DOJ lawyer who escorted James Meredith to segregated campus dies at 92
Former Justice Department lawyer John Doar, a leader in the battle against segregation, has died at the age of 92.
Doar, who led the Justice Department’s civil rights division in the 1960s, accompanied black student James Meredith onto the segregated University of Mississippi campus in 1962, the New York Times and the Washington Post report. He also served as lead prosecutor in the civil rights case against 17 men accused in the murder of three civil rights workers. Seven were convicted, including a Mississippi deputy sheriff and a Klan leader.
In one dramatic moment in Jackson, Mississippi, after the funeral of civil rights leader Medgar Evers, Doar stepped between black marchers and police officers who had drawn their weapons. The marchers had refused orders to disband and began throwing bricks, bottles and stones. At Doar’s urging, the crowd left peacefully.
Doar was named leader of the civil rights division after several others turned down the job, the Times says. He described himself as a “Lincoln Republican”; his GOP credentials were one reason why he was later named chief counsel to the House Judiciary Committee investigating Watergate.
President Barack Obama awarded Doar the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012. “He was the face of the Justice Department in the South,” Obama said. “He was proof that the federal government was listening.”
