On June 5, 1968, presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was mortally wounded shortly after midnight at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Earlier that evening, the 42-year-old junior senator from New York was declared the winner in the South Dakota and California Democratic presidential primary during the 1968 presidential election. He was pronounced dead at 1:44 a.m. PDT on June 6, about 26 hours after he had been shot.Following dual victories in the California and South Dakota primary elections for the Democratic nomination for the presidential nomination, Kennedy spoke to journalists and campaign workers at a live televised celebration from the stage of his headquarters at the Ambassador Hotel. Shortly after leaving the podium and exiting through a kitchen hallway, he was mortally wounded by multiple shots fired from a handgun. Kennedy died in the Good Samaritan Hospital 26 hours later. The shooter was 24-year-old Sirhan Sirhan. In 1969, Sirhan was convicted of murdering Kennedy and was sentenced to death. His sentence was commuted to life in prison in 1972 due to the court case People v. Anderson. A freelance newspaper reporter recorded the shooting on audio tape, and the aftermath was captured on film.

Kennedy's remains were taken to St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York, for two days of public viewing before a funeral Mass was held on June 8. His funeral train traveled from New York to Washington, D.C.; many spectators lined the route to view the journey. His body was interred at night in Arlington National Cemetery near his brother John F. Kennedy. His death prompted the United States Secret Service to protect presidential candidates. Vice President Hubert Humphrey was also a presidential candidate; he went on to win the Democratic nomination but ultimately lost the election to Republican candidate Richard Nixon.

Much like his brother's assassination, Robert Kennedy's assassination has led to a number of conspiracy theories; to date, no credible evidence has emerged that Sirhan was not the shooter, or that he did not act alone. Kennedy and Huey Long of Louisiana (in 1935) are the only two sitting United States Senators to be assassinated. It was one of four major assassinations of the 1960s in the United States, coming several years after the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963 and the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965, and two months after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968.