Robert Francis Kennedy (1925-1968), a U.S. senator and the attorney general in the administration of his brother John F. Kennedy, was assassinated during his 1968 race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Robert Kennedy was born on November 20, 1925, in Brookline, Mass. He graduated from Milton Academy before entering Harvard. His college career was interrupted during World War II; just after his oldest brother, Joseph, was killed in combat, Robert joined the Navy and was commissioned a lieutenant. In 1946 he returned to Harvard and took his bachelor of arts degree in 1948. He earned his law degree from the University of Virginia Law School and was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1951. A year earlier he had married Ethel Skakel, by whom he had 11 children, one born posthumously.

In 1951 Kennedy joined the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. He resigned the following year to run John F. Kennedy's...