- John Doar
John Michael Doar (born
December 3 ,1921 , inMinneapolis, Minnesota ) is an Americanlawyer and currently senior counsel with thelaw firm Doar Rieck & Mack inNew York .Six months before
John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960, Doar joined thecivil rights division of theUnited States Department of Justice . He was involved in several events which constituted theAmerican civil rights movement . In 1962, Doar confrontedRoss Barnett over Barnett's attempts to preventJames Meredith from entering the then-segregatedUniversity of Mississippi . He also prosecuted and convictedCollie Leroy Wilkins for federal civil rights violations in themurder ofViola Liuzzo , before an all-whitejury inAlabama . As a federal prosecutor Doar could not prosecute someone for murder, which was a state offense. In 1963, Doar confronted and calmed anangry mob after the murder ofMedgar Evers .He prosecuted the federal case for civil rights violations against the people who were accused of lynching
Andrew Goodman ,James Chaney andMichael Schwerner , in events which were later depicted in the movie "Mississippi Burning ". Doar later contributed to drafting the Civil Rights Act of 1965, whichLyndon Johnson signed in an attempt to solve some of the problems that he had observed in the deep south.He left the government in the later part of the Johnson administration, returning only in 1974 as Chief Counsel for the
United States House Committee on the Judiciary , which was then investigating theWatergate scandal and preparing articles ofimpeachment againstRichard Nixon .Doar is a graduate of
Princeton University (A.B. 1944) and theUniversity of California-Berkeley Boalt Hall School of Law (LL.B. 1949).External links
* [http://www.doarlaw.com/Bio/JohnDoar.asp Biography on the website of Doar Rieck & Mack]
* [http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/trialheroes/doaressay.html Bending Toward Justice: John Doar and the Mississippi Burning Trial]
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