Ethel Kennedy, social activist and wife of Robert F. Kennedy, has died

BOSTON, Mass. (AP) — Ethel Kennedy, the wife of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, who raised their 11 children after he was assassinated and remained dedicated to social causes and the family’s legacy for decades thereafter, died on Thursday, her family said. She was 96.

“It is with our hearts full of love that we announce the passing of our amazing grandmother,” Joe Kennedy III posted on X. “She died this morning from complications related to a stroke suffered last week.”

“Along with a lifetime’s work in social justice and human rights, our mother leaves behind nine children, 34 grandchildren and 24 great-great-grandchildren, along with numerous nieces and nephews, all of whom love her dearly,” the family statement said.

President Joe Biden called her “an American icon — a matriarch of optimism and moral courage, an emblem of resilience and service.”

“For over 50 years, Ethel traveled, marched, boycotted, and stood up for human rights around the world with her signature iron will and grace,” Biden said.

The Kennedy matriarch, mother to Kathleen, Joseph II, Robert Jr., David, Courtney, Michael, Kerry, Christopher, Max, Douglas and Rory, was one of the last remaining members of a family generation that included President John F. Kennedy. Her family said she had recently enjoyed seeing many of her relatives before falling ill.

A millionaire’s daughter who married the future senator and attorney general in 1950, Ethel Kennedy had endured more death by the age of 40, for the whole world to see, than most people would in a lifetime.

She was by Robert F. Kennedy’s side when he was fatally shot in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on June 5, 1968, just after winning California's Democratic presidential primary. Her brother-in-law had been assassinated in Dallas less than five years earlier.

Her parents were killed in a plane crash in 1955, and her brother died in a 1966 crash. Her son David Kennedy overdosed, son Michael Kennedy died in a skiing accident and nephew John F. Kennedy Jr. in a plane crash. Another nephew, Michael Skakel, was found guilty of murder before the Connecticut Supreme Court ultimately vacated his conviction. And in 2019, her granddaughter Saoirse Kennedy Hill died of an apparent overdose.

“One wonders how much this family must be expected to absorb,” family friend Philip Johnson, founder of the Robert F. Kennedy Foundation, told the Boston Herald after Michael Kennedy’s death.

Ethel Kennedy sustained herself through faith and devotion to family.

“She was a devout Catholic and a daily communicant, and we are comforted in knowing she is reunited with the love of her life, our father, Robert F. Kennedy; her children David and Michael; her daughter-in-law Mary; her grandchildren Maeve and Saorise and her great-grandchildren Gideon and Josie. Please keep our mother in your hearts and prayers,” the family statement said.

Ethel's mother-in-law, Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, initially wondered how she would handle so much tragedy.

“I knew how difficult it was going to be for her to raise that big family without the guiding role and influence that Bobby would have provided,” Rose recalled in her memoir, “Times to Remember.” “And, of course, she realized this too, fully and keenly. Yet she did not give way.”

Ethel Kennedy founded the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights soon after her husband’s death and advocated for causes including gun control and human rights. She rarely spoke about her husband’s assassination. When her filmmaker daughter Rory brought it up in the 2012 HBO documentary, “Ethel,” she couldn't share her grief.

“When we lost Daddy ...” she began, then teared up and asked that her youngest daughter “talk about something else.”

Many of her progeny became well known. Daughter Kathleen became lieutenant governor of Maryland; Joseph represented Massachusetts in Congress; Courtney married Paul Hill, who had been wrongfully convicted of an Irish Republican Army bombing; Kerry became a human rights activist and president of the RFK center; Christopher ran for Illinois governor; Max served as a prosecutor in Philadelphia and Douglas reported for Fox News Channel.

Her son Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also became a national figure — first as an environmental lawyer and more recently as a conspiracy theorist spreading false theories about vaccines. He ran for president as an independent after briefly challenging Biden, and his name remained on ballots in multiple states after he suspended his campaign and endorsed Donald Trump.

Ethel Kennedy did not comment publicly on her son's actions, although several other family members denounced him.

Decades earlier, she seemed to thrive on her in-laws’ rising power, enthusiastically backing the 1960 campaign and hosting some of the era’s most well-attended parties at their Hickory Hill estate in McLean, Virginia, including one where historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. was pushed fully clothed into the swimming pool. In the Kennedy spirit, she also was a highly competitive tennis player.

“Petite and peppy Ethel, who doesn’t look one bit the outdoorsy type, considers outdoor activity so important for the children that she has arranged her busy Cabinet-wife schedule so she can personally take them on two daily outings,” The Washington Post reported in 1962.

Accompanying her husband on a round-the-world goodwill tour, she said it was important for Americans to meet ordinary people overseas.

“People have a distinct liking for Americans,” she told the Post. “But the Communists have been so vocal, it was a surprise for some Asians to hear America’s point of view. It is good for Americans to travel and get our viewpoint across.”

She divided her time between homes in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, and Palm Beach, Florida, after Hickory Hill, which they bought from John and Jackie Kennedy in 1957, was sold in 2009 for $8.25 million.

Born Ethel Skakel on April 11, 1928, she grew up in a 31-room English country manor house in Greenwich, Connecticut, as the sixth of seven children of coal magnate George and Ann Brannack Skakel. She met Robert Kennedy through his sister Jean, her roommate at Manhattanville College.

The newlyweds moved to Charlottesville, Virginia, where he finished his last year of law school at the University of Virginia, and helped expand her world view by introducing her to people like Ralph Bunche, the first person of color to win the Nobel Peace Prize. They decided the safest place for him to stay during his visit was in their home.

“He was so charming and non-complaining, but they did throw things at our house all night long. It was so unthinkable and outrageous, but you got a little taste of what Black people in our country had to go through at that time,” she said in the documentary.

Robert Kennedy became chief counsel to the Senate Select Committee in 1957, and then was appointed attorney general by his brother in 1960.

She supported his successful 1964 campaign for the U.S. Senate in New York and his subsequent presidential bid. Pregnant with their 11th child when he was gunned down by Sirhan Sirhan, her look of shock and horror was captured in images that remained indelible decades later.

The assassination traumatized the family, especially son David Kennedy, just 12 years old when he watched the news in a hotel room. He never recovered, struggling with addiction for years before overdosing in 1984.

In 2021, she said Sirhan should not be released from prison, a view not shared by some others in her family. Two years later, a California panel denied him parole.

Although Ethel Kennedy was linked to several men after her husband’s death, most notably the singer Andy Williams, she never remarried.

On the 40th anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., she visited Indianapolis, where a monument commemorates the speech her husband gave that night in 1968, credited with averting rioting in the city.

“Of all the Kennedy women, she was the one I would end up admiring the most,” Harry Belafonte would write of her. “She wasn’t playacting. She looked at you and immediately got what you were about. Often in the coming years, when Bobby was balking at something we wanted him to do for the movement, I’d take my case to Ethel. ‘We have to talk to him,’ she’d say, and she would.”

In 2008, she joined brother-in-law Ted Kennedy and niece Caroline Kennedy in endorsing Sen. Barack Obama for president, likening him to her late husband. She later went to the Obama White House to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom and meet Pope Francis. Obama called her “a dear friend with a passion for justice, an irrepressible spirit, and a great sense of humor.”

“She touched the lives of countless people around the world with her generosity and grace, and was an emblem of enduring faith and hope, even in the face of unimaginable grief,” Obama said on social media, one of many high-profile eulogies.

Obama and former President Bill Clinton held her hands as they climbed stairs to lay a wreath at President Kennedy’s grave site on the 50th anniversary of his death. Clinton remembered her on Thursday as a “fierce fighter for justice and equality" who built “one of the most effective human rights organizations in the world.”

The center she founded still advances human rights through litigation, advocacy, education and inspiration, giving annual awards to journalists, authors and others who have made significant contributions to human rights.

She also was active in the Coalition of Gun Control, Special Olympics, and the Earth Conservation Corps. And she showed up in person, participating in a 2016 demonstration in support of higher pay for farmworkers in Florida and a 2018 hunger strike against the Trump administration’s immigration policies.

“She could be found anywhere human dignity was at stake, from picket lines to prisons, on every corner of the map," Clinton said. “She was fearless and indefatigable, a true force of nature, guided by the teachings of her faith that call upon all of us to serve others.”

FILE - Ethel Kennedy, wife of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, is shown July 27, 1970. (AP Photo/File)

FILE - Mrs. Robert F. Kennedy, left, and Jean Kennedy, sister-in-law and sister, respectively of Patricia Kennedy, enter the Roman Catholic Church of St. Thomas More in New York, April 24, 1954, to attend Patricias wedding to actor Peter Lawford. Ethel Kennedy is at left. (AP Photo/Matty Zimmerman, File)

FILE - Mrs. Ethel Kennedy gives a kiss to her brother-in-law, President-elect John Kennedy, at his Georgetown home, Nov. 27, 1960, in Washington. (AP Photo/Henry Griffin, File)

FILE - U.S. Senator-elect Robert F. Kennedy is shown with his wife Ethel boarding plane, Nov. 4, 1964, in New York City at LaGuardia Airport for flight to Glens Falls, N.Y. (AP Photo/File)

FILE - Mrs. Ethel Kennedy is escorted by her brother-in-law, Senator Edward Kennedy, to their pew in St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York for the funeral services of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, June 8, 1968. (AP Photo/File)

FILE - Members of the Kennedy family kneel at the grave site of the late President John F. Kennedy at Arlington National Cemetery after they visited the grave of the late Robert F. Kennedy nearby, on the anniversary of his death 16 years ago, June 6, 1984. From left: Emily and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.; Chris Kennedy; Ethel Kennedy; Michael Kennedy and Kathleen Kennedy, the wife and children of Robert Kennedy. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) stands at back. (AP Photo/Barry Thumma, File)

FILE - From left, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Ethel Kennedy, Kerry Kennedy, and Mariah Kennedy Cuomo attend the Ripple of Hope Awards, Dec. 11, 2013, in New York. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP, File)

A Barnstable Police truck is stationed at the entrance to Marchant Ave. at the entrance to the Kennedy compound, Thursday, Oct. 10, 2024, in Hyannis, Mass., to provide security following the announcement of the death of Ethel Kennedy, whose home is at background right. (Steve Heaslip/Cape Cod Times via AP)

FILE - President Barack Obama awards Ethel Kennedy the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Monday, Nov. 24, 2014, during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)

FILE - From left, Dolores Huerta, labor leader and civil rights activist, Ethel Kennedy, and civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., are applauded during the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award ceremony on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, June 5, 2018. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

FILE - Navy Secretary Ray Mabus smiles with Ethel Kennedy, widow of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, at the naming of the Robert F. Kennedy Navy Ship at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2016, in Boston. Ships in this class are being named in honor of civil and human rights heroes. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola, File)

FILE - Ethel Kennedy, left, and her daughter Kerry Kennedy attend the Robert F. Kennedy Ripple of Hope Award ceremony, Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2014, in New York. (AP Photo/Jason DeCrow, File)

FILE - Ethel Kennedy, left, subject of the HBO documentary "Ethel," poses for a portrait with her daughter Rory Kennedy, the director of the film, Wednesday, Aug. 1, 2012 in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP, File)

FILE - Sen. Edward Kennedy, from left, first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, President Bill Clinton and Ethel Kennedy, right, listen to a remembrance delivered by Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy II during a memorial Mass in honor of Robert F. Kennedy on the 25th anniversary of his death at the Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va., June 7, 1993. (AP Photo/Marcy Nighswander, File)

FILE - Ethel Kennedy holds her new son, Douglas Harriman Kennedy, with two-year-old Christopher Kennedy, right, as they leave Georgetown University in Washington, April 13, 1967, for home. (AP Photo/Henry Burroughs, File)

FILE - Sen. Edward Kennedy, back, stands behind the widow of former Senator Robert F. Kennedy, Mrs. Ethel Kennedy, second left, with her five children, and his wife Joan, right, as they pause at the grave of assassinated President John F. Kennedy in Arlington National Cemetery, Nov. 20, 1970, in Arlington, Va. (AP Photo/Bob Daugherty, File)

FILE - Ethel Kennedy, widow of Sen. Robert Kennedy, ice skates with youngsters from Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn borough, at the eighth annual Kennedy skating party originated by the late senator at Rockefeller Center's skating rink on Dec. 16, 1972, in New York. (AP Photo, File)

FILE - Egyptian human rights attorney and women's rights activist Ragia Omran, center, gets a kiss on the cheek from Robert F. Kennedy Center President Kerry Kennedy, right, accompanied by Ethel Kennedy, left, during the presentation of the RFK Human Rights Award, Nov. 21, 2013, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)

FILE - U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., center, talks with those gathered, including Ethel Kennedy, center, and Rev. Jesse Jackson, on the historic Edmund Pettus Bridge during the 19th annual reenactment of the "Bloody Sunday" Selma to Montgomery civil rights march across the bridge in Selma, Ala., Sunday, March 4, 2012, 47 years after the historic march that led to the Voting Rights Act. (AP Photo/Kevin Glackmeyer, File)

FILE - Ethel Kennedy holds hands with grandson Joseph P. Kennedy III, left, while Navy Secretary Ray Mabus chats with her daughter Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, as they pose near a rendering of the Robert F. Kennedy Navy Ship named at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2016, in Boston. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola, File)

FILE - Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, right, wife Ethel Kennedy, and children, from left, Bobby, Joseph, and Kathleen, second right, pose at Kennedy International Airport in New York, July 1, 1964, shortly after they returned from a one-week trip to West Germany and Poland. (AP Photo/Matty Zimmerman, File)

FILE - Ethel Kennedy, from the film "Ethel," poses for a portrait during the 2012 Sundance Film Festival on Sunday, Jan. 22, 2012, in Park City, Utah. (AP Photo/Victoria Will, File)

FILE - Sen. Robert Kennedy poses with his wife Ethel outside the Senate Chamber on Oct. 13, 1965, in Washington. (AP Photo, File)

DETROIT (AP) — Donald Trump on Thursday lobbed new complaints about the federal response to a pair of hurricanes that ravaged large swaths of the Southeast, as he again seeks to increasingly turn two deadly storms to his political advantage ahead of the November election.

The former president spoke at the Detroit Economic Club, shortly after his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, virtually attended a briefing, held in the White House Situation Room, on emergency efforts in Hurricane Milton's wake. Harris is scheduled to attend a Univision town hall in Las Vegas and an evening rally in Phoenix as she remains in close contact with federal authorities about the storm.

Trump offered empathetic messages to people affected by Hurricanes Helene and Milton, which came ashore Wednesday night. Trump also suggested that the federal response had been lacking, particularly in North Carolina, where he alleged the government after Helene had “not done what you’re supposed to be doing."

“They’ve let those people suffer unjustly,” said Trump, who has for several days promoted falsehoods about the response of President Joe Biden and emergency management officials.

President Joe Biden has repeatedly slammed Trump for spreading misinformation about federal assistance available to victims, including falsely claiming that such assistance is capped at $750. In reality, that is just for immediate needs, the first potential payout rather than the total.

“That $750 that they’re talking about, Mr. Trump and all those other people know it’s a lie to suggest that’s all they’re going to get,” Biden said Thursday. “It’s just bizarre. They got to stop this. They’re being so damn un-American with the way they’re talking about this stuff.”

Asked if he planned to speak with Trump to urge him to stop, Biden said he wouldn’t, but followed that with a message delivered directly into television cameras: “Mr. President Trump, former President Trump, get a life, man. Help these people.”

Despite the storm, Trump and Harris are slated to visit key swing states on Thursday, using their travel strategically, trying to increase support with key voting blocs who could decide an election expected to be exceedingly close.

In Michigan, where he's looking to appeal to primarily to blue-collar voters, Trump took a swipe at the city he happened to be campaigning in, suggesting that Detroit was “a mess.”

“Our whole country will end up being like Detroit if she’s your president," he said of Harris. “You’re going to have a mess on your hands.”

He also used his speech to echo core themes from his 2016 campaign, saying some other countries, especially China, are ripping the U.S. off and taking manufacturing business away. Trump said powerful companies have “raped” the United States and vowed to impose huge tariffs that he said would force other countries to negotiate what they charge on American products.

“They’ve been screwing us for so many years that we’re allowed to get some of that back,” Trump said about charging tariffs from countries.

Economists warn Trump’s proposed tariffs would drive up consumer costs. Trump has also claimed, without providing specifics, that he can use tariffs to reduce the U.S. budget deficit and pay for an expansion of childcare funding, even as he proposes other ideas to end taxes on things like tips and Social Security without saying how he would replace the lost funding.

But the former president seemed to not understand the difference between the budget deficit and trade imbalances, conflating the two different economic measures as essentially being the same thing.

He noted that the federal government has nearly $36 trillion in total debt, a byproduct of the annual borrowing needed to cover the gap between tax revenues and government spending. Except Trump then seemed to indicate that the debt was a byproduct of the trade deficit with China, which is a separate issue that reflects the difference between how much a country exports and how much it imports.

“We have $36 trillion in debt,” Trump said. “For years and years and years, we’ve been accumulating. We’d have these deficits that are monstrous. We had 5,6,7 $800 billion deficit with China.”

He also claimed that “we had the highest job numbers in my administration” but that isn’t true any longer. The unemployment rate fell slightly lower under Biden -- to 3.4% early last year, the lowest in a half-century, below 3.5% before the pandemic under Trump.

Harris is out west, as she looks to increase support among Hispanic voters, especially men. Her campaign began a group this week known as “Hombres con Harris” which is planning to hold upcoming events at Latino-owned small businesses, union halls, barbecues and community events until Election Day.

The Harris campaign has also aimed to reach Hispanic voters who may not be closely following the election by doing things like having Julie Chavez Rodriguez, Harris' campaign manager, attend the recent boxing match between Canelo Alvarez and Edgar Berlanga in Las Vegas, and holding events at churches and elsewhere to mark Mexican Independence Day in September.

Harris' campaign also announced last month that it was spending $3 million on Spanish-language radio ads and focusing on sport events like baseball games and boxing matches. Harris’ appearance in Nevada also coincided with a Democratic National Committee effort to put bilingual billboards in Las Vegas and ads promoting the importance of voting in Spanish-language newspapers in southern Nevada.

Hispanic voters are about evenly split on whether to trust Harris or Trump to do a better job handling the economy, but they give the former president an edge on handling immigration. About 4 in 10 Hispanic voters trust Trump more on the economy, and a similar share trust Harris more.

When it comes to handling immigration, 45% of Hispanic voters trust Trump more and 38% trust Harris more. Hispanic women voters are more likely to trust Harris to better handle the economy and immigration, and Hispanic men are more likely to trust Trump on both issues, according to polling from The Associated Press and NROC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Meanwhile, former President Barack Obama is also hitting the campaign trail on Thursday night, making his first appearance for Harris at a rally in Pittsburgh. Obama's team says he will focus on swing states, especially those with key Senate races. If he does so, that might mean promoting her harder than Biden, who just made one joint campaign appearance with Harris since he himself left the race in July.

Weissert reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Christopher Rugaber and Josh Boak in Washington Adriana Gomez Licon in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, contributed to this report.

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris waves as she boards Air Force Two at LaGuardia International Airport, Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump gestures at a campaign rally at the Santander Arena, Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2024, in Reading, Pa. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)