PORTLAND, Ore. -- June 5, 2018 is the 50th anniversary of the shooting of Robert Kennedy.
In late spring of 1968, Kennedy brought his campaign for president to Oregon trying to capture the state’s early primary.
He spent weeks canvassing Oregon by car, train and on foot with stops in every major city and many smaller ones.
This very rare film from the KGW archives highlights a few of Kennedy’s speeches in the state, including at Lloyd Center Mall, Portland State University and from the “Beaver Express”, a whistle-stop campaign train tour he made of the Willamette Valley.
In the end, although drawing record setting crowds of highly energized young Oregonians, the Oregon primary went to Eugene McCarthy who took 44 percent of the vote to Kennedy’s 38 percent.
He left Oregon on May 29 to campaign in the June 4 California primary, which he won with 46 percent of the vote. It was after his victory speech at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles in the early morning hours of June 5 that he was shot. He died the next morning.