As attorney general, Kennedy authorized the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to wiretap Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference on a limited basis.

[6][7] In office, Kennedy opposed U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War and raised awareness of poverty by sponsoring legislation designed to lure private business to blighted communities (i.e., Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration project).

He was an advocate for issues related to human rights and social justice by traveling abroad to eastern Europe, Latin America, and South Africa, and formed working relationships with Martin Luther King Jr., Cesar Chavez, and Walter Reuther.

[51] Upon graduating from Harvard, Kennedy sailed on the RMS Queen Mary with a college friend for a tour of Europe and the Middle East, accredited as a correspondent for The Boston Post, filing six stories.

[73] Kennedy was a Massachusetts delegate at the 1956 Democratic National Convention,[74] having replaced Tip O'Neil at the request of his brother John, joining in what was ultimately an unsuccessful effort to help JFK get the vice-presidential nomination.

[110] How important Johnson's intercession was is uncertain,[112] as still other southern Democrats, such as McClellan and Sam Ervin, embraced Kennedy due to his past work on the Senate Labor Rackets Committee,[108][113] and overall the nomination was likely never in doubt.

[116] However, Senator Gordon Allott, a Republican from Colorado who deemed Kennedy unqualified and had come out against the nomination a week earlier,[117] requested a division vote on the candidate, in which members indicate their sentiment by standing.

[120] Author James W. Hilty concludes that Kennedy "played an unusual combination of roles—campaign director, attorney general, executive overseer, controller of patronage, chief adviser, and brother protector" and that nobody before him had had such power.

Through speeches and writing, Kennedy alerted the country to the existence of a "private government of organized crime with an annual income of billions, resting on a base of human suffering and moral corrosion".

[156] Kennedy called the Greyhound Company and demanded that it obtain a coach operator who was willing to drive a special bus for the continuance of the Freedom Ride from Birmingham to Montgomery, on the circuitous journey to Jackson, Mississippi.

[164] Historian David Halberstam wrote that the race question was for a long time a minor ethnic political issue in Massachusetts where the Kennedy brothers came from, and had they been from another part of the country, "they might have been more immediately sensitive to the complexities and depth of black feelings".

[165] In an attempt to better understand and improve race relations, Kennedy held a private meeting on May 24, 1963, in New York City with a black delegation coordinated by prominent author James Baldwin.

The black delegation generally felt that Kennedy did not understand the full extent of racism in the United States, and only alienated the group more when he tried to compare his family's experience with discrimination as Irish Catholics to the racial injustice faced by African Americans.

Yale law professor Charles Reich wrote in The New Republic that the Justice Department had violated civil liberties by calling a federal grand jury to indict U.S. Steel so quickly, then disbanding it after the price increase did not occur.

[180] As his brother's confidant, Kennedy oversaw the CIA's anti-Castro activities after the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion in Cuba, which included covert operations that targeted Cuban civilians.

[190][191] During the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, Kennedy proved himself to be a gifted politician with an ability to obtain compromises, tempering aggressive positions of key figures in the hawk camp.

The trust the president placed in him on matters of negotiation was such that his role in the crisis is today seen as having been of vital importance in securing a blockade, which averted a full military engagement between the United States and the Soviet Union.

[205] In the days following the assassination, he wrote letters to his two eldest children, Kathleen and Joseph, saying that as the oldest Kennedy family members of their generation, they had a special responsibility to remember what their uncle had started and to love and serve their country.

"[210] After a meeting with Kennedy in 1966, historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. wrote: "It is evident that he believes that [the Warren Commission's report] was a poor job and will not endorse it, but that he is unwilling to criticize it and thereby reopen the whole tragic business.

In response to this statement, angry letters poured in directed towards both Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird, expressing disappointment at Kennedy being dropped from the field of potential running mates.

Speaking about his brother's vision for the country, Kennedy quoted from Romeo and Juliet: "When he shall die, take him and cut him out into the stars, and he shall make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night and pay no worship to the garish sun.

[231][230] In search of a way out of the dilemma, Kennedy asked speechwriter Milton Gwirtzman to write a memo comparing two offices: 1) governor of Massachusetts and 2) U.S. senator from New York, and "which would be a better place from which to make a run for the presidency in future years?

A quote from this address appears on his memorial at Arlington National Cemetery: "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.

[284] He visited the Mississippi Delta in April 1967 and eastern Kentucky in February 1968 as a member of the Senate committee reviewing the effectiveness of "War on Poverty" programs, particularly that of the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964.

[285][286] Marian Wright Edelman described Kennedy as "deeply moved and outraged" by the sight of the starving children living in the economically abysmal climate of Mississippi, changing her impression of him from "tough, arrogant, and politically driven".

[291] Kennedy sought to remedy the problems of poverty and urban decay through legislation (i.e., a 1966 amendment to the Economic Opportunity Act)[292] to encourage private industry through tax breaks to locate in poverty-stricken areas, thus creating jobs for the unemployed, and stressed the importance of work over welfare.

"[309] In February 1966, Kennedy released a peace plan that called for preserving South Vietnam while at the same time allowing the National Liberation Front, better known as the Viet Cong, to join a coalition government in Saigon.

"[347] During a speech at the University of Kansas on March 18, Kennedy notably outlined why he thought the gross national product (GNP) was an insufficient measure of success, emphasizing the negative values it accounted for and the positive ones it ignored.

[420] In October 1951, Kennedy embarked on a seven-week Asian trip with his brother John (then a U.S. congressman from Massachusetts' 11th district) and their sister Patricia to Israel, India, Pakistan, Vietnam, and Japan.

That blunt sincerity was said by associates to be authentic; Frank N. Magill wrote that Kennedy's oratorical skills lent their support to minorities and other disenfranchised groups who began seeing him as an ally.