The U.S. senator and presidential candidate was fatally shot in 1968.
After the assassination of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy in June 1968, more than 2,000 people gathered inside New York City's St. Patrick’s Cathedral to pay their respects.
Tuesday marks 50 years since Kennedy’s death and InsideEdition.com is taking a look back at the funeral of the slain lawmaker who was pursuing the Democratic nomination for president of the United States at the time of his death.
Kennedy was shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, Calif., on June 5, moments after announcing his win in the California presidential primary.
It looked like he would receive the Democratic nomination for the presidency and go up against Richard Nixon in the general election. He had been campaigning for three months.
That dream was cut short, however, when Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian, stepped out of a crowd in the hotel's kitchen with a rolled up campaign poster hiding a .22 revolver, and shot Kennedy multiple times. Kennedy died the following day.
On June 8, 1968, thousands attended Kennedy’s funeral, including Coretta Scott King and President Lyndon B. Johnson. Outside the church, thousands listened to the service through a loud speaker as Kennedy’s brother, Ted Kennedy, gave a eulogy.
Ted Kennedy said his brother should be remembered as a, "good and decent man," who "saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it."
A funeral train then carried Kennedy’s body from New York to Washington D.C. Along the entire route, thousands paid their respects.
The procession ended at Arlington Cemetery where a brief candlelight ceremony was held.
Kennedy was laid to rest next to his brother, John F. Kennedy.
“What joy he brought us,” Rose Kennedy, Robert Kennedy’s mother, said during a memorial service years later. “What an aching void there is without him. We admired him. We loved him and the world is indeed bleak without him."
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