Ethel Kennedy, human rights activist and widow of Robert F. Kennedy, dies at age 96

CNN
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Ethel Kennedy, the widow of former U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and a longtime human rights activist, died Thursday, her family said. She was 96.

Former Massachusetts Rep. Joe Kennedy III announced the news of his Grandmother X’s death. Ethel Kennedy was hospitalized last week after suffering a stroke.

“In addition to her life’s work for social justice and human rights, our mother leaves behind nine children, 34 grandchildren and 24 great-grandchildren, as well as numerous nieces and nephews, all of whom love her dearly,” the former congressman wrote in a letter posted. “She was a devout Catholic and communicated daily, and we are comforted to know that she is reunited with the love of her life, our father, Robert F. Kennedy. her children David and Michael; her daughter-in-law, Mary; her grandchildren Maeve and Saoirse; and her great-grandchildren Gideon and Josie.”

Kennedy married into one of the most influential political families in the United States and supported her husband in his successful Senate campaign and later in his 1968 presidential bid, which ended with his assassination months into the campaign.

Her husband was tragically shot in a Los Angeles hotel shortly after winning the Democratic primary in California. The attack, which came five years after the shooting of Robert F. Kennedy’s brother, former President John F. Kennedy, left five more wounded and shocked a nation already reeling from multiple assassination attempts; Civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. had been killed about two months earlier. Photos from the shooting show Ethel Kennedy leaning over her husband and placing her hands on his chest as he falls to the floor, bleeding to death. At the time, she was three months pregnant with her youngest daughter, Rory.

In the decades following her husband’s death, Ethel Kennedy became an environmental and human rights activist in her own right, founding the nonprofit organization Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights to advocate for her late husband’s causes.

Her activism took her across the country and the world, from a march with Cesar Chavez in support of the farm workers movement to confronting Kenyan dictator Daniel Arap Moi with her daughter Kerry in 1989. She received the country’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded by President Barack Obama in 2014. Her activism continued well into the final decades of her life. In 2018, Kennedy joined a hunger strike to protest the then-Trump administration’s separation of families at the U.S.-Mexico border.

“Generations of Americans have not toiled and sacrificed to build a country where children and their parents are locked in cages to advance a cynical political agenda,” she said in a statement at the time.

Most recently, Ethel Kennedy’s family was caught in political turmoil when her eldest son, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., ran for president in 2024, first as a Democrat and later as an independent. Members of the staunch Democratic family opposed his campaign, calling it “dangerous” and expressing frustration and sadness. RFK Jr. paused his campaign in August and endorsed former President Donald Trump.

Ethel Kennedy was born in Chicago in 1928 into a large family and grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut. She met Robert F. Kennedy through his sister Jean Kennedy on a ski trip in 1945. 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. Her father, George Skakel, a wealthy coal magnate, and her mother, Ann Skakel, died in a plane accident in 1955. Her brother died in a plane crash in 1966. Their son David died of an accidental drug overdose in 1984 and another son Michael died in a skiing accident in 1997. Her granddaughter Saoirse Kennedy Hill died of an accidental overdose in 2019, and another granddaughter, Maeve Kennedy Townsend McKean, drowned in a canoeing accident with her 8-year-old son in 2020.

This story has been updated with additional information.

CNN’s Paul LeBlanc and Tom Foreman contributed to this report.