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NCAA Honors John Doar
Created: 12/13/2005 9:48:47 AM
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Thanks to Jerry Price of the Princeton Athletics Department and the NCAA News
John Doar, a 1944 Princeton graduate who earned his law degree at the University of California, was a strong, uncompromising force in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. Now, 40 years after stepping in harm's way time and time again, he has been selected to receive the Inspiration Award from the NCAA. Doar was a four-year letterwinner for the Tigers' basketball team.
A native of Wisconsin, Doar first learned of the racial inequalities bubbling over in the South during his years at Princeton. "I had a lot of friends from the South. They would say we know we have a problem, but let us solve it," he said.
A decade later, Doar was practicing law in a small town in northwestern Wisconsin, when he was presented with an opportunity to join the newly established Civil Rights Division of the United States Justice Department.
"I looked around late in 1959 and became conscious from newspaper articles and magazines that nothing had happened with segregation since I left Princeton," he said. "A friend of mine called me and asked if I'd like to go to work for the Justice Department, in the Civil Rights Division. It didn't take me long to say I'd do it. I moved my family to Washington on July 4, 1960."
He began helping enforce federal voting-rights laws by litigating cases in the U.S. District Courts in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. As part of his work with the Civil Rights Division, Doar was involved in a number of events that have found their way into the American history annals. In 1962, he escorted James Meredith, the first African-American student to attend the University of Mississippi, onto the campus. It was perhaps his most dangerous role in the South.
"They had taken Meredith up there once, and they had been turned away," Doar said. "The president and the attorney general were determined he was going to get into that university. I went with him the next time, and we were turned away. On the fourth trip we got in. That night there was a riot. I lived with him for the next few weeks."
Doar was also among the masses who participated in the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala. In 1967, he successfully prosecuted seven men accused of murdering three civil rights workers in Mississippi.
"They would work the counties. That's how they developed information and knowledge," said Doar of the lawyers and paralegals who worked with him during his tenure at the division. "When you try to do something like change a culture, the one thing you have to do is know your territory and keep going back. The thing about the Civil Rights Division was the lawyers knew the territory. They knew individuals and they knew families."
Doar spent eight years with the division, and later became part of another important history event when he served as the special counsel for the House Judiciary Committee in the Watergate hearings. He continues to practice law today in New York.
Through the work of the division, the Civil Rights Movement pressed forward with the support of the federal government.
"It was certainly a conviction that if we kept at it the way we were working at it, we would break the caste system one way or another," said Doar, who noted that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 would not have been enacted without the work of members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, nor without support from lawyers and paralegals in the Civil Rights Division. "I'm getting credit for a lot of hard work by a lot of young lawyers and paralegals who worked with me during that period. They were a remarkable group of young people. They made a difference."
Raul Altreche, a senior lacrosse student-athlete at Amherst College; and Lois Taurman, a former three-sport standout at Bellarmine University, were also selected for the Inspiration Award, which is not automatically awarded annually. It recognizes a current or former coach, administrator or varsity letter-winner at an NCAA institution who when confronted with a life-altering situation used perseverance, dedication and determination to overcome the event and now serves as a role model for others.
"We are greatly appreciative that the NCAA chose to honor one of Princeton's finest," said Director of Athletics Gary Walters. "John Doar a towering figure in the history of the American Civil Rights movement who at the same time is a man of great humility and modesty. He represents the very best of the student-athlete-citizen ideal."
Doar, Altreche and Taurman will be recognized during the Honors Celebration January 7 at the 100th NCAA Convention in Indianapolis.
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Related Schools: Princeton
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Related Sports: Basketball
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*This Article has been archived.*
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