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The 1960's

Robert Kennedy

Robert Kennedy
Reading Level
     edHelper's suggested reading level:   grades 7 to 9
     Flesch-Kincaid grade level:   8.37

Vocabulary
     challenging words:    betterment, candidacy, fatally, charismatic, determined, happening, ballroom, policies, withdrawal, tactics, presidency, better, politics, wounded, federal, controversial
     content words:    Robert Kennedy, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harvard University, World War II, Virginia Law School, Senate Subcommittee, Senator Joseph McCarthy, Senator McCarthy, Jack Kennedy, United States

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Robert Kennedy
By Jane Runyon 		  
1     Robert Kennedy liked to tell people that he was a survivor. He said that being the seventh child in a family of nine children taught him how to get through any situation. He used his brain and his Massachusetts charm to survive many events in his life. He could not survive an assassin's bullet. He died at the hand of someone he had never met. His brother Jack had died the same way just five years earlier.
 
2     As a young man, and even as an adult, Robert was known to all who knew him as Bobby. Mealtime in young Bobby Kennedy's Massachusetts household was always filled with discussion. He remembered many dinner table conversations centered on the political decisions made by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Robert received a degree in government from Harvard University in 1948. He had postponed entering the university right after high school to serve in the Navy near the end of World War II. In 1951 he received a law degree from the University of Virginia Law School. His desire to study law and government had all begun at the family meals of his youth.
 
3     Bobby Kennedy's first job in government was to manage his brother Jack's campaign for senator from Massachusetts. He successfully completed that job. Bobby then became a staff member on a Senate Subcommittee chaired by the very controversial Senator Joseph McCarthy. Senator McCarthy was convinced that Communist forces were going to take over America. He was bound and determined to stop the Communist traitors in their tracks. Robert Kennedy became disillusioned by the tactics used by Senator McCarthy. He resigned his position after only six months. He later became legal counsel for the senate committee which condemned McCarthy and his investigations.

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