RFK Remembered : L.A. Conference Planned to Revive Spirit of His ’68 Campaign

A group of campaign workers, supporters and admirers of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy are planning a two-day conference here to mark the 20th anniversary of Kennedy’s ill-fated presidential campaign--and send a message to what they regard as this year’s less substantive campaigns.

Plans for the April 22-23 meeting at Loyola-Marymount University call for a reunion and public speeches by members of the Kennedy family, leading 1968 campaign staff members, including Frank Mankiewicz, Adam Walinsky and Peter Edelman, and Ford Foundation president Frank Thomas, an associate of Kennedy’s in his pioneering 1964 Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Project.

The conference is primarily being put together by Paul Schrade, a former regional director of the United Auto Workers who was wounded in the assassination of Kennedy in the Ambassador Hotel on June 5, 1968, and Bill Fitzgerald, director of Loyola-Marymount’s new Center for Politics, Ethics and Public Policy.

A support group includes Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez of the United Farm Workers; Ted Watkins of the Watts Labor Community Action Committee; Olympic decathlon gold medalist Rafer Johnson; Los Angeles County Supervisor Ed Edelman; former Democratic National Committeeman and now U.S. Circuit Court Judge Stephen Reinhardt, and famed Kennedy campaign prankster Dick Tuck.

Explaining why the gathering is being held in April rather than June, Schrade said:

“We wanted to get away from the assassination, and base it on his campaign and what he stood for. It’s a better time to get students involved. And it’s right in the middle of this year’s presidential primaries and will afford us a chance to challenge the lower expectations that seem to mark this campaign year.”

Fitzgerald said: “This will not simply be a remembrance of Robert Kennedy. It will be a focus on those promises he made but couldn’t keep, and that we ought to fulfill.”

The meeting will roughly coincide with the re-publication this spring of books by Jack Newfield and Jules Witcover on the Robert Kennedy campaign.

In addition, as Kennedy is remembered this spring, a book of his campaign speeches will be published for the first time, as will an oral history and a book of Kennedy anecdotes by a former aide, John Siegenthaler. A Robert Kennedy memorial group in Washington is also planning ceremonies, including a commemorative Mass.

The oral history is a project long in preparation, constituting Kennedy’s tape-recorded responses to questions about the Administration of his brother, President John F. Kennedy, and his role in it as U.S. attorney general.

Schrade said that in advance of the conference he, KPFK reporter Zeta Graham and David Cross, a student helper, have opened an office at 8033 Sunset Blvd. and are working to track down Kennedy workers and supporters from a 20-year-old mailing list. People with information are invited to write P.O. Box 991, Los Angeles, 90046.

He said the organizers also plan to invite current presidential candidates to send representatives to observe the proceedings.

“We would like to pass the torch and inspire young people,” Schrade said, “and have some impact on the election.

“The candidates today are not exciting people like RFK did in 1968. No one seems to be going to Watts or the San Joaquin Valley, and no one is creating the excitement in office buildings or on assembly lines that Bob Kennedy did.”

It is true, he conceded, that the Kennedy campaign unfolded at a time of tremendous public anxiety about the Vietnam War and tense racial situations.

“But, regardless, I don’t think it’s going to happen for a Democratic candidate this year unless they try to define the issues and take strong stands the way Kennedy did,” Schrade added. “They won’t get the turnout and they will lose.”

Kennedy scored a narrow triumph in the California Democratic presidential primary, getting 1.5 million votes.