John Doar, R.I.P.

Lawyer John Michael Doar has died, aged almost 93.
Another of my heroes is dead. He will be missed by all who love justice.
John Doar guided the House Judiciary Committee in its impeachment inquiry into RICHARD MILHOUS NIXON, resulting in Nixon's resignation. Earlier, Mr. Doar was Attorney General Robert Kennedy's Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Civil RIghts, later promoted to Assistant AG. Mr. Doar patiently guided DOJ lawyers and FBI agents in desegregating Southern elections, schools, employment and public accommodations.
After allegedly not doing enough to protect murdered civil rights workers, Mr. Doar personally prosecuted the Mississippi KKK members and Sheriff's deputies who conspired to murder three civil rights workers and bury them in an earthen dam. The civil rights workers were Mickey Schwerner (known to KKK as "Jewboy" and "Goatee"), his African-American deputy, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman. Mississippi KKK members and law enforcement were angry at a successful boycott of a Meridian, Mississippi store that refused to hire blacks while relying on black customers. Mr. Doar had never prosecuted a criminal case., but he won seven convictions for federal criminal civil rights violations of seven Mississippi Klansmen for the murders of three civil rights workers. The jury was all white. Never before in Mississippi was any white person convicted of committing an act of violence against any black person. (The case is dramatized in the 1988 movie, Mississippi Burning).
Mr. Doar helped persuade Congress to enact the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, using the moral force of constitutional law and federal courts to end what he called a "caste system," the only country to do so without war, revolution or massive violence.
President Barack Obama said without Mr. Doar's efforts, "Michelle and I might not be where we are today." The President described Mr. Doar as "one of the bravest American lawyers of his or any era." "Time and time again, John put his life on the line to make real our country's promise of equal justice for all." "He was the face of the Justice Department. He was proof that the federal government was listening."
Mr. Doar was a longtime protege of St. John Barrett (my boss as an antitrust paralegal in 1980, who like Mr. Doar was a graduate of the Boalt Hall School of Law at the Univresity of California at Berkeley. While I never met Mr. Doar, he ranks among my legal heroes. In an antitrust case he was prosecuting, Mr. Barrett showed me and taught me how to use the pre-computer system of "events slips," multiple-ply carbon color-coded typed notes, which Mr. Doar's lawyers used to dictate and used to organize and marshall information to win civil rights cases and the Nixon impeachment investigation (At least in the 1960s and 1970s, Mr. Doar didn't trust computers because of security concerns).
Mr. Doar was a "country lawyer" from Northern Wisconsin, a Republican (a "Lincoln Republican") who was always impeccably prepared and who stood up to wrongdoers, even in his own law firm, reporting a lawyer who withheld material evidence in an antitrust case involving Kodak.
Mr. Doar led the judicial investigation of Miami U.S. District Judge Alcee Hastings, resulting in then-Judge Hastings' impeachment for bribery and removal from office (Hastings is now a Congressman).
In Jackson, Mississippi, after the 1963 murder of Medgar Evers, Mr. Doar confronted a group of angry African-Americans throwing bricks,stones and bottles; he defused a potential riot and massacre, saying, "My name is DOAR.
D-0-A-R. I'm from the Justice Department. And anyone here knows I stand for what is right. Medgar Evars wouldn't want it this way." Years later, Mr. Doar said. "I wasn't concerned about my safety. Perhaps I should have been. I wasn't hit by any of the projectiles. they were sort of skipping in front of me."
Mr. Doar told C-SPAN in 2009, "Countless black citizens in the South couldn't vote. They were second-class citizens from cradle to grave. The discrimination was terrible, brutal." Mr. Doar's and RFK's vigorous efforts secured Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendment rights for millions of Americans.
At the University of Mississippi, a/k/a "Ole Miss," during weeks of rioting and bad feelings, Mr. Doar stayed in James Meredith's dormitory room, empowering the desegregation of Ole Miss with federal forces. Mr. Doar's dismantling Jim Crow segregation was not popular with certain white elected officials. Flying the Confederate flag above the American flag on the Alabama State Capitol, Alabama Governor GEORGE CORLEY WALLACE openly spoke of wanting to shoot Mr. Doar, which once led New York reporter Jimmy Breslin to write, in his Watergate history (How the Good Guys Finally Won): "Don't miss." Mr. Doar's fellow prep football players at St. Paul's Academy described him as "fearless."
We need more lawyers like John Michael Doar.