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On this day in history, June 5, 1968, presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy is fatally shot in Los Angeles
New York Sen. Robert F. Kennedy was on the presidential campaign trail as a Democratic candidate when he was fatally shot on this day in history, June 5, 1968, by an assassin at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California.
The New York legislator, better known as Bobby, was 42 at the time of his death.
Moments before he was shot, Kennedy delivered a victory speech in front of supporters in the hotel’s Embassy Room ballroom, according to the Los Angeles Almanac. He had just won the California primary race.
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The final words of Kennedy’s speech, given shortly after midnight on June 5 to a raucous crowd, were, “My thanks to all of you,” says the same source.
He added, “And now it’s on to Chicago, and let’s win there.”
In this May 9, 1968, file photo, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, D-N.Y., speaks to the delegates of the United Auto Workers at a convention hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey. (AP Photo)
As Kennedy worked his way through the crowd, shaking hands and greeting well-wishers and hotel staff on his way to another room for a press conference, he was shot several times by Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian immigrant from Jordan, recounts the Los Angeles Almanac.
Robert Kennedy was pronounced dead a day later, on June 6, 1968, notes History.com.
“Just because we cannot see clearly the end of the road, that is no reason for not setting out on the essential journey.”
On April 23, 1969, Sirhan Sirhan was sentenced to the death penalty after being convicted in Kennedy’s assassination.
In 1972, Sirhan’s sentence was commuted to life in prison after California abolished the death penalty, according to History.com.
Sen. Robert F. Kennedy pictured on June 5, 1968, at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California. (Getty Images)
The summer of 1968 was a tense time in America. The Vietnam War had created a restless populace at home as well as an outspoken anti-war movement.
“In the face of this unrest, President Lyndon B. Johnson decided not to seek a second term in the upcoming presidential election, and Robert Kennedy, John [Kennedy’s] younger brother and former U.S. attorney general, stepped into this breach and experienced a groundswell of support,” History.com says.
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“At stake is not simply the leadership of our party and even our country,” Kennedy said in announcing his candidacy for the presidency on March 16, 1968, according to the University of Virginia. “It is our right to moral leadership of this planet.”
Robert Kennedy was born on Nov. 20, 1925, in Brookline, Massachusetts, a son of Joseph P. Kennedy and Rose Kennedy. He interrupted his studies at Harvard University in Massachusetts to serve in the U.S. Navy during World War II, but returned to the university and graduated in 1948, says Brittanica.com.
Pictured in center (left to right) are Ethel Kennedy and her husband, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, before he was fatally shot on June 5, 1968, during his campaign stop at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California. (Getty Images)
Kennedy earned a law degree from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1951, that university notes.
On June 17, 1950, Robert Kennedy married Ethel Skakel of Greenwich, Connecticut.
The couple had eleven children: Kathleen, Joseph, Robert Jr., David, Courtney, Michael, Kerry, Christopher, Max, Doug and Rory, according to the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights organization.
After earning his law degree, Kennedy started his political career in Massachusetts the next year by managing his brother John F. Kennedy’s successful campaign for the U.S. Senate, notes the same source.
On March 16, 1968, Kennedy announced his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination.
After JFK won the election in 1961, Robert Kennedy was appointed attorney general in his cabinet, says History.com.
On Nov. 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Robert Kennedy continued to serve as attorney general until he resigned in September 1964.
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Following President Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963, Robert Kennedy briefly served as attorney general under President Lyndon B. Johnson, History.com says.
A passionate communicator, Kennedy, in Poland in 1964 during the Cold War as attorney general, said, “Just because we cannot see clearly the end of the road, that is no reason for not setting out on the essential journey,” according to the University of Virginia’s website.
Senator-elect Robert F. Kennedy places a flower near the eternal flame on the grave of his brother, the late President John F. Kennedy, during a visit on the first anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy. (Getty Images)
“In August of 1964, Bobby resigned and then ran for a seat in the U.S. Senate representing the State of New York. This was his first time running for public office in his own right,” the National Park Service says.
On March 16, 1968, 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,” as the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum reports.
“His 1968 campaign brought hope to an American people troubled by discontent and violence at home and war in Vietnam,” the library also says.
“He won critical primaries in Indiana and Nebraska and spoke to enthusiastic crowds across the nation.”
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While giving a presidential campaign speech at a rally in Indianapolis, Indiana, on April 4, 1968, Kennedy learned of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination, California’s Stanford University reports.
Kennedy informed the largely Black audience of King’s death, cautioning them not to be “filled with hatred and distrust at the injustice of such an act, against all White people,” for “Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice for his fellow human beings, and he died because of that effort,” says the university’s website.
Above, a special White House conference with civil rights leaders. Posing in the Rose Garden from left to right: Martin Luther King Jr., leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; Attorney General Robert Kennedy; Roy Wilkins, executive secretary of NAACP; and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson. (Getty Images)
Kennedy’s legacy devoted to social activism and human rights continues today through the nonprofit “Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights,” says the National Park Service.
In January 2022, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California rejected releasing assassin Sirhan Sirhan from prison and back into society on a parole grant — more than a half-century after the 1968 slaying, according to the governor’s op-ed in the Los Angeles Times explaining his decision.
“Mr. Sirhan’s assassination of Sen. Kennedy is among the most notorious crimes in American history,” Newsom wrote in his decision.
The political aspirations of the Kennedy family continue today. Last year, Kennedy’s son, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., 70, an environmental lawyer, activist and vaccine critic, announced he was launching a Democrat challenge against Joe Biden, as Fox News Digital previously reported.
As of today, he is an independent presidential candidate in the 2024 race.
For more Lifestyle articles, visit www.foxnews.com/lifestyle.
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HONOLULU — The latest lava fountaining episode of an erupting Hawaii volcano reached 1,000 feet high Tuesday, prompting temporary closures at a national park and part of an important highway because of falling glassy volcanic fragments, including ash.
Kilauea, on Hawaii’s Big Island, has been dazzling residents and visitors for more than year with an on-and-off eruption that periodically sends fountains of lava soaring into the sky.
The fountaining that began Tuesday morning marked the eruption’s 43rd episode since it began in December 2024. A livestream showed two fountains of bright-red lava and smoke. It’s unclear how long the fountaining will last. Some episodes have lasted a few days and others a few hours.
Like other times, the molten rock was confined within Kilauea’s summit crater inside Hawaii Volcanoes National Park and hasn’t threatened homes or buildings.
But the lava fountains were creating trouble for neighboring communities and a highway where the volcanic fragments and ash, known as tephra, was falling. The tephra prompted temporary closures at the national park around the summit and a partial closure of Highway 11, an important route around the island, on either side of the park.
Hawaii County officials also opened a shelter at a district gymnasium for residents and tourists impacted by the road closure or falling tephra. There were no people using the shelter soon after it opened, said Tom Callis, a county spokesperson.
The National Weather Service issued an ashfall warning.
Volcanic tephra can irritate eyes, skin and the respiratory system, according to county officials. Tephra also can clog and cause other problems with water catchment collection systems, which are common in some parts of the Big Island, officials said.
Ash fell so heavily during a previous fountaining episode that some communities needed help from county civil defense workers to clean up ash that coated their homes, Callis said.
Kilauea is one of the world’s most active volcanoes.
LAS VEGAS (FOX5) — Smith’s employees are packing 5,000 meal kits for Clark County students through a partnership with Move for Hunger and Communities in Schools of Southern Nevada.
The event took place on March 10 at Decker Elementary School.
About 270 leaders from across seven states are also participating in building the kits. The donation is valued at approximately $50,000.
Feed The Need: Helping Southern Nevadans fight food insecurity
In the past year, Smith’s and its customers provided more than 16 million meals to nonprofit hunger-relief organizations throughout Nevada through donations.
Copyright 2026 KVVU. All rights reserved.
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