Born on November 20, 1925, in Brookline, Massachusetts, Robert Kennedy was the seventh of Joseph and Rose Kennedy's nine children. Starting out as a poor student, he eventually began to excel academically. In 1946, after his discharge from the navy, Robert helped with brother John's campaign for the U.S. House of Representatives.

In 1948, he graduated from Harvard, then earned his law degree from the University of Virginia in 1951. In the early 1950s, Kennedy worked as an investigative lawyer for the Justice Department, interrupted in 1952 when he ran his brother John's U.S. Senate campaign. In 1953, he resigned his position on the Senate investigations committee in protest over the methods used by committee head Joseph R. McCarthy (1908-1957) in his hunt for communists in the government. The following year, after McCarthy's spectacular downfall, Kennedy returned as the committee's chief counsel (head lawyer). For six years, he worked...