it's a great effort on behalf of the United States, on behalf of our own people, and on behalf of all mankind all around the globe, and the next generation.”
For eighty-two days in the spring of 1968, it seemed as though things actually COULD be different. But just as quickly as it had begun, it all came to an end when the young Palestinian opened fire in the Ambassador's pantry. In the years that followed, those that he had inspired to change the world - particularly the young - withdrew from politics. For many, the political system seemed to be an impenetrable fortress that defied our every attempt to change it, and so they left. Bobby Kennedy, however, called on us to do otherwise. He spoke of politics as “an honorable profession”, one that “calls forth the chance for responsibility and the opportunity for achievement; against those measures, politics is a truly exciting adventure.”
If he had taken another route from the Ambassador's Embassy Ballroom that night, RFK would be 82 years old today and an elder statesman in American political affairs. And looking at a primary season 40 years later that has energized both young and old in a way not seen since the spring of 1968, it's easy to imagine how brightly we could see him smile.
