RFK Funeral Train

by Norman Mailer, Evan Thomas

On 6/5/68, while campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination, New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. His death, which occurred only two months after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., came as a terrible shock to an already-grieving nation. Three days later, a funeral train carried his coffin from New York to its final resting place in Arlington Cemetery. Hundreds of thousands of people stood in the searing heat as the train traveled slowly en route to Washington, D.C. Paul Fusco, then a staff photographer for Look magazine, accompanied the train on its journey. The images he made convey the respect the American people--both rich & poor, black & white--held for RFK, a man who had come to symbolize social justice. As Fusco writes, "when Bobby rose to try to reestablish a government of hope, the hearts of Americans quickened & excitement flared. Then tragedy struck again. The blow was monumental." Two previous versions of RFK Funeral Train--a 1999 limited-edition and a 2000 edition (now out-of-print)--have been heralded as contemporary classics. This newly expanded volume--released to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of Kennedy's death--offers 30 never-before-published images, alongside a memoir of Kennedy by Norman Mailer & a retelling of the assassination by Newsweek editor & RFK biographer Evan Thomas.

Genres: Photography, History, Art, Politics

180 pages, Hardcover

First published November 15, 2000

About the author

Norman Kingsley Mailer was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, and film director.

Along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, and Tom Wolfe, Mailer is considered an innovator of creative nonfiction, a genre sometimes called New Journalism, but which covers the essay to the nonfiction novel. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize twice and the National Book Award once. In 1955, Mailer, together with Ed Fancher and Dan Wolf, first published The Village Voice, which began as an arts- and politics-oriented weekly newspaper initially distributed in Greenwich Village. In 2005, he won the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from The National Book Foundation.

Reviews

[Catherine Corman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.

-Edward Kennedy, eulogy for Robert F. Kennedy

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gorgeous gorgeous book. The photographs are so affecting, and do something more than words of tribute could.

[Courtney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing images - simultaneously emotionally evocative and high art. Couldn't put it down.

[Evelyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Paul Fusco died shortly before John Lewis, so these pictures were fresh in mind when the great Civil Rights leader left us. Taken from aboard the funeral train that bore Kennedy from New York to his burial in Arlington, these photos capture many of the people who lined the tracks to honor Kennedy. Individually and as a group, they make for a terrible beauty.

[raul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kodachrome, 1968, and a nation full of emotion. Powerful stuff.