Robert F. Kennedy: Keeping the Peace
Performed by Jeremy Meier
This performance is presented by the Athens Chautauqua Society with the generous support of Athens Downtown Development Authority in partnership with the Greenville Chautauqua Festival entitled “Challenge: Accepted!”
Reserve your FREE tickets to the June 12th programs on Pauli Murray (3:00 p.m.) and Robert Kennedy (7:00 p.m.) at the Morton Theater:
Event Summary
When one hears the name Kennedy, most think of JFK or maybe even Jackie. But it was serious young Robert Kennedy who faced off with Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamsters during the Rackets Committee hearings of the late fifties and who during the Cuban Missile Crisis possessed a dissenting voice to which the President was open to listen.
When we think of the 1960’s, we hear JFK’s challenge: “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”
RFK took up that gauntlet. He was thirty-six when he became the US Attorney General. At thirty-nine, he was elected US Senator and later started his Presidential campaign. History asks the question, what might have been had he finished the race?
FREE EVENT
““The final lesson of the Cuban Missile Crisis is the importance of placing ourselves in the other country’s shoes.””
About Robert F. Kennedy
The third son of Joseph P. Kennedy, Robert was born into an impressive family legacy. Even in contemporary times, when many people hear the name “Kennedy,” they first think of older brother JFK. For good reason, the excitement and interest in the New Frontier of the early 60’s is tied to dawning of the John F. Kennedy presidency. But as the decade continued, it would be moments in which Robert was actively evolving which proved perhaps the most pivotal and emblematic of the times.
A young lawyer, Robert Kennedy had already faced off with Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamsters during the Rackets Committee hearings of the late fifties. When President Kennedy joked that he had nominated his younger brother as Attorney General so that he could get some legal experience, Robert wasn’t laughing. It was the classic Kennedy brother dynamic—the charm of Jack, the seriousness of Bobby. (Family members referred to the latter as “Black Robert” even as a young man.) But Robert Kennedy proved his worth with vigor as the Attorney General.
He was in the heated decision room meetings during The Cuban Missile Crisis in October of 1962. As RFK recounts in his memoir 13 Days, the discussions were ongoing over twelve continuous days and that the Executive Committee of the National Security Council “met, talked, argued, and fought together during that crucial period of time.” In fact, President Kennedy was often not in these meetings as both he and Robert perceived that “personalities change when the President is present, and frequently even strong men make recommendations on the basis of what they believe the President wishes to hear.”1 Younger brother Robert possessed a dissenting voice to which the President was open to listen. Although first in favor of a calculated military strike of the Cuban missile sites, Robert’s perspective on the best plan of action shifted to the strategy outlined by Robert McNamara—a quarantine of Cuba until the missile sites were dissembled. President Kennedy agreed as well.
About Jeremy Meier
Jeremy Meier serves as the Chair of Fine and Performing Arts at Owens Community College in Northwest Ohio. He has directed nineteen student productions at the school including Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and Romeo and Juliet as well as adapted and directed texts for the stage including Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and American Salvage by Bonnie Jo Campbell. In addition to his portrayal of RFK, Meier has created original solo performances for the Ohio Humanities on John Dillinger and Oliver Hazard Perry. In 2017, Meier was awarded a grant by Ohio Humanities to pilot the state’s first Chautauqua Training Program for new scholars learning to develop original solo performances based on historical figures.
Resource Guide
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The Last Campaign: Robert Kennedy and the 82 Days that Inspired America, by Thurston Clarke. 2008.
Clarke’s book chronicles a day-by-day account of Kennedy on the campaign trail in the spring of 1968. It features fascinating insights from the press pool who caravanned with the candidate.
Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis, by Robert F, Kennedy. Reprint 1999.
History looks back with a more nuanced perspective of the Cuban Missile Crisis, but for more than a decade that followed this first-person account from RFK was one of the only narratives available to the public. It is still a riveting account from the perspective of the man closest to President John F. Kennedy as he measured his options in a time of national crisis.
Robert Kennedy And His Times, by Arthur M. Schlesinger. 2002.
Schlesinger was the perhaps the biographer with the closest proximity to share the stories of the brothers Kennedy. His account of Robert’s life is detailed and provides a look at his life from boyhood through candidate for the office of the presidency.
Bobby Kennedy: A Raging Spirit, by Chris Matthews. 2017.
Matthews’ follow-up to a 2011 biography on John F. Kennedy, this book hones in on Robert’s status of younger brother and family underdog. It has noteworthy viewpoints on how the younger brother pushed steadfast into adulthood as a fraternal loyalist and then found his own voice and ambition after the tragic event in Dallas in November, 1963.
The Promise and the Dream: The Untold Story of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, by David Margolick. 2018.
At the corner of 17th and Broadway in Indianapolis stands a landmark composed of two statues—King and Kennedy—each with an arm extending toward the other. The assassinations of both men in the spring of 1968 have linked the two men in American History. This book investigates the visions of each man, the crossed paths and tentative relationship between these two men in the early sixties, their widows’ grief after the assassinations, and each man’s impact on social justice and equality in America.
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October, 1962
“The final lesson of the Cuban Missile Crisis is the importance of placing ourselves in the other country’s shoes.”
June, 1965
“We are stronger, and therefore have more responsibility, than any nation on earth; we should make the first effort—the greatest effort, and the last effort—to control nuclear weapons. We can and must begin immediately.”
March, 1968
“War is not an enterprise lightly to be undertaken, nor prolonged one moment past its absolute necessity.”
April, 1968
“What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.”
(in Indianapolis the evening of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination)
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1925-1968
June 17, 1950 Marries Ethel Skakel. Between 1951 and 1968, they have 11 children.
1951-1952
Works as an attorney in the Criminal Division, Department of Justice.
1959-1960
Manages brother, John F. Kennedy’s successful presidential campaign. Subsequently, Robert Kennedy serves as Attorney General in the president’s cabinet.
1960
His book on experiences pursuing racketeering factions, The Enemy Within, is published.
October 16-28, 1962
Cuban Missile Crisis. Robert Kennedy works backchannels of communication with Russian representatives in brokering a solution.
November 22, 1963
John F. Kennedy assassinated in Dallas.
August 22, 1964
Announces he will run for the senate, representing the state of New York. After a successful campaign, Robert Kennedy begins his tenure as part of the 89th Congress.
March 16, 1968
Announces he will to enter the primary race in pursuit of the Democratic nomination for the presidency.
April 4, 1968
Robert gives a speech in Indianapolis in which he informs the crowd that Martin Luther King Jr. had been that day assassinated in Memphis. He pleads for non-violence, forgiveness and healing for the nation.
June 5, 1968
After winning the important California primary, Robert is shot by an assassin in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. He perishes on June 6.