2020 Elmer Louis Kayser Memorial Lecture: Kevin M. Kruse

 Dr. Kevin M. Kruse (Princeton University) delivered a riveting lecture on John Doar, the point man for civil rights for the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. John Doar was a vital actor in countless crisis moments in the civil rights movement — personally confronting segregationists at the University of Alabama, putting Klansmen on trial for the deaths of civil rights workers (including the famous “Mississippi Burning” murders), helping craft the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and overseeing the implementation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and literally leading the way in the Selma-to-Montgomery March. Through the previously untapped papers of Doar, Dr. Kruse hoped to provide new insights into these civil rights milestones as well as a new understanding of the ways in which the federal government worked (and didn’t work) during the racial revolution unfolding across the South.