JACKSON — There was John Doar, the most genuinely modest hero I’ve ever known interviewed on C-SPAN: at 87 still understating and downplaying how, as the Justice Department’s man on the ground in the 1960s, he transformed racial justice in Mississippi and saved the state from several dark chapters in its history.
Doar’s matter-of-fact recounting of how on a brutally hot June day in 1963 he personally prevented the massacre of dozens, possibly hundreds, of defiant blacks on Jackson’s Farish Street at the end of Medgar Evers’ funeral procession, made it sound like just another day at the office.
Those of us who were there that day can truly attest: Only when Doar, the tall Wisconsin native suddenly strode in shirt sleeves through a no-man’s-land between the ranks of 300 trigger-happy law enforcement officers and hundreds of rock-throwing, mostly young blacks and persuaded them to abandon their march on the police lines, was this state spared its most disastrous violence of the civil rights era.
For six years, Doar, representing the Justice Department’s civil rights division, rode the state’s red-dirt back roads and unassumingly stood up to recalcitrant racist judges to bring racial justice to Mississippi’s African-American population.
When James Meredith enrolled as the first black student at Ole Miss on Oct. 1, 1962, beside him was John Doar, just as he had been during the weeks leading up to what became Mississippi’s greatest confrontation with the federal government since the Civil War.
Classic was the scene on Sept. 25, 1962, when Doar, flanked by Meredith and Chief U.S. Marshal James P. McShane, stood before Gov. Ross Barnett at the entrance to the state College Board office in Jackson, armed with a federal court order to enroll the 23-year-old black man.
The drawling Mississippi governor adjusted his glasses, surveyed the three men — one a tall, pale white man, another a short black man with a pencil moustache, and the other a pudgy cop with the map of Ireland in his face — and in guttural voice incredibly asked: “Which one of you is James Meredith?”
As he did on three occasions, Barnett turned away Meredith and Doar. Only with backing of 60 U.S. marshals and thousands of Army troops did Meredith finally become the first black Mississippian to break the state’s color barrier in educational institutions.
Questioned by C-SPAN’s Brian Lamb to characterize Barnett during the heyday of the Mississippi governor’s massive resistance against federal court orders, Doar declined to describe the legendary segregationist as anything but a nice Southern gentleman, not mentioning Barnett’s deviousness in conversations with President John F. Kennedy and his brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, in negotiations to bring Meredith to the university campus.
Likewise, Doar vastly understated how rigid old segregationist federal Judge Harold Cox often thwarted him when Doar persisted for blacks’ voting rights. Many times, Cox scolded the soft-spoken Justice Department attorney as though he were some troublesome schoolboy.
Doar played a final key role in writing a new chapter in Mississippi racial justice as chief prosecutor to criminally punish under post-Civil War conspiracy laws 18 men linked by the FBI to the 1964 murders of three young civil rights workers in Neshoba County. When the state (fearing it futile) stepped out of the picture, Doar battled for two years with Cox to assemble a grand jury to indict the men, and finally go to trial in 1967 in a Meridian federal courtroom.
Despite a claim by state Attorney General Joe Patterson that Doar as the prosecutor was like “waving a red flag” in the face of a Mississippi jury, Doar’s Boy Scout manner won over many of the jurors. Seven men were convicted and an eighth pleaded guilty. Edgar Ray “Preacher” Killen, the man Doar most wanted to convict, went free by jury deadlock when a lone woman juror held out against conviction.
In a sharp reversal of attitude, Cox, presiding at the trial, became a potent weapon for federal prosecutors, spurred by reports a burly defendant had threatened to bomb the court.
C-SPAN’s Brian Lamb seemed amazed when Doar said he has never committed the story of his remarkable career to paper or even done an oral history. With typical humility, Doar said he was “thinking about” contacting a historian. Even at 87, Doar might forget a few names, but he’s still sharp about the facts in his treasure trove of experiences.
