Sept. 13, 1964 - Robert F. Kennedy swept through Brooklyn today, creating mob scenes in every corner of the city’s most populous borough.
By dusk, tens of thousands of people had seen the 38-year-old Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate. At many of the places where his motorcade stopped, the crowds were so big he could not leave his car.
Politicians who have spent a lifetime convoying candidates through the streets of Brooklyn said they had never seen a reception as tempestuous as the one given Kennedy.
It made no difference who was in the audience — Catholics in Park Slope, Negroes and Puerto Ricans in Brownsville, or Hasidic Jews in Williamsburg — the reaction was the same.
Police barricades were flattened, children were knocked down, and the former Attorney General, at the center of the turbulence, was caught in one melee after another.
Late in the afternoon, as Kennedy’s car turned into Belmont Avenue from Rockaway Avenue, in the Brownsville section, it was confronted by a mass of people that stretched four blocks.
The convertible crept through the throng at 2 miles an hour, with the candidate standing above the back seat and Assemblyman Stanley Steingut clinging to his legs to keep him from falling. Kennedy first smiled, then grimaced, at the frenzy of the crowd.
By the time he reached his final Brooklyn stop, he was two hours behind schedule.
The former Attorney General began the day on the Staten Island ferry, where a television crew taped campaign commercials. After speaking to a Democratic breakfast on Staten Island, he took a ferry to Brooklyn and began his touring there at a home for the aged operated by the Little Sisters of the Poor in Park Slope.
One stop was at Coney Island and Nathan’s, the pavilion of the hot dog. Kennedy at two of the house specialties (mustard, no relish), but he did not pose for the traditional campaign pictures there.
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