RFK Young Leaders

Inspired by the legacy of Robert Kennedy, RFK Young Leaders are dedicated to empowering young human rights defenders. For 2012, its first project was funding and supporting the Young Leaders Fellow, who will work with volunteers to spread the word about Speak Truth to Power in New York City. Click here to help support efforts to fund the Young Leaders Fellow.

Inspiring Young Leaders: the Life of Robert F. Kennedy

Robert Kennedy championed the disenfranchised from Watts to the Mississippi Delta. He battled corrupt union bosses and protected Alabama Freedom Riders. He marched with Cesar Chavez and opposed the Vietnam War. He soothed those who suffered, and he suffered himself. He fought racism, lauded courage, and called for peace. Serving as the U.S. attorney general, as a senator, and as a presidential candidate during the 1960s, he fought tirelessly to promote social justice and human rights, both in the United States and abroad.

As a Senator for New York, he initiated projects such as assistance to underprivileged children and students with disabilities in the state. He established the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation to improve living conditions and employment opportunities in depressed areas of Brooklyn. Today, the program remains a model for communities across the nation.

In March 1968, Robert Kennedy announced his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination, a campaign characterized by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. as "uproarious, filled with enthusiasm and fun. .. and moving in its sweep and passion." Robert Kennedy brought hope and challenge to an American people troubled by discontent and violence at home and by war in Vietnam. Although his life was cut short during the campaign, Robert Kennedy's vision and ideals live on today through the work of his family, friends, the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, and the RFK Young Leaders.

Our answer is the world’s hope; it is to rely on youth…This world demands the qualities of youth: not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the life of ease. It is a revolutionary world that we all live in; and thus, it is the young people who must take the lead. – Robert F. Kennedy, 1966