1968 — The Basement

Fifty-two years ago today, a man running an outsider campaign for President won the California primary. He was trying to convince the powers that be in the Democratic party that he was the best candidate to win the 1968 Presidential campaign and move the country away from war, poverty, division, and injustice. It had been a hard fight that had left him exhausted; he had seen hundreds of thousands of people, black, white, brown, native, immigrant, poor, middle class and they had snatched at him, wrung his hands, stolen cufflinks, tie clasps and even his shoes in an effort to touch, to support, to remember him. He was their hope when hope seemed a distant thing and they loved him for it.

"And now, it's on to Chicago, and let's win there." He told his supporters at the rally, and he stepped away from the stage, letting his aides guide him not through the crowd as he usually went, but out the back way through a kitchen. As he stopped to shake teenage busboy Juan Romero's hand, a gunman ended the hopes of millions of people. Robert Kennedy, Senator, husband, father of eleven children, and brother of a slain president laid on the floor shot in the head, Juan's rosary pressed into his hand. "Is everyone alright?" he asked.

He would die officially hours later, and America still hasn't recovered from that summer of destruction and death.