Robert Kennedy’s 1968 Presidential Campaign

This week on From the Vault, we study the 1968 presidential campaign of Robert F. Kennedy. We’ll follow his meteoric rise from presidential race late-comer to popular candidate and shocking murder through a series of recordings preserved by Pacifica Radio Archives.

We begin with one of Kennedy’s early campaign speeches from March of 1968 on the campus of San Fernando Valley State College (later renamed California State University, Northridge). Here, Kennedy states his positions on the United Farm Worker strike and involvement of the U.S. in Vietnam, and takes questions from reporters afterwards.

A few weeks later Bobby Kennedy was back in Los Angeles to speak in front of a gathering of business and financial leaders at the Biltmore Hotel on April 19th, 1968. Again we’ll hear Kennedy’s charm even when facing a hostile audience.

We conclude with interview with USA Radio Networks White House Correspondent Connie Lawn, who was a young journalist getting her first major work covering the Presidential campaign with Robert F. Kennedy. She spoke with the BBC’s Joanne Griffith about her experience on the campaign trail with Kennedy and the relevance of the historic events of 1968 today. Woven into this interview as she describes the evening of Bobby Kennedy’s shooting by Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan is event actuality from the Pacifica Radio Archives.

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