Bobby Kennedy’s death 40 years ago still haunts me.

When the train carried Robert F. Kennedy to Washington, D.C., on June 8, 1968, my father, a civil-rights activist, insisted that my two brothers and I accompany him to the railroad tracks nearest our home to watch it arrive.

Cars jammed the shoulder of a busy parkway entrance at New York and South Dakota avenues. People packed a hill that overlooked the railroad tracks. Most of the ones I saw were blacks. This was because the train took a route near several of Washington’s communities and because blacks felt a special bond with Bobby.

Two months prior to Kennedy’s assassination, the Rev. Martin Luther King was assassinated. The remnants of the civil-rights movement in America and King’s “Poor People’s Campaign” came apart that day in Memphis. Cities burned and were looted; Americans gave up hope.

But Bobby Kennedy, despite his own imperfections, became the answer to King’s death. Kennedy announced his candidacy for the office of the president of the United States on March 16, 1968. By the day of his assassination on June 5, 1968, after his famous victory in the California primary, it was clear he was going to be the nominee of the Democratic Party.

Judging by the enthusiasm he created around the country, and his call for a different direction on the war in Vietnam, and in America generally, most believed he would be elected president in November. His speech announcing his candidacy exuded a universal appeal:

“I do not run for the presidency merely to oppose any man,” Kennedy urged, “but to propose new policies.”

He added that he wanted “to end the bloodshed in Vietnam and in our cities,” and wanted to propose “policies to close the gaps that now exist between black and white, between rich and poor, between young and old, in this country and around the rest of the world.”

Kennedy’s courageous vision of 1968 is similar to what is needed today from our incoming president.

Today, as in 1968, there is a hugely unpopular and unjust war still raging today, this time in Iraq. American involvement should have ended long ago.

Today, as in 1968, economic inequality is pervasive.

Faced with the central issues of his time, Bobby Kennedy decided to act.

Then he was shot and killed.

So, in tribute to the man who took a chance at serious change in the United States of America at an unstable time, many of us gathered along the railroad tracks on June 8, 1968, and paid tribute to what might have been.

I remember the moment well. Bobby Kennedy’s train was late arriving, and it was night. The train car was all lit up, and I could see the casket draped with a bright American flag. The train rolled down the tracks down into the city and then disappeared forever.

People waved or just stood silently. We all got back into our cars and went back to our homes. There was still a little reason to hope. I hope there still is.

Brian Gilmore, a poet and a lawyer, lives in Takoma Park, Md. He can be reached at pmproj [at] progressive [dot] org.