Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy served as U.S. attorney general from 1961 to 1964 under his brother, President John F. Kennedy, and President Lyndon B. Johnson. Kennedy went on to become a U.S. senator from New York and a 1968 Democratic Party presidential candidate, but his life was cut short by political assassination in June 1968. Kennedy was a controversial public figure, who worked with anti-Communist senator Joseph R. McCarthy in the early 1950s but later embraced liberal causes such as civil rights that infuriated other segments of the population.

Kennedy was born on November 20, 1925 in Brookline, Massachusetts. Kennedy, the son of millionaire businessman Joseph Kennedy, served in the Navy during World War II and then returned to Harvard University, where he earned a degree in 1948. After graduating from the University of Virginia in 1951, Kennedy briefly served in the U.S. Department of Justice before returning to Boston to manage John Kennedy's...