Ethel Kennedy, widow of former U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and a lifelong advocate for human rights, passed away on Thursday at the age of 96, her family announced. Former Massachusetts Rep. Joe Kennedy III shared the news on X, revealing that his grandmother had been hospitalized after suffering a stroke the previous week.
“Our mother, who dedicated her life to social justice and human rights, leaves behind nine children, 34 grandchildren, 24 great-grandchildren, and countless nieces and nephews, all of whom loved her deeply,” Joe Kennedy wrote. “She was a devout Catholic, and we find comfort in knowing she has been reunited with the love of her life, our father Robert F. Kennedy, as well as her children David and Michael, her daughter-in-law Mary, and grandchildren Maeve and Saoirse, and great-grandchildren Gideon and Josie.”
Ethel Kennedy married into one of America’s most prominent political dynasties and supported her husband through his Senate career and his 1968 presidential campaign. That campaign was tragically cut short when Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated at a Los Angeles hotel after winning the California Democratic primary. The assassination, which came five years after his brother, President John F. Kennedy, was killed, left the nation reeling, already shaken by the recent murder of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. Ethel Kennedy, three months pregnant with their youngest daughter Rory at the time, was photographed at the scene, leaning over her husband as he lay bleeding on the hotel floor.
In the years following her husband’s death, Ethel Kennedy became a notable activist in her own right. She founded the nonprofit Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights organization, dedicated to championing the causes her husband had fought for, including human rights and environmental justice. She marched with labor leader Cesar Chavez in support of farm workers and, in 1989, traveled with her daughter Kerry to confront Kenyan dictator Daniel Arap Moi over human rights abuses. In 2014, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama in recognition of her tireless efforts.
Ethel Kennedy continued her activism into her later years, joining a hunger strike in 2018 to protest the Trump administration’s policy of separating families at the U.S.-Mexico border. “Generations of Americans did not toil and sacrifice to build a country where children and their parents are placed in cages to advance a cynical political agenda,” she stated at the time.
Her final years were marked by political division within her own family when her eldest son, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., launched a controversial presidential campaign in 2024, first as a Democrat and later as an independent. His campaign, which his family labeled “dangerous,” was widely disavowed by the staunchly Democratic Kennedys.
Born in Chicago in 1928, Ethel Kennedy grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut. She met Robert F. Kennedy in 1945 through his sister, Jean, and the couple married in 1950, eventually raising 11 children together.
Like many members of her family, Ethel Kennedy’s life was marked by a series of personal tragedies. Her parents died in a plane crash in 1955, and her brother perished in another crash in 1966. Her son David died of a drug overdose in 1984, and her son Michael was killed in a skiing accident in 1997. More recently, her granddaughter Saoirse Kennedy Hill died of an overdose in 2019, and another granddaughter, Maeve Kennedy Townsend McKean, drowned along with her 8-year-old son in a canoeing accident in 2020.
Despite these tragedies, Ethel Kennedy’s legacy as a fierce advocate for justice and human rights will endure for generations.