Marking the 50th anniversary of the death of Robert Kennedy
A few months ago, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, eldest daughter of Robert Kennedy, asked me if the Embassy would like to be involved in marking the 50th anniversary of her father's death and, of course, I readily agreed. Robert Kennedy deserves to be remembered on account of his own achievements and as a symbol of the contribution made to America by millions of Irish Americans past and present.
On the 6th of June, I was honoured to be part of a moving commemorative ceremony at Arlington Cemetery where I was asked to read from one of Robert Kennedy's speeches, whose message struck me as having remarkable continuing pertinence.
“The whole human experiment will fail unless it can find unity and mediate its disputes, unless it can follow the paths of economic growth and cooperation, unless, above all, it can realize the equality and brotherhood of man. These are not clichés—for anybody. They are the bare essentials of survival for us all. And on this small, vulnerable, infinitely interdependent planet, all of us are seeking solutions. Under the spur of potential plenty as under the shadow of potential destruction, we are one: our triumphs and defeats are common. The bell tolls for us all." (Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 1966)
After the memorial service, at which President Bill Clinton was the keynote speaker, I hosted members of the Kennedy family, led by Mrs Ethel Kennedy, and their guests at a reception at our Embassy residence.
Robert Francis Kennedy was born in Brookline, Massachusetts in November 1925, the seventh of nine Kennedy children. His was a thoroughly Irish background. Not only did his great-grandfather, Patrick Kennedy, leave New Ross for America in 1848 at the height of Ireland's Great Famine, but other Irish surnames - Fitzgerald, Murphy, Hickey and Hannon - also appear in his family tree. In the two generations following the arrival of Patrick Kennedy, his descendants prospered to the point where Robert was born into a wealthy Boston family.
Robert Kennedy's most recent biographer, the leading TV journalist, Chris Matthews, describes him as: "The most Irish of the Kennedy children, and always attached to what that meant, it wouldn't be wrong to say he was, despite being a third-generation American, the least changed from the old country."
Kennedy addressed his Irish identity at some length during a speech he gave to a gathering of the Friendly Sons of Patrick in Scranton, Pennsylvania on St Patrick's Day 1964. At that time, Robert, who had helped his elder brother win the Presidency and had served as his Attorney General, was a member of the Johnson administration. He resigned as Attorney General and was elected to the US Senate later that same year.
His Scranton speech points to a deep appreciation of his Irish background. He describes himself as '"a son of St Patrick" and recalls that: "As the first of the racial minorities, our forefathers were subject to every discrimination found wherever discrimination is known."
He marvelled that the rich Irish heritage "stems from a small island in the far Atlantic with a population one quarter the size of the State of Pennsylvania." The Irish had "survived persecution in their own land and discrimination in ours. They have emerged from the shadow of subjugation into the sunlight of personal liberty and national independence. And they have shared the struggles for freedom of more than a score of nations across the globe."
In this speech, Robert Kennedy went on to draw some interesting conclusions from his analysis of Ireland's historical struggle. He pointed to the racial discrimination that scarred America and suggested that "it is toward concern for these issues - and vigorous participation on the side of freedom - that our Irish heritage must impel us. If we are true to this heritage, we cannot stand aside."
Robert Kennedy argued that "the bloody struggles for liberty" in Algeria, Indonesia and Vietnam had shown "that others would make the same sacrifices to throw off the yoke of imperialism today that the Irish did more than half a century ago". Referring to the policies of the Kennedy and Johnson Presidencies, he suggested that "the emerald thread runs in the cloth we weave today" and that this represented "the current flowering of the Irish tradition." He urged his Irish American audience to "hold out our hands to those who struggle for freedom - at home and abroad - as Ireland struggled for a thousand years." He was certainly laying down a gauntlet to his Irish American audience, urging them to side with progressive forces in 1960s America.
Robert Kennedy eventually broke with Lyndon Johnson over the Vietnam War and launched a bid for the US Presidency in 1968 after Johnson decided not to stand for re-election. He was shot and killed in Los Angeles just after he had won the California Primary. It is clear from a reading of his speeches that his political outlook matured and deepened during the years after his brother's assassination. As an orator, he is remembered especially for a stirring impromptu speech he delivered in Indianapolis on the night of Martin Luther King's assassination in which he successfully appealed for calm. He urged his listeners to seek "to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world."
Why is there this enduring connection between the Kennedys and Ireland considering that the children of Robert Kennedy are four generations removed from our country? It may perhaps be the fact that the Kennedys are emblematic of Irish America, the ascent of our people from deprivation and disaster at home to triumphant success in America.
I value the Kennedy connection with Ireland because I am old enough to remember the visit to Ireland of John F. Kennedy and the exhilaration that was felt at the fact that 'one of our own' had ascended to the top of the tree and become America's President. As a child of the 1960s, I marvel at the fact that the name 'Kennedy' sums up better than any other word that turbulent decade in all of its aspirations, and its disappointments.
Robert Kennedy is like his elder brother, JFK, a symbol of lost hope. The brothers' early deaths means that their legacy is one of unfinished business. As President Barack Obama put it in a preface to a recent book, RFK: His Words for Our Times, "the idealism of Robert Kennedy - the unfinished legacy that calls us still - is a fundamental belief in the continued perfection of American ideals." Or as President Bill Clinton wrote in the same book, "in Robert Kennedy we all invested our hopes and our dreams that somehow we might redeem the promise of the America we then feared we were losing, somehow we might call back the promise of President Kennedy and Martin Luther King and heal the divisions of Vietnam and the violence and pain in our own country."
The Embassy's involvement in commemorating this iconic Irish American and his legacy of hope and idealism has been a highlight of my first year in the United States.
