"This is a Kennedy evening and we have a very important Kennedy person here . . ." The voice of Pierre Salinger, self-professed friend of the Kennedy family for the past 42 years, was drowned out by applause when the audience saw the tall young man bounding onto the stage. "The Kennedy family is still the most important family in the United States," Mr Salinger, who was JFK's presidential spokesman from 1960 until his assassination in 1963, gushed.
The opening ceremony of UNESCO's six-week "Kennedy, The American Dream" exhibition and lecture series, taking place at UNESCO headquarters in Paris, hovered between maudlin nostalgia and deification of the murdered brothers. Both Mr Salinger and the Kennedy family's official photographer, Jacques Lowe - whose photos are the mainstay of the exhibition - said they could not bear to live in the US after the assassinations. Other old-timers described the Kennedy era as an awakening, a turning point for the world and the happiest moment of US history.
Thank goodness that Robert Kennedy jnr (44), the third of Bobby and Ethel Kennedy's 11 children, was there to focus the evening on its topic: the Kennedys' role in the US civil rights movement. Mr Kennedy has the familiar hair and smile, and a voice with a Boston accent that you could mistake for his father's or uncle's. One of the most moving of Jacques Lowe's photos shows Bobby Kennedy in 1958, holding then four-year-old Robert jnr, wearing a cowboy hat.
Like his famous namesakes, Robert Kennedy jnr studied law at Harvard. He is now an environmental crusader, defending the Hudson River. As a child, Mr Kennedy remembers driving through the south with a family friend, a tall war veteran named Bill Sharwell. Whenever they stopped at a roadside cafe, Robert jnr bought the food, then brought it outside to eat. As an African-American, Mr Sharwell was not allowed inside the whites-only restaurants.
"There was a whole generation who fought in World War II and had to come home and keep fighting for their rights," Mr Kennedy said. "Blacks in those states had no more rights than blacks in South Africa under apartheid." The word "negro" appeared on every legal document, from their birth certificates to their death certificates. "You broke the law if you married outside your race . . . The whole system was designed to deprive black Americans of the right to vote. My father and President Kennedy had the privilege of holding power at a time when America finally became a constitutional democracy. They really believed that democracy stood on the foundation of justice, and that it had to be available to everyone in the nation."
Mr Kennedy's most poignant memory was accompanying his father's casket to Arlington Cemetery. "I was 14 years old. There were hundreds of thousands of people - an extraordinary cross-section of America - all lining the route of the cortege."
It is easy for politicians to appeal to the xenophobia, bigotry and greed within societies, Mr Kennedy said. But his father and uncle appealed to the good in people. They believed the US was special in history. "Because God had treated us so fairly as a nation, history would judge us . . . My father's idea was that the American community - black, white, red and yellow - would be a paradigm for the world."
The commemorations are financed by the French fashion house Gerard Darel. Company president, Laurent Darel, admitted "Jackie is the connection between us and the Kennedys, her charm, her elegance". The Darels bought Jackie Kennedy Onassis's black pearl necklace - the one she wore when she met Charles de Gaulle in 1961 - at a Sotheby's auction, and it is on display at UNESCO with Lowe's photos.