Robert F. Kennedy

Born into the Kennedy dynasty in Brookline in 1925, Robert Kennedy managed his brother John's Senate run in 1952, then made his name grilling Jimmy Hoffa as chief counsel of the Senate Labor Rackets Committee from 1957 to 1959. At 35 he became one of the youngest attorneys general in history, pushing civil rights enforcement and authorizing wiretaps on Martin Luther King Jr. while navigating Cold War crises alongside the president. After John's assassination in 1963 he stayed under Lyndon Johnson briefly, then won a New York Senate seat in 1964 despite carpetbagger charges. He opposed Vietnam, sponsored anti-poverty legislation in Bedford-Stuyvesant, and traveled to South Africa and Latin America championing social justice. In 1968 he mounted a presidential campaign that drew African American, Hispanic, Catholic, and young voters - his chief rival Eugene McCarthy - and shortly after midnight on June 5, moments after winning California, Sirhan Sirhan shot him in retaliation for his support of Israel. He died 25 hours later.