A time of action; Students learn about social movements from RFK adviser.

Byline: Karen Nugent

LANCASTER - A connection with the man himself was made yesterday at the Robert F. Kennedy Children's Action Corps.

Journalist John L. Seigenthaler, who was an adviser to the late Mr. Kennedy before and during his ill-fated 1968 presidential campaign, led a roundtable discussion on intolerance with a dozen or so Grade 7 and 8 students who studied civil rights this year.

But Mr. Seigenthaler, a Nashville, Tenn., native who founded the Freedom Forum First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University, and who was the government's chief negotiator in 1961 during the violence-riddled Freedom Rides throughout the South - he was knocked unconscious while saving a woman Freedom Rider from an angry mob - was somewhat stymied when asked by a student what the next social change movement might be.

He paused.

"You've been studying intolerance - you know it's still with us, and that people are affected by it. Poverty exists without regard to race. People are suffering and need support, and they need a movement," he said. "If you see it, don't be as blind as I was at your age. I just don't know ... there may be a need for a movement, a small movement, and some will succeed."

Mr. Seigenthaler, 82, was in town as the keynote speaker at the Boston-based Children's Action Corps' annual Embracing the Legacy awards last night at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum in Boston. He started his journalism career in 1949 as a reporter for the Tennessean, resigning in 1960 to become Robert Kennedy's administrative assistant after Kennedy was appointed U.S. attorney general by his brother, the president.

Mr. Seigenthaler went back to the Tennessean as its editor in 1962 and became the publisher in 1973. Mr. Seigenthaler also has written books and was the founding editorial director of USA Today in 1982.

A student yesterday asked Mr. Seigenthaler how he felt when Mr. Kennedy was assassinated on June 5, 1968. The killing occurred nearly two months to the day after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tenn.

Mr. Seigenthaler told the students he initially did not support Mr. Kennedy, then a U.S. senator from New York, running for president and tried to talk him out of it, because he believed he could never unseat President Lyndon B. Johnson.

"I took a long walk with him, it was at night. And I decided I can't do it - but I knew I couldn't not do it," Mr. Seigenthaler told the students.

But as time went on, Mr. Seigenthaler began to change his mind, especially after a meeting Mr. Kennedy had in California with Cesar Chavez, the Mexican-American president of United Farm Workers and a civil rights activist. During last weeks of the campaign, momentum continued to grow, until the night of the California primary victory in June 1968 when Mr. Kennedy spoke before a packed auditorium at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.

Mr. Seigenthaler said he was unaware of the shooting right after the speech, because he stayed behind at the hotel to thank speakers and only learned about it from a car radio on his way back. During the shooting, he said, he and others from Robert Kennedy's campaign were watching his brother Edward M. Kennedy's televised speech in San Francisco.

"We had no idea when Ted was speaking that his brother had been attacked," Mr. Seigenthaler told the students. "I was devastated. That this could happen twice in the same family was unbelievable. This is not supposed to happen in this society. I was almost immobilized for two weeks. Before that, I felt Bob was right: This can be a newer world.

"That's a tough question you asked me, and it was tough to answer," he told the student who posed the question. "But I'm glad you asked it. It made me think about the worst time in my life."

The RFK Children's Action Corps, a state-run residential school for troubled youth who are often referred by the state Department of Children and Families, was established shortly after Mr. Kennedy's death.

"After he died, the impact was so powerful that programs began to be developed in his name. That just says something about his ability to inspire the country. That these programs still exist in his name is very exciting," Mr. Seigenthaler said.

Mr. Kennedy's widow, Ethel, and their children, he said, keep up with happenings at the agency.

Valerie L. Paen, school principal, said students developed their own questions in class for the hourlong discussion.

After the program, Mr. Seigenthaler acknowledged that his audiences usually consist of college students - not middle-schoolers. He said he has known about the school since the 1980s, and could not turn down the invitation to speak from Edward P. Kelley, school president and chief executive officer.

"It was very fulfilling and emotionally rewarding," Mr. Seigenthaler said. "It makes me so pleased that Bob's legacy continues with this program."

ART:PHOTOS

CUTLINE: (1) Journalist John L. Seigenthaler, an adviser to the late Robert F. Kennedy, led a discussion about intolerance yesterday with seventh- and eighth-graders at Robert F. Kennedy Children's Action Corps, a school in Lancaster. (2) Political buttons from the 1968 presidential campaign of the late Robert F. Kennedy were given to students at Robert F. Kennedy Children's Action Corps, a school in Lancaster.

PHOTOG: T&G Staff Photos/TOM RETTIG