Robert F. Kennedy served as attorney general under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson before becoming a U.S. senator from New York. His record included organized-crime prosecutions, civil-rights enforcement, national-security work, and later criticism of the Vietnam War.
During the 1968 presidential campaign, Kennedy was shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after winning the California Democratic primary and died the following day. The assassination joined the killings of John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr. in the public memory of the decade.
Issue #16 uses a radio report of the shooting to anchor Lee’s hallucinatory conversation. The historical death supplies the setting; the claim that collective belief or a hidden reality conflict caused it belongs to the story.
A report of Kennedy’s shooting fixes Lee’s encounter in June 1968 and makes political assassination part of the discussion about national identity.
Lee and the red-haired figure interpret the decade’s violence as a struggle over what America will become. They do not provide a verified account of Kennedy’s murder.
Kennedy’s public service, campaign, shooting, and death are documented. The Department and its reality mechanics are fictional.
Attorney general and senator
Kennedy’s Justice Department pursued organized crime and became more active in enforcing federal civil-rights protections, though the administration’s path was shaped by political caution, surveillance, and conflict. As senator, he addressed poverty and opposed further escalation in Vietnam.
These roles made him both part of federal power and a candidate associated with political change, a contradiction the comic places inside its wider distrust of institutions.
The meaning of 1968
In issue #16 the news does not solve a case; it changes the emotional pressure of the room. Another public figure associated with a possible future has been violently removed.
The sequence matters without requiring a unified conspiracy. The story’s speaker tries to make the deaths one narrative, while the historical record requires each event to be examined on its own evidence.
References
- U.S. Department of Justice — Robert Francis KennedyOfficial biography and attorney-general record.
- The Department of Truth #16Primary fictional source; 1968 setting and discussion of political violence.