Video: 'June 6, 1968 - President Lyndon B. Johnson's Statement on the Death of Senator Robert F. Kennedy'

(Thursday, June 6, 1968, 11:55 a.m. EDT) — President Lyndon Johnson, responding to the death of Robert F. Kennedy early this morning, declared Sunday, June 9, 1968, to be a day of national mourning during a statement today in the Fish Room of the White House.

Kennedy, the younger brother of slain President John F. Kennedy, was shot and critically wounded June 5, 1968 at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles just after he made his victory speech California’s Democratic presidential primary.

Despite extensive neurosurgery to remove the bullet and bone fragments from his brain, Kennedy was pronounced dead nearly 26 hours after the shooting.