() – Ethel Kennedy, widow of Robert F. Kennedy, has died, her family announced Thursday. He was 96 years old.
Former Massachusetts Representative Joe Kennedy III announced the news of his grandmother’s death in X. Ethel Kennedy had been hospitalized after suffering a stroke last week.
“Along with a lifetime of work dedicated to social justice and human rights, our mother leaves behind nine children, 34 grandchildren and 24 great-grandchildren, along with numerous nieces and nephews, all of whom love her deeply,” the former congressman wrote in a publication. “She was a devout Catholic and daily communicant, and we take comfort in knowing that she has been reunited with the love of her life, our father, Robert F. Kennedy; his sons David and Michael; his daughter-in-law Mary; his granddaughters Maeve and Saoirse; and his great-grandchildren Gideon and Josie.”
Marrying into one of the most influential political families in the United States, Kennedy supported her husband during his successful Senate campaign and later during his 1968 presidential bid, which ended with his assassination months into the race. Campaign.
Her husband was tragically shot to death in a Los Angeles hotel just after winning the California Democratic primary. The attack, which occurred five years after Robert F. Kennedy’s brother, former President John F. Kennedy, was assassinated, left five other people injured and shook a nation already shaken by multiple assassinations. Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. had also been assassinated approximately two months earlier. Photos of the shooting show Ethel Kennedy leaning over her husband with her hands on his chest as he bled on the ground. She was three months pregnant with her youngest daughter, Rory, at the time.
In the decades after her husband’s death, Ethel Kennedy emerged as an environmental and human rights activist in her own right, founding the nonprofit Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights to champion the causes her late husband promoted.
Her activism took her across the country and the world, from marching with César Chávez in support of the Farm Workers movement to confronting Kenyan dictator Daniel Arap Moi with her daughter Kerry at her side in 1989. She received the country’s highest civilian honor , the Presidential Medal of Freedom, from President Barack Obama in 2014. His activism continued until the last decades of his life. In 2018, Kennedy participated in a hunger strike to protest the separation of families at the US-Mexico border by the then Trump administration.
“Generations of Americans did not work and sacrifice to build a country where children and their parents are placed in cages to advance a cynical political agenda,” he said in a statement at the time.
More recently, Ethel Kennedy’s family became embroiled in a political dispute when her eldest son, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., ran for president in 2024, initially as a Democrat and then as an independent. Members of the family, staunchly Democratic, rejected his campaign, calling it “dangerous” and expressing frustration and sadness. RFK Jr. suspended his campaign in August and endorsed former President Donald Trump.
Born into a large family in Chicago in 1928, Ethel Kennedy grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut. She met Robert F. Kennedy in 1945 through his sister, Jean Kennedy, on a ski trip. The couple married in 1950 and had 11 children.
Ethel Kennedy’s life, like that of many of her family members, was marked by a series of tragedies. His father, George Skakel, a wealthy coal magnate, and his mother, Ann Skakel, died in a plane crash in 1955. His brother died in a plane crash in 1966. His son David died in 1984 from an accidental drug overdose. , and another son, Michael, died in a skiing accident in 1997. His granddaughter Saoirse Kennedy Hill died of an accidental overdose in 2019, and another granddaughter, Maeve Kennedy Townsend McKean, drowned with her 8-year-old son in a skiing accident. canoe in 2020.
This story has been updated with additional information.
‘s Paul LeBlanc and Tom Foreman contributed to this report.
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