Evansville Vanderburgh Public Library

All this marvelous potential, Robert Kennedy's 1968 tour of Appalachia, Matthew Algeo

Label
All this marvelous potential, Robert Kennedy's 1968 tour of Appalachia, Matthew Algeo
Language
eng
resource.accompanyingMatter
technical information on music
Form of composition
not applicable
Format of music
not applicable
Literary text for sound recordings
other
Main title
All this marvelous potential
Responsibility statement
Matthew Algeo
Sub title
Robert Kennedy's 1968 tour of Appalachia
Summary
In the winter of 1967-68, Robert F. Kennedy, then a US Senator from New York, ventured deep into the heart of Appalachia. As acting chairman of a Senate subcommittee on poverty, RFK went to eastern Kentucky to gauge the progress of the War on Poverty. He was deeply disillusioned by what he found. Kennedy learned that job training programs were useless, welfare programs proved insufficient, and jobs were scarce and getting scarcer. Before he'd even left the state, Kennedy had determined the War on Poverty was a failure-and he blamed Lyndon Johnson. Robert Kennedy wasn't merely on a fact-finding mission, however; he was considering challenging Johnson for the Democratic presidential nomination, but he needed support from white voters to win it. His trip to eastern Kentucky was an opportunity to test his antiwar and antipoverty message with hardscrabble whites. Kennedy encountered deep resentment in the mountains, and a special disdain for establishment politicians. A month after his visit, RFK officially announced he was challenging Johnson for the Democratic nomination. Four months after his visit, he was murdered. He was forty-two. All This Marvelous Potential retraces RFK's tour of eastern Kentucky and provides a new portrait of the politician-a politician of uncommon courage who was unafraid to shine a light on our shortcomings
Target audience
adult
Transposition and arrangement
not applicable
Classification
Contributor