TRANSCRIPT: STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

It's just after midnight in a ballroom in the ornate Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, Calif. A packed crowd watches a presidential candidate give a victory speech after winning the California primary.

(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)

ROBERT F KENNEDY: Now it's on to Chicago. And let's win there. Thank you.

(CHEERING)

INSKEEP: It's June 5, 1968 - 55 years ago today - and Senator Robert F. Kennedy is gaining momentum to secure the Democratic nomination. But this is the last time he will address the public. NPR's Ashley Montgomery has the story.

ASHLEY MONTGOMERY, BYLINE: Almost five years after his older brother, John F. Kennedy, was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, Robert Kennedy is making his own run for the White House. As Kennedy walks offstage at the Ambassador Hotel through a pack of eager reporters, the crowd chants his name.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (Chanting) We want Bobby.

MONTGOMERY: We want Bobby. He shakes hands with supporters and exits the ballroom through the kitchen. And then the crowd hears what witnesses would later describe as the sound of firecrackers.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

ANDREW WEST: Senator Kennedy has been shot. Is that possible?

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Help.

WEST: Is that possible?

MONTGOMERY: A gunman fired a .22-caliber revolver, hitting Kennedy and injuring five others.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

WEST: Not only Senator Kennedy - oh, my God. Senator Kennedy has been shot.

MONTGOMERY: One of Kennedy's friends who worked on his campaign, an Olympic gold medalist named Rafer Johnson, wrestles the gunman to the ground and tries to disarm him.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

WEST: Get the gun, Rafer.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Get the gun.

WEST: OK, now hold on to the guy.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Get the gun.

WEST: Hold on to him.

MONTGOMERY: In the chaos, a teenage busboy comforts Kennedy, who's sprawled out on the floor.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

JUAN ROMERO: I kneeled down to him and put my hand between the cold concrete and his head just to make him comfortable.

MONTGOMERY: This is the voice of Juan Romero, the busboy. He spoke to StoryCorps in 2018.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

ROMERO: I could feel a steady stream of blood coming through my fingers. I had a rosary in my shirt pocket, and I took it out thinking that he would need it a lot more than me. I wrapped it around his right hand, and then they wheeled him away.

MONTGOMERY: Kennedy died the next day. He was 42. Kennedy's widow, Ethel, was pregnant with their 11th child. Robert Kennedy was memorialized as a liberal icon who found support among Black and Latino voters. Here's NPR commentator Rod MacLeish in 1983.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

ROD MACLEISH: He made a virtue of abrasiveness in his 1968 campaign, deliberately taunting affluent constituencies on behalf of the disadvantaged.

MONTGOMERY: But Kennedy was complicated and contradictory - especially when it came to one particular decision. When he was a U.S. attorney general, he authorized the FBI to wiretap Martin Luther King Jr.'s telephones in 1963 because of suspicion that one of King's aides had communist ties. But Kennedy was a well-known advocate for marginalized communities and spoke about racial equality during his campaign. Two months before his own death, he gave a speech to a mostly Black crowd in Indianapolis about the assassination of Dr. King.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

KENNEDY: What we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness but is love and compassion toward one another, feeling of justice toward those who still suffer, whether they be white or whether they be Black.

(APPLAUSE)

MONTGOMERY: The day Kennedy died, on June 6, 1968, Congress responded by expanding Secret Service protection to include major presidential candidates. The man who shot Kennedy was convicted of first-degree murder and continues to serve a life sentence. Today, there is no Ambassador Hotel. It was demolished in 2006.

(CROSSTALK)

MONTGOMERY: The site in LA is now a complex of public schools called the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools. There are vibrant murals all over campus and in the hallways. The walls of the school library are adorned with portraits and huge, colorful paintings of Kennedy. Most of the students here are Latino. And over the years, many of the students who graduate from here are the first in their families to attend college.

Ashley Montgomery, NPR News.