50 Years Later, the Story Behind the Photos of Robert Kennedy’s Assassination

What a sordid history for America. The truth of the matter is we can never put you Americans past this sort of thing even today.

Does anyone know who the woman is behind Ethyl Kennedy? It looks very much like Jackie.

Although Mr. Eppridge says he will always be haunted by his tragic photo(s) of Robert Kennedy’s assassination on June 5, 1968, he (and we) should also remember (and take some solace from) his lyrical photograph of RFK running with his dog Freckles on the beach at Fort Stevens State Park on the Oregon coast. That photo was taken less than two weeks before Kennedy was shot and killed after his victory speech in Los Angeles. It appeared on the cover of LIFE magazine less than two weeks later.

America is and continues to be a very violent country in deep denial.

I was fourteen and the two 1968 assassinations flash back to me still. What came to me from them was that there would never be a hero to deliver my agenda by magic, charisma. Once the tears and anger ended, I went to work. Every week I did something against the war, to this day I do what I can for peace and justice. At one level, I feel sorry for the young people who didn’t have this lesson thrust upon them. Too many of them believed in the superman, in Barack Obama as deliverance from all political evil. Back in the 1960s, we learned that none of our political leaders could be simply turned loose and trusted. Jack was too calculating, Bobby was politically suspect due to his long-held tough-guy positions, and by mid-1969 Ted had treated us to Chappaquiddick. Obama seemed free of such clay feet. The left could not believe that our first Black president would be such a pragmatic centrist so the bank bailout came as a shock. He seemed much more of the Jack Kennedy we thought had finally been shed with the talk of arms control and voting rights, yet those who saw only his skin kept calling him a socialist. To our disillusion with TARP we can attribute the left’s failure to hold the Congress by voting in 2010. But for myself, and probably others, we probably knew the truth of what Ted said, time and again, “The dream never dies and the work continues.” Key words: Work. Continues. Trust no one fully, reject no one too soon.

you know how people old enough to remember know exactly where they were when they heard JFK had been shot? I do remember that. But I also remeber when I heard when RFK was shot. oh, what could have been with RFK as President! Still, 50 years later, what a loss to the world. Almost sadder is to think how 50 years later, we as a nation have still so far to grow. Treat human beings as human beings. Regardless of skin color or religion. A sad day again.

A haunting photo that needed to be taken. Mr. Eppridge shouldn't feel bad for taking this photo. A good man cut down in prime. What a shame.

Juan Romero spoke to Story Corps on NPR. That is worth a listen. Bobby Kennedy spoke of the need to make gentle the life of this world. We have fallen short on so many levels.

I was 17 50 years ago. I’m still waiting for some straight talk about the Kennedy assassinations

I was just shy of my 14th birthday. But very politically tuned in. Hard not to be in those days. Robert Kennedy touched me so deeply. So clear in his views. Simple humanity, we know it in our hearts - it rang like a clear bell. In the few years prior to his death, he had gone through a profound personal transformation and became a hopeful beacon of higher consciousness and the politics caring and possibilities. This article, these pictures have me weeping as much as I did 50 years ago. All the good he pushed for is still with us today. In each of us. We just need to show it, believe it.

NPR interviewed the busboy. Beautiful, sad and inspiring: https://www.npr.org/2018/06/01/615534723/the-busboy-who-cradled-a-dying-...

The light and hand always stand out in so many ways with this photo. Divine descent, spiritual ascent, eerie, ..., take your pick because they are all there and more.

I remember that decade, when assassinations punctuated cascading riots and demonstrations and sit-ins and war news. I often wonder if those of us who lived through the Sixties, with its constant state of upheaval and loss, still carry a form of cultural PTSD. Nothing as severe as survivors of war or famine but soul-robbing nevertheless, in its own shadowy way. I can never read about JFK, Malcolm X, MLK, or RFK without feeling admittedly pointless anger at the tremendous waste of young lives, and this is multipled by all of those killed, maimed, and marred by fighting in the misguided Vietnam War. Visionary leaders who could have helped us find our way; young men who deserved to have children, barbecue in their backyards, and retire in blissful obscurity, their names never inscribed on black walls. Think of what sits in the White House today and know how far we have fallen.