He has always been well-known as the third generation of America’s almost-royalty, the Kennedys.
Now, he may become better known as the secretary of Health and Human Services in the second Trump administration. The guy taking on big pharma; the guy against mandates on citizens and businesses; the guy wanting to “Make America Healthy Again.”
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on Thursday. He is a new member of President Trump’s cabinet, the "health czar."
RFK Jr. lived in Alabama in the 1970s. He was researching and writing a book about federal Judge Frank Johnson from Winston County and Montgomery: "Judge Frank M. Johnson, Jr.: A Biography."
The Johnson biography was highly anticipated because Johnson made precedent-setting pro-civil rights rulings even though he was a Republican. He had been appointed to the federal bench by Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Despite a Republican Party membership and appointment, Judge Johnson was a civil rights trailblazer. He ruled in several key cases that revolutionized Alabama’s separate but equal system.
Judge Johnson’s foe, legally and politically, was Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace. Kennedy could not write a book about Johnson without including Wallace, and he did so. While living in Montgomery, RFK, Jr. met and interviewed Wallace, who had battled U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy, Sr. over integration efforts in the state in the 1960s. The ultimate confrontation was Wallace’s “Stand in the Schoolhouse Door” at the University of Alabama.
RFK Sr. did not come to Tuscaloosa himself for the standoff with Wallace. He sent his deputy attorney general, Nicholas Katzenbach.
Fourteen years later (1977), RFK Sr. was dead from an assassin’s bullet (1968). Wallace was in a wheelchair and in a lot of daily pain from an assassin’s bullet (1972). Wallace was in his third term as governor. (1975-1979). RFK Jr. was in Montgomery working on his biography of Judge Johnson.
RFK, Jr. needed to interview Gov. Wallace about his interactions with Judge Johnson (1950s and 1960s). He did so, and Wallace plays a prominent role in the RFK Jr. book on Johnson.
During RFK Jr.'s time in Alabama, I (your writer, Jim Zeigler) was a commissioner on the Alabama Public Service Commission. Bobby Kennedy, Jr., called my office to set up an appointment to meet with me. We set it up.
The meeting never took place. Kennedy called and canceled because his beloved dog had run off somewhere in Montgomery, and he was looking for it. Someone found his dog and turned it into the Montgomery animal shelter. Bobby Kennedy, Jr. himself went down and retrieved his dog. All was well except for my canceled meeting. That’s an Alabama story that he should remember.
Fast-forward to 1996. Wallace was living in painful retirement in Montgomery. RFK Jr. and former Gov. Wallace both attended a black-tie dinner at the Alabama capitol.
Alabama’s unofficial historian David Azbell served as spokesman and personal aide to Wallace at the time.
He tells the following story of the second meeting of RFK Jr. and Wallace:
Gov. Wallace had grown to be stone deaf, so the only way you could communicate with him was through notes I wrote on the legal pad I am holding in the photo shared here. Once he had read what I scribbled, the governor would respond verbally to the other person.
I remember that RFK Jr. mentioned to me he was excited and a bit nervous to meet Gov. Wallace again.
The governor told RFK Jr. that he admired his father despite their past political differences during the years of the Civil Rights Movement, and he made mention that both of them were targets of assassins - one successful and one not.
Gov. Wallace also recalled that Ethel Kennedy, RFK Jr.'s mother, visited him in Holy Cross Hospital while he was recovering from the assassination attempt that left him paralyzed in 1972.
RFK Jr. referenced in reply, a voter behavior study he once read that indicated a surprising number of Bobby Kennedy supporters voted for George Wallace in 1968 after Kennedy was killed in California.
The study said that those voters cared about supporting a candidate who was considered an outsider or a maverick who would change the system more than they cared about the particular political views they espoused.
Alabama has vital issues in the area of health care. State leaders will likely be calling on Secretary Kennedy and his staff about small town pharmacies going out of business, rural hospitals going out of business and vital medical research at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Something tells me that Secretary Kennedy will make yet another trip to Alabama soon—and maybe more than one.
Jim ‘Zig’ Zeigler writes about Alabama’s people, places, events, groups and prominent deaths. He is a former Alabama Public Service Commissioner and State Auditor. You can reach him for comments at ZeiglerElderCare@yahoo.com.
Don’t miss out! Subscribe to our newsletter and get our top stories every weekday morning.
