page_title: Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation
section_title: Robert F. Kennedy's involvement
hierarchical_section_title: Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation / Background / Robert F. Kennedy's involvement
caption_attribution_description: Senator Robert Kennedy discusses school with young Ricky Taggart of 733 Gates Ave. / World Telegram &amp; Sun photo by Dick DeMarsico.
context_page_description: The Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation is a community development corporation based in Brooklyn, New York, and the first ever to be established in the United States.
context_section_description: Late in 1965 Robert F. Kennedy, the junior senator of New York, decided to give an address on race and poverty. Disturbed by the Watts riots in Los Angeles, he was worried that America's racial crisis was shifting from the rural South to the urban North. He was also concerned that white support for black demands within the community was declining and that race relations were near to boiling over.
  Kennedy gave three consecutive speeches in Manhattan on January 20, 21, and 22, 1966. Most of the content was in line with John F. Kennedy's New Frontier programs, with proposals for job training, rent subsidies, students loans for the poor, and housing desegregation. He also broke with President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society rhetorical optimism, arguing that the situation for black Americans was worsening instead of improving. He asserted that welfare and stricter code enforcement were not solving the problems facing ghettos and that community involvement and action from the private sector were necessary to effectively combat urban poverty. Kennedy warned that failure to act could lead to more race riots. Several days later, Kennedy decided to create his own anti-poverty program. He told speechwriter Adam Walinsky, "I want to do something about all this. Some kind of project that goes after some of these problems[...]see what you can put together." 
  In mid-February, Kennedy spent an afternoon touring Bedford–Stuyvesant. Afterwards, he attended a meeting with community activists at the local YMCA building. Similar in manner to the Baldwin–Kennedy meeting of 1964, Brooklyn community leaders were bitter towards the senator and lectured him on the problems black residents of the neighborhood faced. Civil Court Judge Thomas R. Jones said, "I'm weary of study, Senator. Weary of speeches, weary of promises that aren't kept[...]The Negro people are angry, Senator, and, judge that I am, I'm angry, too. No one is helping us." Kennedy was irritated by the way he was treated. As he drove back to Manhattan he told his aides, "I could be smoking a cigar down in Palm Beach. I don't really have to take that. Why do I have to go out and get abused for a lot of things I haven't done?" Several moments later he said, "Maybe this would be a good place to try and make an effort."
caption: Senator Robert F. Kennedy speaks with a boy during his tour of Bedford–Stuyvesant
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