Jan 3, 202219 min read

Time Out: Senator Robert F. Kennedy: Landon Lecture

I watched with great anticipation when Bobby Kennedy announced his candidacy for President of the United States and recorded the event on my tiny reel-to-reel recorder. We did not live in a world of instant news back then. Although I never heard the Senator speak at Kansas State, I was aware the ‘the campaign was on.’ When I heard this speech in 2021 Bobby Kennedy’s voice and his moral certainty invigorated all those ideals I felt at 17 years old and that were too easily buried between the pages of history. I wanted to bring in as much of that spring of 1968 into volume II of American Injustice as I could without dragging the novel’s flow. The energy of the crowd at this and subsequent speeches sustained that flow.