President John F Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, 60 years ago. I do not remember that fateful day on 22 November 1963, as I was just four years old.
But I do remember the summer day, five years later in 1968, when his brother – former US attorney general and would be president, Robert F “Bobby” Kennedy – was shot dead in that tumultuous election year.
Over the decades since their deaths the two brothers, often referred to just by their initials – JFK and RFK, have never been forgotten.
In the United States, and much of the Western democratic world, they have assumed iconic status in death. Their family members left behind, have tried to pick up their political legacies.
The Kennedy name has been the biggest brand in American politics, public interest in its members sharpened by numerous tragedies and scandals.
Image: RFK with his wife and their seven children, including Robert F Kennedy Jr (back, far left). Pic AP
Some likened them to America’s royal family complete with symbolic castles at the “family compounds” in Massachusetts and Florida. Clan members seemed to occupy political office, almost as if by divine right.
But the dynastic vision has been fading at last. The myths, personalities and untimely deaths associated with the Kennedys are inevitably resonating less and less with contemporary electorates. There are currently none of the dynasty in elected state or national office.
More on Us Election 2024
Related Topics:
In this election year, a maverick Kennedy is hoping to reverse all that. RFK’s 69-year-old son, who shares his father’s name, is running for president.
Whether Bobby Junior revives or further tarnishes the Kennedy brand is an open question. At least four of his 10 siblings say he is “an embarrassment”.
Advertisement
He has abandoned his family’s traditional allegiance to the Democratic party. He pulled out of the Democratic nomination contest to run as an independent candidate against both Donald Trump and Joe Biden, declaring “my intention is to spoil it for both of them”.
Image: John F Kennedy (centre) surrounded by his family, including his brothers and father, Joseph. Pic AP
RFK junior is a self-styled environmentalist, an anti-vaxxer, and a supporter of the right to bear arms. He has embraced numerous conspiracy theories – even suggesting the CIA was involved in the assassinations of his father and uncle.
He marked the 60th anniversary of the death of President Kennedy by launching a petition to release the last of the government’s records relating to the shooting.
The National Archives says 99% of the material is already in the public domain, following orders from Presidents Trump and Biden. RFK junior retorted, “what is so embarrassing that they’re afraid to show the American public 60 years later?”.
Political dynasty
The Kennedys came to America as immigrants from Ireland. JFK was the first Roman Catholic US president. A grandfather of Joseph Kennedy was mayor of Boston in the 1890s.
Joe Kennedy was the patriarch of the clan and founder of the family fortune. His businesses flourished through the great depression and the prohibition of alcohol.
Image: JFK reaching toward his head seconds before being fatally shot in 1963. Pic AP
President Franklin Roosevelt gave Joseph P Kennedy I his highest rank in politics by appointing him a controversial ambassador to the UK.
He resigned during the Battle of Britain in 1940, suspected of Nazi sympathies, after commenting “democracy is finished in England”.
He was subsequently a major supporter of the anti-communist senator Joe McCarthy.
Today Joseph’s fortune is shared by several generations of direct descendants, who have mostly chosen to go into public service rather than business. Their net worth is put at several billion dollars.
Joe and his ambitious wife, Rose, had nine children, all now dead. The eldest son, Joe junior, a US Navy bomber pilot was killed above the English Channel in 1944. Their youngest daughter, Jean Kennedy Smith, was US ambassador to Ireland and died in 2020.
Rose and Joseph put their ambitions and their money behind their surviving sons – Jack, Bobby and Ted. All three became US senators and presidential candidates. Their siblings and descendants have often followed in their political footsteps – to a lesser and dwindling degree.
JFK was elected the US’s youngest-ever president. Young, rich, and beautiful, the Kennedys carefully curated their glamourous image in the White House.
Image: President John F Kennedy
Most famously Marilyn Monroe sang a seductive “Happy Birthday, Mr President” at the Madison Square Garden for his 45th birthday.
He and his stylish wife Jackie had three children. Patrick died in infancy. John junior and Caroline were still small when their father was killed.
Neil Diamond has said Caroline was the inspiration for his song “Sweet Caroline”. More recently Biden appointed Caroline Kennedy US ambassador to Japan, she was previously Obama’s ambassador to Australia.
John junior and his wife Carolyn Bessette were killed when a plane he was piloting crashed off Martha’s Vineyard in 1999.
The last powerful, world-famous Kennedy died in 2009. Edward Kennedy was the younger brother of JFK and RFK.
“Ted” died while still a US senator. Many viewed the liberal Democrat’s 47 years of continuous service as an attempt to expiate for what happened at Chappaquiddick in 1969.
Image: Caroline Kennedy, who has been a US ambassador to Japan and Australia, with her father JFK
A 29-year-old aide, Mary Jo Kopechne, drowned in his car when Kennedy drove it off a bridge in Martha’s Vineyard. He survived but was later linked to a further scandal.
After a night partying with his son and nephew, his nephew, William Kennedy Smith, was charged and subsequently acquitted, of rape. Dr Smith went on to found the charity Physicians Against Land Mines (PALM).
Ted had three children, including Patrick who served eight terms as a congressman from Rhode Island before retiring with mental and addiction issues.
Of RFK’s 11 children, Joseph P Kennedy II was a six-term congressman for Massachusetts, Kathleen was a two-term lieutenant governor in Maryland and then there is RFK jnr.
Jack, Ted and Bobby’s sister Eunice married Sargent Shriver, who ran unsuccessfully in 1974 on the Democratic ticket as George McGovern’s vice-presidential candidate.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
2:54
What will decide the US election?
Their daughter Maria Shriver was married to the bodybuilder and actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was twice elected Republican governor of California.
‘Challenger’
Joe Biden has always enjoyed a close relationship with his fellow Irish Americans. As well as sending Caroline Kennedy to Tokyo, he made Ted’s second wife, Victoria, ambassador to Austria.
President Biden also appointed Ted’s 23-year-old grandson, Joseph P Kennedy III, US special envoy to Northern Ireland.
Now Bobby is challenging Biden. In a favourability opinion poll this month by Harris, he topped the candidates list with a net rating of +27, ahead of Trump on +7 and Biden on -2.
That does not make him a likely winner in the US’s fundamentally two-party system, but third-party candidates matter because they often affect who becomes president.
In 2000, when Democrats won the popular vote but lost the Electoral College, the activist Ralph Nader scored 97,488 votes in Florida. If Al Gore had picked up just 537 of those votes he would have become president instead of George W Bush.
In 2016 Democrats again won the popular vote and lost the Electoral College.
In the swing states of Wisconsin and Michigan the Libertarian, Gary Johnson, and Green Party’s Jill Stein, each took multiples of the margin of votes by which Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
0:45
‘I don’t mind being Nelson Mandela’
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
1:42
Biden updates media on Air Force One
Kennedy’s current ratings around 20% are on a par with the businessman Ross Perot, the strongest third force of modern times.
Perot won 19% and 8% of the popular vote respectively in 1992 and 1996, arguably assisting Bill Clinton’s election.
With typical entitlement, Kennedy says he is confident he will win the battle against Trump and Biden’s lawyer to “get on the ballot of every state”.
If he succeeds, polls suggest he takes slightly more votes from Trump than from Biden. That could be enough to change who wins in closely fought key states.
Trump has called Bobby a Biden “plant”. The Biden campaign is worried that the Kennedy name could cost Democratic votes.
They note Bobby’s visit to Trump’s White House and the encouragement he has received from Steve Bannon and alternative media outlets such as Fox News, Joe Rogan and Jordan Petersen.
Plugging into the mood of populist discontent, Bobby is appealing for votes from “people who are willing to question orthodoxy”.
As embodied by JFK and RFK, the Kennedy name is one of the most revered in American politics. Now yet another descendant is attempting simultaneously both to exploit and to escape from being a Kennedy.
In Minneapolis, the spot where George Floyd was murdered has been turned into a mural.
His face is depicted in street art on a pavement covered in flowers, rosaries, and other trinkets left by people who have come to pay their respects in the last five years.
His final moments, struggling for breath with white police officer Derek Chauvin’s knee on his neck, were captured in a viral video that provoked anger, upset, and outrage.
Image: Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd’s neck
In Minneapolis and other parts of America, there were protests that at points boiled over into unrest.
The events to mark the fifth anniversary of his death took on a very different tone – one of celebration and joy.
Behind a wooden statue of a clenched fist on one end of a junction now renamed George Perry Floyd Square, people gathered in the morning.
There was a moment of prayer before a brass band began to play and the group marched, while singing and chanting.
Image: George Perry Floyd Square, a makeshift memorial area
‘It made us want to fight harder’
Among those gathered in front of a makeshift stage built in the square were two of Floyd’s family members – his cousin Paris and aunt Mahalia.
To them, the man whose death sparked a racial reckoning in America and further afield, was simply “Perry,” a larger-than-life figure whose presence is missed at family gatherings.
Speaking to me while the speakers behind them thumped and people danced, they didn’t just reflect with sadness though.
There was also pride at a legacy they felt has led to change.
“It made us want to fight harder,” said Mahalia, “and it’s a feeling you cannot explain. When the whole world just stood up.”
Image: George Floyd’s aunt Mahalia and cousin Paris
Referring to Chauvin’s eventual murder charge, Paris added: “I think that from here on out, at least officers know that you’re not going to slide through the cracks. Our voices are heard more.”
The tapestry of items outside the Cup Foods convenience store, now renamed Unity Foods, is not the only makeshift memorial in the area.
A short walk away is the “Say Their Names” cemetery, an art installation honouring black people killed by the police.
Meeting me there later in the day, activist Nikema Levy says the installation and George Floyd Square are called “sacred spaces” in the community.
As someone who took to the streets at the time of Floyd’s death and a community organiser for years before that, she’s constantly stopped by people who want to speak to her.
Image: Activist Nikema Levy speaking to Sky News
‘White supremacy on steroids’
Once we do manage to speak, Levy reminds me of a wider political picture. One that goes beyond Minneapolis and is a fraught one.
In the week of the anniversary, the US Department of Justice rolled back investigations into some of the largest police forces in the country, including in Minneapolis – a move she calls “diabolical.”
“That type of cruelty is what we have seen since Donald Trump took office on January 20th of this year,” she continued.
“From my perspective, that is white supremacy on steroids. And it should come as no surprise that he would take these types of steps, because these are the things that he talked about on the campaign trail.”
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
3:23
Has US changed five years after George Floyd’s death?
‘True healing has never taken place’
Trump has argued his policing reforms will help make America’s communities safer.
Even on a day of optimism, with a community coming together, Levy’s words in front of headstones bearing the names of black people who have died at the hands of the police are a reminder of how deep the racial divides in America still are – a sentiment she leaves me with.
“From the days of slavery and Jim Crow in this country, we’ve just had the perception of healing, but true healing has never taken place,” she says.
“So the aftermath of George Floyd is yet another example of what we already know.”
On Friday, after a period of relative calm which has included striking a deal with the UK, he threatened to impose a 50% tariff on the EU after claiming trade talks with Brussels were “going nowhere”.
The US president has repeatedly taken issue with the EU, going as far as to claim it was created to rip the US off.
However, in the face of the latest hostile rhetoric from Mr Trump’s social media account, the European Commission – which oversees trade for the 27-country bloc – has refused to back down.
EU trade chief Maros Sefcovic said: “EU-US trade is unmatched and must be guided by mutual respect, not threats.
“We stand ready to defend our interests.”
Image: Donald Trump speaks to reporters in the Oval Office on Friday
Fellow EU leaders and ministers have also held the line after Mr Trump’s comments.
Polish deputy economy minister Michal Baranowski said the tariffs appeared to be a negotiating ploy, with Dutch deputy prime minister Dick Schoof said tariffs “can go up and down”.
French trade minister Laurent Saint-Martin said the latest threats did nothing to help trade talks.
He stressed “de-escalation” was one of the EU’s main aims but warned: “We are ready to respond.”
Mr Sefcovic spoke with US trade representative Jamieson Greer and commerce secretary Howard Lutnick after Mr Trump’s comments.
Mr Trump has previously backed down on a tit-for-tat trade war with China, which saw tariffs soar above 100%.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
3:44
US and China end trade war
Sticking points
Talks between the US and EU have stumbled.
In the past week, Washington sent a list of demands to Brussels – including adopting US food safety standards and removing national digital services taxes, people familiar with the talks told Reuters news agency.
In response, the EU reportedly offered a mutually beneficial deal that could include the bloc potentially buying more liquefied natural gas and soybeans from the US, as well as cooperation on issues such as steel overcapacity, which both sides blame on China.
Stocks tumble as Trump grumbles
Major stock indices tumbled after Mr Trump’s comments, which came as he also threatened to slap US tech giant Apple with a 25% tariff.
The president is adamant that he wants the company’s iPhones to be built in America.
The vast majority of its phones are made in China, and the company has also shifted some production to India.
Shares of Apple ended 3% lower and the dollar sank 1% versus the Japanese yen and the euro rose 0.8% against the dollar.
In the dozens of framed images and newspaper clippings covering the walls of his office in downtown New York City, Al Sharpton is pictured alongside presidents and leading protests.
He has spent decades campaigning and is perhaps the most famous civil rights activist in the US today.
Many of those clippings on the wall relate to one moment in May 2020 – the murder of George Floyd.
Image: George Floyd was killed while under arrest in Minneapolis in May 2020
Speaking to Sky News ahead of the five-year anniversary of that moment, Mr Sharpton remembered the combination of “humiliation and deep anger” he felt seeing the footage of Mr Floyd’s death that swept the world.
“The more I watched, the more angry I felt,” he said.
Mr Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis by Derek Chauvin, a 44-year-old white police officer.
Mr Floyd had been arrested after a store clerk reported he had made a purchase using counterfeit money.
Chauvin knelt on Mr Floyd’s neck for over nine minutes, while he was handcuffed and lying face down in the street.
Image: Chauvin pressed his knee on Mr Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes, as the victim repeatedly said ‘I can’t breathe’. Pic: AP
‘A seismic moment’
For Mr Sharpton, who has marched with countless other families, this felt different because it was “graphic and unnecessary”.
“What kind of person would hear somebody begging for their life and ignore them?” he said.
“I had no idea this would become a seismic moment,” he continued.
“I think people would accuse civil rights leaders, activists like me of being opportunistic, but we don’t know if one call from the next one is going to be big, all we know is we have to answer to the call.”
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
3:23
Has US changed five years after George Floyd’s death?
Trump ‘pouring salt on the wounds’
Mr Floyd’s death took place during Donald Trump’s first term in the White House.
During Trump’s second term, his administration has moved to repeal federal oversight plans for the Minneapolis Police Department – a move originally supported by Joe Biden’s administration.
Mr Sharpton believes Mr Trump and the Department of Justice have purposely timed this for the 5th Anniversary of Mr Floyd’s Death.
“It’s pouring salt on the wounds of those that were killed, and those that fought,” he said.
“I think Donald Trump and his administration is actively trying to reverse and revoke changes and progress made with policing based on the movement we created after George Floyd’s death, worldwide.”
Image: The murder of George Floyd sparked Black Lives Matter protests around the world
Mr Sharpton still supports George Floyd’s family and will be with them this weekend in Houston, Texas, where many of them will mark the anniversary.
He said the legacy of Mr Floyd’s death is still being written.
Evoking the civil rights movement of the 1960s he said: “The challenge is we must turn those moments into permanent movements, it took nine years from 1955 to 1964 for Dr [Martin Luther] King in that movement to get a Civil Rights Act after Rosa Parks sat in the front of a bus in Montgomery.
“We’re five years out of George Floyd, we’ve got to change the laws.
“We can do it in under nine years, but we can’t do it if we take our eye off the prize.”