On June 5, 1968, a few minutes after midnight, Robert Kennedy was shot and killed at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles while walking through a narrow serving area called “the pantry.” Kennedy had just won the California primary and was on his way to a room where print media reporters were waiting to hear him speak.
In early March, Lyndon B. Johnson had thrown open the race by announcing that he would not seek re-election because of the failure of his Vietnam policy. Kennedy emerged as a leading contender by energizing the youth wing of the party with his calls for sweeping social change.
Kennedy was in many ways a strange liberal icon because he grew up idolizing Herbert Hoover, was closest in his family to his father, Joseph, the millionaire business tycoon, began his career supporting Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communist witch-hunt, called for victory against communism in Vietnam in the early 1960s, and oversaw a terrorist campaign designed to overthrow the Cuban government.

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