Robert F. Kennedy and the 1968 Indiana Primary

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments Memory, according to the Greek tragedian Aeschylus, is both the handmaid and the mother of the Muses. For writers of nonfiction, memories are a vital part of our work, leading sometimes to truth, but often down blind alleys. A memory can also inspire what we spend our time researching and writing about, as was the case with this book on Robert F. Kennedy’s campaign in Indiana during the 1968 presidential primary season. Growing up in Mishawaka , Indiana, at this time, I remember our living room in my family’s home on West Battell Street as being dominated by a large television–record player combo. My two brothers and I used the television every Saturday to faithfully watch a cartoon rabbit attempt to trick a cartoon hunter, while my mother used the turntable to listen to Johnny Cash records. Cash’s mournful lament of “I fell into a burning ring of fire / I went down, down, down / And the flames went higher” remains a haunting memory from my youth. On one Saturday in early June 1968, however, the television networks abandoned the usual mindless cartoons to broadcast the funeral of a U.S. senator from New York. I could not help but sit, transfixed at the age of nine, by this public display of grief for a man I had seen photographs of in our local newspaper, the South Bend Tribune. Death had been a stranger to my family up to that point, and the anguish displayed on the faces of the crowd that gathered to mourn Robert Kennedy at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York was too much for my young mind. I vaguely knew the details of the senator’s assassination : someone with a strange-sounding name had shot him just after Kennedy declared victory in some election in California. I could not believe that someone so young and vibrant could be snatched away like that in the blink of an eye. My mother, Joyce, walked into the room. I told her that I hoped someone— anyone—would kill the person responsible for this horror. Perhaps my mother remembered the death of another young politician— President John F. Kennedy—and the subsequent shooting of the alleged assassin , Lee Harvey Oswald, by Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby. Perhaps she had watched on television as Ruby rushed up to Oswald as authorities were taking him from police headquarters to the nearby county jail on November 24, 1963. All I know for sure is that my mother reproached me for my remark, noting that Robert Kennedy had been known as a compassionate man who, because of the tragedy in his own family, abhorred such violence and had worked to heal, not harm. My mother’s words that day have stayed with me and may have been the impetus behind my research and writing about Kennedy’s famous speech in Indianapolis following the killing of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. Indulging me in this pursuit was J. Kent Calder, the original managing editor of the Indiana Historical Society’s popular history magazine, Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History. The magazine’s assistant editor, Megan McKee, proved so adept at turning my dross into gold I could not help but marry her. Over the past eighteen years, she has been a keen critic when needed, as well as a source of solace when the words would not come. I owe her everything. Works of this sort could not be written without the dedication and support of archivists and librarians. I received helpful guidance from such dedicated professionals as Ruth E. Dorrel, archivist at Franklin College’s B. F. Hamilton Library, and John Straw, director of the Archives and Special Collections Research Center at Ball State University’s Bracken Library. This book would not have been possible without the generous support of a research grant from the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston, Massachusetts. Sharon Kelly at the library provided able assistance with both the grant process and my search of collections while I was in Boston. At the Indiana Historical Society’s William Henry Smith Memorial Library , Susan Sutton did her usual fine job of helping to find suitable photographs for the book. My thanks as well to David Turk for his photos of the memorial A Landmark for Peace in Indianapolis and to Susan Darnell for her able transcription of many of the interviews I conducted for the book. Nick Cullather, Indiana University Associate Professor of History...