Bobby Kennedy spoke to Foremen’s Club in York about labor racketeering
Robert F. Kennedy was following in his assassinated brother’s footsteps. Lyndon Johnson received the Democratic Party’s nod that year and eventually served a full term as president. Bobby Kennedy, assassinated while campaigning in 1968, gave a speech in York in 1959. Background posts: Lady Bird Johnson visits York, LBJ: In small towns, girls are fonder; dinner pails fuller and ‘Poor Phil Livingston … so Honest a Man’.
Robert Kennedy told a large gathering of the Foreman’s Club in September 1959 that new legislation in Congress would slow down alleged racketeering by Teamsters head Jimmy Hoffa.
Kennedy was speaking from the vantage point as counsel for the Senate Labor Rackets Committee… .
Veteran newsman Harry McLaughlin gave this account in an undated newspaper article found in York County Heritage Trust files. (Hoffa later was imprisoned on corruption charges.)
McLaughlin also wrote about an personal interview with Bobby Kennedy in which he quizzed the younger Kennedy about the presidential aspirations of his brother, Jack.
“If he is a candidate,” Bobby Kennedy told McLaughlin, “I’ll probably help him.”
A couple of weeks later, McLaughlin wrote, Jack Kennedy began his presidential bid.
And Bobby was at his side.
For scores of posts on presidential links to York County, see this blog’s presidential stops category.
