Passionate leader Robert Francis Kennedy (1925–1968) was born on this day in Brookline, Massachusetts, the seventh child of America’s famous Kennedy family.

He later recalled, “I can hardly remember a mealtime when the conversation was not dominated by what Franklin D. Roosevelt was doing or what was happening in the world.” From an early age, he was listening, learning, and paying attention to the struggles and possibilities around him.

After graduating from Harvard and law school, Kennedy managed his brother John’s successful political campaigns and was appointed Attorney General in 1961, becoming the president’s confidant and a powerful partner in both domestic and foreign policy.

Following President Kennedy’s death, Bobby was elected to the U.S. Senate from New York. With eloquent inspiration, he worked to end the war in Vietnam and, through grassroots activism, stood alongside the poor and powerless. “Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope,” he said.

With this determined hope, he crusaded for civil rights in America alongside Cesar Chavez and Martin Luther King, Jr., and sought freedom for others throughout the world. In a 1966 speech in segregated South Africa, he called for “the enlargement of liberty for individual human beings.”

Kennedy was assassinated in 1968, minutes after winning California’s crucial Democratic presidential primary. On his gravestone are etched the words from Aeschylus: “He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.”