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When Senator Robert F. Kennedy Went To Chadron And The Pine Ridge Reservation [1]

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Date: 2023-04-15  

Robert Kennedy first became concerned about the problems facing Native Americans when he served as Attorney General in the Kennedy Administration. After he was elected to the U.S. Senate, he established the Senate Subcommittee on Indian Education and served as its chairman. Before he announced his presidential candidacy Kennedy had scheduled hearings at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota on April 16 as part of his education agenda.

The only way for Kennedy to reach the Pine Ridge reservation was to fly into the nearest airport in tiny Chadron, Nebraska. This northwest Nebraska town had a population of approximately five thousand eight hundred people in 1968. While there his campaign held a rally on the morning of April 16.

A boisterous crowd of about six thousand people greeted Kennedy and his entourage at the Chadron airport. The crowd mostly consisted of students since the area high schools and Chadron State College had cancelled classes for the rally. Cars jammed the highways in the Chadron area as early as two hours before Kennedy’s appearance. After landing and disembarking from the plane, Kennedy spent fifteen minutes near the gate working the crowd. While Kennedy was shaking hands, he was rushed by the crowd who knocked down a fence, toppling hundreds of people. Kennedy stepped back just in time to avoid getting pushed over. Fortunately, there was only one minor injury.

After avoiding the onrushing crowd, Kennedy mounted a small bench where he addressed the audience for about ten minutes. The New York Senator said he was pleased with the large turnout and joked that he was happy to spot the Nixon supporters in the crowd who were carrying signs.[i] This was a common occurrence at Kennedy’s rallies in Nebraska and he enjoyed bantering with the supporters of opposing candidates. His speech then took a more serious turn: “The time is now to decide the direction the U.S. will take. There is so much to be done.” Kennedy cited the problems facing the United States, emphasizing “lawlessness and tension between the Black and Whites.” After briefly discussing some of the most important national issues Kennedy shifted gears and devoted the remainder of his remarks to agriculture.

“You probably wonder why I, an easterner, am bothered with Nebraska. But the problems in Nebraska are problems for the other forty-nine states as well. If it concerns you, it is a problem elsewhere…The farmer today is not getting his fair share of the financial returns for his products.” In rhetoric which harkened back to Franklin Roosevelt, Kennedy termed the farmer the “forgotten man.”

Kennedy again returned to humor — a common staple of his campaign stops in Nebraska. The voters enjoyed it and it humanized Kennedy, somebody with whom they had little in common. Nebraska voters liked Kennedy and he liked them. It was an unlikely coupling. He joked: “I myself do something for the farmer. I feed my family. I don’t know of any candidate who does as much for the farmer as I do, and I challenge them to match my record between now and the election. I don’t know of any candidate’s family who eats more food and drinks more milk than my family.”

After this well received bit of humor Kennedy discussed the same platform he referenced on March 28 in Lincoln. Once again, he advocated for lower interest rates for agricultural loans and collective bargaining for farmers. Kennedy wrapped up his remarks by asking the voters for their help and promised to return to Nebraska.

After the event Kennedy and two Senate colleagues left to drive sixty miles to the Pine Ridge reservation. Upon his arrival, Kennedy was appalled by the conditions at Pine Ridge and frequently uttered the word “outrageous” as he toured the reservation. There were none of the modern conveniences that most Americans had grown accustomed to — no grocery stores, public transportation, or banks. Junked cars and shacks littered the landscape. Only half of the homes had electricity and even fewer had running water. The unemployment rate was 75 percent and residents had one of the lowest life expectancies in the Americas. At the time life expectancy was fifty-two years for women and forty-eight years for men (in 2022 Pine Ridge still has the lowest life expectancy in the United States). Kennedy remarked that some of the money spent on the Vietnam War would be better spent to alleviate the poverty at Pine Ridge.

After concluding his subcommittee hearings Kennedy was already late for Rapid City, but Senator George McGovern (D-SD) had told Kennedy that the Wounded Knee monument was the most important site for Plains Indians. Kennedy insisted that McGovern take him there and brought ten-year-old Christopher Pretty Boy with him, a Lakota boy whose parents had been killed in a car accident the previous week. The boy continued, as he had for the entire day, holding Kennedy’s hand.

It was at this site on December 29, 1890 that federal troops wantonly massacred upwards of three hundred Lakota men, women, and children. It is thought that an accidental firearm discharge was the immediate cause, but on a larger scale the massacre was prompted (and justified) by growing, unfounded fears of a Lakota uprising with the spread of the Ghost Dance. The Ghost Dance, a pan-Native religious movement founded by the Paiute prophet Wovoka, promised to disappear white invaders from Native lands, restore the nearly extinct buffalo, and bring peace. It brought hope to peoples whose populations, ways of life, resources, and territories had been systematically targeted for eradication by the U.S. Government.

Kennedy demanded to see the small monument marking the mass grave where troops had unceremoniously dumped over one hundred frozen Lakota corpses three days later. At a time when giddy tourists bought postcards featuring pictures of the contorted corpses at a gift shop nearby, Kennedy’s demeanor was sober. “I should have brought flowers,” he muttered. His visit to Pine Ridge and Wounded Knee could not benefit him much politically, and moreover he went well out of his way to stand at this spot. Kennedy visited because he wanted to understand the injustices leveled against the Lakota and all Native American peoples since contact. He wanted to witness their suffering firsthand. He visited because he cared. Kennedy bowed his head at Wounded Knee to strengthen and reaffirm his promise, to himself as much as to God, to be a tireless champion of the poor and oppressed.

After this somber visit the Kennedy motorcade departed for Chadron. Kennedy shook hands with a small group that had gathered there and boarded a flight for a rally in Rapid City, South Dakota. Shortly after Kennedy left Nebraska on April 16 his campaign announced that he would swing through Scottsbluff, Norfolk, Wayne, and Hartington on April 20. In addition, the Kennedy campaign informed the press about a major television buy in Nebraska. Media sources told the Associated Press that Kennedy plan to spend $100,000 on a television blitz, or about $850,000 in today’s dollars. Kennedy’s television buy was going to be “twice as much as any candidate, Republican or Democrat, and heavier than we’ve ever had in a presidential primary.”

The Nebraska primary was hotly contested in 1968. Kennedy spent ten campaign days in Nebraska and Eugene McCarthy spent eight days in the Husker state. Both campaigns had well organized voter turnout operations that reached every Democratic voter and even some Republicans. Nebraska had not heard the last from the Democratic candidates for president. In 1968, Nebraska mattered.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/15/2164097/-When-Senator-Robert-F-Kennedy-Went-To-Chadron-And-The-Pine-Ridge-Reservation

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