The News
Ethel Kennedy, the American human rights advocate and a matriarch of the famous Kennedy political dynasty, died Thursday aged 96. She suffered complications from a stroke, her grandson said.
Kennedy — the widow of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and mother of former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — was often said to be “more Kennedy than the Kennedys,” because of her love of politics and fierce campaigning for her husband and other family members.
Kennedy was a noted advocate for social justice, founding the global nonprofit Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, which aims to “confront systematic abuses” through litigation and supports investigative journalists and authors. She supported the United Farm Workers union, traveled to Kenya in 1989 to criticize the country’s human rights record, and in 2018, and at 90, joined a hunger strike to protest Donald Trump’s immigration policies.
She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama in 2014.