John Doar - Civil Rights Career

Civil Rights Career

He served as First Assistant and then Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in the U.S. Dept. of Justice, from 1960 to 1967, during which time he was involved in several of the most significant events of the American civil rights movement. In 1961 Doar operated in Montgomery, Alabama along with his assistant, John Siegenthaler, to protect the freedom riders. In 1962, Doar confronted Ross Barnett over Barnett's attempts to prevent James Meredith from entering the then-segregated University of Mississippi. He also prosecuted and convicted Collie Leroy Wilkins for federal civil rights violations in the murder of Viola Liuzzo, before an all-white jury in Alabama. As a federal prosecutor Doar could not prosecute someone for murder, which was a state offense. In 1963, Doar confronted and calmed an angry mob after the murder of Medgar Evers.

He prosecuted the federal case for civil rights violations against the people who were accused of lynching Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner, in events which were later depicted in the movie Mississippi Burning. Doar later contributed to drafting the Civil Rights Act of 1965, which Lyndon Johnson signed in an attempt to solve some of the problems that he had observed in the deep south. In March, 1965, Doar was the first to arrive in Montgomery during the third of the Selma to Montgomery marches. He walked into Montgomery half a block ahead of the march in his capacity as Assistant Attorney General.