Here’s an original and SCARCE
1968
ROBERT F. KENNEDY
“KENNEDY”
CAMPAIGN
POSTER
This
is an original item from Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 Campaign for President of the
United States
In
the lower left hand corner is the indicia:
“KENNEDY FOR PRESIDENT
2000 L STREET,
WASHINGTON, D. C.
CHAIRMAN: JOSEPH
GARGAN”
MEASURES 12¼” x 18¾” AND IS IN VG CONDITION WITH 3
HORIZONTAL FOLDS – STILL DISPLAYS WELL!
RFK’s son is now running
for president, fifty-five years after his father!
Robert F. Kennedy, would be killed by an assassin’s bullet
in his 1968 run for the Presidency.
<>>::<<>
Robert
Francis Kennedy was born on November 20, 1925, in Brookline,
Massachusetts, the seventh child in the closely knit and competitive family of
Rose and Joseph P. Kennedy. "I was the seventh of nine children," he
later recalled, "and when you come from that far down you have to struggle
to survive."
He attended Milton Academy and, after wartime service in
the Navy, received his degree in government from Harvard University in 1948. He
earned his law degree from the University of Virginia Law School three years
later. Perhaps more important for his education was the Kennedy family dinner
table, where his parents involved their children in discussions of history and
current affairs. "I can hardly remember a mealtime," Robert Kennedy
said, "when the conversation was not dominated by what Franklin D.
Roosevelt was doing or what was happening in the world."
In 1950, Robert Kennedy married Ethel Skakel of Greenwich,
Connecticut, daughter of Ann Brannack Skakel and George Skakel, founder of
Great Lakes Carbon Corporation. Robert and Ethel Kennedy later had eleven
children. In 1952, he made his political debut as manager of his older brother
John's successful campaign for the US Senate from Massachusetts.
The following year, he served briefly on the staff of the
Senate Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by Senator Joseph McCarthy.
Disturbed by McCarthy's controversial tactics, Kennedy resigned from the staff
after six months. He later returned to the Senate Subcommittee on
Investigations as chief counsel for the Democratic minority, in which capacity
he wrote a report condemning McCarthy's investigation of alleged Communists in
the Army. His later work as Chief Counsel for the Senate Rackets Committee
investigating corruption in trade unions won him national recognition for
exposing Teamsters' Union leaders Jimmy Hoffa and David Beck.
In 1960, he was the tireless and effective manager of John
F. Kennedy's presidential campaign. After the election, he was appointed
Attorney General in President Kennedy's cabinet. While Attorney General, he won
respect for his diligent, effective and nonpartisan administration of the
Department of Justice.
Attorney General Kennedy launched a successful drive
against organized crime, and convictions against organized crime figures rose
by 800% during his tenure. He also became increasingly committed to helping
African Americans win the right to vote, attend integrated schools and use
public accommodations. He demonstrated his commitment to civil rights during a
1961 speech at the University of Georgia Law School: "We will not stand by
or be aloof. We will move. I happen to believe that the 1954 [Supreme Court
school desegregation] decision was right. But my belief does not matter. It is
the law. Some of you may believe the decision was wrong. That does not matter.
It is the law."
In September 1962, Attorney General Kennedy sent US
Marshals and troops to Oxford, Mississippi to enforce a federal court order
admitting the first African American student - James Meredith - to the
University of Mississippi. The riot that had followed Meredith's registration
at "Ole Miss" had left two dead and hundreds injured. Robert Kennedy
believed that voting was the key to achieving racial justice and collaborated
with President Kennedy in proposing the most far-reaching civil rights statute
since Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which passed eight months
after President Kennedy's death.
Robert Kennedy was not only President Kennedy's Attorney
General, he was also his closest advisor and confidant. As a result of this
unique relationship, the Attorney General played a key role in several critical
foreign policy decisions. During the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, for instance,
he helped develop the Kennedy administration's strategy to blockade Cuba
instead of taking military action that could have led to nuclear war. He then
negotiated with the Soviet Union on removal of the weapons.
Soon after President Kennedy's death, Robert Kennedy
resigned as Attorney General and, in 1964, ran successfully for the United
States Senate from New York. His opponent, incumbent Republican Senator Kenneth
Keating, labeled Kennedy a "carpetbagger" during the closely
contested campaign. Kennedy responded to the attacks with humor. "I have
[had] really two choices over the period of the last ten months," he said
at Columbia University. "I could have stayed in - I could have retired.
[Laughter.] And I - my father has done very well and I could have lived off
him. [Laughter and applause.] ... I tell you frankly I don't need this title because
I [could] be called General, I understand, for the rest of my life. [Laughter
and applause.] And I don't need the money and I don't need the office space...
[Laughter.] ... Frank as it is - and maybe it's difficult to believe in the
state of New York - I'd like to just be a good United States Senator. I'd like
to serve." Kennedy waged an effective statewide campaign and, aided by
President Lyndon Johnson's landslide, won the November election by 719,000
votes.
As New York's Senator, he initiated a number of projects in
the state, including assistance to underprivileged children and students with
disabilities and the establishment of the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration
Corporation to improve living conditions and employment opportunities in
depressed areas of Brooklyn. Since 1967, the program has been a model for
communities all across the nation.
These programs were part of a larger effort to address the
needs of the dispossessed and powerless in America - the poor, the young,
racial minorities and Native Americans. He sought to bring the facts about
poverty to the conscience of the American people, journeying into urban
ghettos, Appalachia, the Mississippi Delta and migrant workers' camps.
"There are children in the Mississippi Delta," he said, "whose
bellies are swollen with hunger... Many of them cannot go to school because
they have no clothes or shoes. These conditions are not confined to rural
Mississippi. They exist in dark tenements in Washington, DC, within sight of
the Capitol, in Harlem, in South Side Chicago, in Watts. There are children in
each of these areas who have never been to school, never seen a doctor or a
dentist. There are children who have never heard conversation in their homes,
never read or even seen a book."
He sought to remedy the problems of poverty through
legislation to encourage private industry to locate in poverty-stricken areas,
thus creating jobs for the unemployed, and stressed the importance of work over
welfare.
Robert Kennedy was also committed to the advancement of
human rights abroad. He traveled to Eastern Europe, Latin America and South
Africa to share his belief that all people have a basic human right to
participate in the political decisions that affect their lives and to criticize
their government without fear of reprisal. He also believed that those who
strike out against injustice show the highest form of courage. "Each time
a man stands up for an ideal," he said in a 1966 speech to South African
students, "or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice,
he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million
different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can
sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."
Kennedy was also absorbed during his Senate years by a
quest to end the war in Vietnam. As a new Senator, Kennedy had originally
supported the Johnson administration's policies in Vietnam, but also called for
a greater commitment to a negotiated settlement and a renewed emphasis on economic
and political reform within South Vietnam. As the war continued to widen and
America's involvement deepened, Senator Kennedy came to have serious misgivings
about President Johnson's conduct of the war. Kennedy publicly broke with the
Johnson administration for the first time in February 1966, proposing
participation by all sides (including the Viet Cong's political arm, the
National Liberation Front) in the political life of South Vietnam. The
following year, he took responsibility for his role in the Kennedy
administration's policy in Southeast Asia, and urged President Johnson to cease
the bombing of North Vietnam and reduce, rather than enlarge, the war effort.
In his final Senate speech on Vietnam, Kennedy said, "Are we like the God
of the Old Testament that we can decide, in Washington, DC, what cities, what
towns, what hamlets in Vietnam are going to be destroyed?... Do we have to
accept that?... I do not think we have to. I think we can do something about
it."
On March 16, 1968, Robert Kennedy announced his candidacy
for the Democratic presidential nomination. It was, in the words of Arthur
Schlesinger Jr., "an uproarious campaign, filled with enthusiasm and
fun... It was also a campaign moving in its sweep and passion." Indeed, he
challenged the complacent in American society and sought to bridge the great
divides in American life - between the races, between the poor and the
affluent, between young and old, between order and dissent. His 1968 campaign
brought hope to an American people troubled by discontent and violence at home
and war in Vietnam. He won critical primaries in Indiana and Nebraska and spoke
to enthusiastic crowds across the nation.
Robert Francis Kennedy
was fatally shot on June 5, 1968 at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California
shortly after claiming victory in that state's crucial Democratic primary. He
was 42 years old. Although his life was cut short, Robert Kennedy's vision and
ideals live on today through the work of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial in
Washington, DC.
I am a proud member of the Universal Autograph Collectors Club
(UACC), The Ephemera Society of America, the Manuscript Society and the
American Political Items Collectors (APIC) (member name: John Lissandrello). I
subscribe to each organizations' code of ethics and authenticity is guaranteed.
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