Call Number:

MC247

Repository:

Princeton University Library: Public Policy Papers

Extent:

• 264 boxes
• 5 folders

Language:

English

Preferred Citation:

Identification of specific item; Date (if known); (Collection Title), Box and Folder Number; Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

Date:

1938-2009 (inclusive) and 1960-1974 (bulk)

Creator:

Doar, John (1921-2014), United States. Department of Justice, United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on the Judiciary, United States. Congress. House. Committee on the Judiciary, United States. Congress. House. Committee on Appropriations, United States. Commission on Civil Rights, United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on the Judiciary. Subcommittee on Improvements in Judicial Machinery, United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on the Judiciary. Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights, Yale University., A. Philip Randolph Educational Fund, Southern Regional Council, National Education Association of the United States. National Commission on Professional Rights and Responsibilities, Freed, Daniel J., Wald, Patricia M., Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Research Committee, University of Houston., University of Georgia., Congressional Quarterly Service, Commonweal Foundation, Read, Leonard E., American Jewish committee, State Bar of Wisconsin, and Johnson, Lyndon B. (Lyndon Baines) (1908-1973)

Abstract:

John Doar (1921-2014) was a lawyer who worked for the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice (1960-1967) and was chief counsel to the House Judiciary Committee investigating the Watergate scandal (1973-1974). He also served as president of the New York City Board of Education (1968-1969) and as president of the Bedford-Stuyvesant Development and Services Corporation (1967-1973). The collection primarily documents Doar's tenure with the Civil Rights Division in the form of court records, investigation files, correspondence, and notes, though materials from Doar's time on the Watergate impeachment inquiry committee and on the Board of Education are also present. To a lesser extent, the collection is composed of records from Doar's work for the Bedford-Stuyvesant Corporation and his private law practice.

John Doar (1921-2014) was an attorney who prosecuted discrimination and segregation cases for the Justice Department during the civil rights movement. He also headed the committee that drafted the articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon following the Watergate scandal and was president of two organizations in New York City: the New York City Board of Education, which oversaw the city's public school system, and the Bedford-Stuyvesant Development and Services Corporation, the business arm of a development company in Brooklyn.

Doar was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1921 and raised in New Richmond, Wisconsin. He attended Princeton University for his undergraduate studies and majored in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. After graduating from Princeton University in 1944, Doar studied law at the University of California, Berkeley, earning his law degree in 1949.

Following his graduation from law school, Doar returned to New Richmond and worked in private practice with his brother and cousin for the firm Doar and Knowles. The Department of Justice offered him a position in July 1960, where he initially served as Special Assistant to the Attorney General. In October, Doar joined the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, the institution tasked with enforcing the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960 (and later the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act). He started in the Division as First Assistant to the Assistant Attorney General, serving first under Harold Tyler (1960-1961) and then under Burke Marshall (1961-1964).

Doar was sworn in as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights on April 22, 1965, making him head of the Civil Rights Division, a position he held until his resignation in December 1967. During his time at the Civil Rights Division, Doar was involved in a number of highly publicized cases and events of the civil rights movement, such as United States v. Price (commonly known as the "Mississippi Burning" trial) and the Selma-Montgomery march of 1965. Doar also escorted James Meredith onto the segregated University of Mississippi campus in 1962 to ensure that Meredith would be allowed to register, and later prosecuted Mississippi's governor, Ross Barnett, for denying Meredith's admission.

At the request of Robert Kennedy, Doar became president of the Bedford-Stuyvesant Development and Services Corporation in 1967, an organization Kennedy had co-founded to help revitalize the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in Brooklyn. Doar also joined the New York City Board of Education in 1968, during a period in the history of New York City's public schools that was characterized by increasing attempts to decentralize power over the school system and give more direct control over the schools to local communities. Doar's tenure on the Board of Education ended in May 1969, after the Board was dissolved by a state decentralization law.

Doar resigned from the Bedford-Stuyvesant Development and Services Corporation in 1973. In December of that same year, he was appointed chief counsel to the House Judiciary Committee, the group which would oversee the Watergate hearings. As head of a special impeachment inquiry committee, Doar led a team that conducted its own investigations into the charges made against Richard Nixon and drafted articles for his impeachment.

After Nixon's resignation in August 1974, Doar returned to New York and entered into private practice. He opened the firm Doar Rieck Kaley and Mack, where he remained active into his 90s. Doar also served as a trustee of Princeton University from 1969 to 1979. President Barack Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012.

John Doar died on November 11, 2014 at age 92.

The collection primarily documents John Doar's tenure with the Civil Rights Division in the form of court records, investigation files, correspondence, and notes, though materials from Doar's time on the Watergate impeachment inquiry committee and on the Board of Education are also present. To a lesser extent, the collection is composed of records from Doar's work for the Bedford-Stuyvesant Corporation and his private law practice.

Please see the series descriptions in the contents list for additional information about each series.

The arrangement of materials in Series 1 and Series 3 are based on outlines prepared by John Doar and his staff detailing how his records were to be organized. The original outline for Series 1 may be found in the folder "Office Management: Filing" in Box 95 and the original outline for Series 3 may be found in the folder "Board of Education: Organization of Files" in Box 140. For both series, however, these outlines were not replicated exactly in the final arrangement of the materials, as some of the records included in the outlines were not actually present in the collection received by Princeton University. The processing archivist also consolidated and simplified the outlines to help researchers navigate the finding aid more easily.

Materials in Series 2 were arranged by the processing archivist in the absence of original order.

The collection is arranged into five series: