His soft-spoken speech to a largely black audience in Indianapolis on the night of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination was a stunning and effective call for peace in American that can still give the reader chills. He challenged his audiences: telling college students he would end the draft deferments that left poor and minority youths to fight in Vietnam and telling whites that they bore responsibility for black frustration and rage. Although fearing that there were, as he told one confidant, 'guns between me and the White House,' he risked his life to ask Americans to help him reclaim 'the generous impulses that are the soul of this nation.'Īs Thurston Clarke recounts so effectively in The Last Campaign, Kennedy stirred huge crowds, who would often tear his clothes, and moved even the most hard-bitten of journalists and other intimate observers.

He sensed that America was wounded, and when he announced that he was running for president, much of the country was thrilled to hear his message of healing and hope. He was haunted by his brother's murder and by the nation's failure to address its most pressing challenges - race, poverty, and the war in Vietnam.

After John Kennedy's assassination, Robert - formerly his brother's no-holds-barred political warrior - was left stunned and grieving.

The Last Campaign by Thurston Clarke