2020 Elmer Louis Kayser Memorial Lecture: Kevin M. Kruse

Kevin M. Kruse (Princeton University) will deliver the 2020 Elmer Louis Kayser Memorial Lecture on "The Division: John Doar, the Justice Department, and the Civil Rights Movement."

John Doar helped lead the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. In that role, he fought voter suppression, faced down prominent segregationists, convicted Klansmen for attacks against civil rights workers (most famously in the “Mississippi Burning” trial), implemented the decade’s new civil rights laws, and more. In his current work in progress, Kruse will use the previously untapped papers of Doar to provide a new perspective on the milestones of the civil rights movement and new insights about how the federal government worked (and didn’t work) during the racial revolution of the 1960s.

This lecture is free and open to the public!