Nicholas Katzenbach

[kwassa]

He died about a month ago at age 90. He was probably the most important individual fighting the civil rights battle representing the US government, and is the guy facing off George Wallace in the doorway in the other thread.

here it is again:



He also wrote most of the the civil rights legislation that came out of Kennedy's administration, including the Voting Rights Act.

I was going to start a thread then, but didn't get around to it.


Here is his obit from the Washington Post.

He wrote a key midnight brief during the Cuban missile crisis, challenged FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover over the wiretapping of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., conceived of the Warren Commission to investigate President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, and argued with some of the most powerful federal officials over how to extricate the country from the Vietnam War.

He is perhaps most widely remembered for his role as a graceful negotiator during political and physical altercations over court-ordered desegregation in the South
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In the early 1960s, Kennedy and his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, feared that sending military troops to force integration of public institutions would spark an anti-Democrat revolution in the South. So they twice turned to Mr. Katzenbach, then deputy attorney general, to lead federal marshals in securing safe passage for black students attempting to register at previously all-white schools.

“Hey, Nick. Don’t worry if you get shot,” Robert Kennedy quipped as Mr. Katzenbach left Washington to oversee the enrollment of a black student, James Meredith, at the University of Mississippi in 1962. “The president needs a moral issue.”

When Meredith arrived at Ole Miss, the campus erupted in a race riot that lasted 15 hours and ended only after Mr. Katzenbach, who sent urgent communiques to Washington via collect calls from a campus pay phone, persuaded the Kennedys to send in 25,000 U.S. soldiers.

Onlookers wielding rocks, lead pipes and rifles laid siege to Mr. Katzenbach and his 400 federal marshals, who took refuge in the basement of a university administrative building. Mr. Katzenbach became the de facto field general, directing the marshals to refrain from resorting to gunfire even as the violence left dozens injured and two dead, a French journalist and a curious bystander.

Meredith, who survived the riots in his guarded dormitory room, ultimately enrolled.

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That night in a nationally televised address, President Kennedy called for a comprehensive civil rights bill. Mr. Katzenbach largely wrote that bill, and his soft-pedal salesmanship was crucial in passing it over a Senate filibuster in 1964.

Mr. Katzenbach was successful at least in part because “he was not an idealogue who alienated people,” civil rights historian Taylor Branch said. “Like any good lawyer, he could see people coming from the other side and figure out some kind of accommodation to move the whole thing forward.”

After Robert Kennedy resigned as attorney general in fall 1964, Mr. Katzenbach was named to the post and served for two years under Johnson.

Mr. Katzenbach continued to address civil rights issues, particularly at the bloody march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala. He was also the president’s key partner in writing and passing the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which established direct and extensive federal oversight of elections to ensure fair voter registration practices.

[nofurylike]

1. thank you very much for posting this, kwassa.

thanks to your posting it, i have learned a lot more about that history, and that person, kwassa.

[Blue_Tires]

2. thanks for this...

[Number23]

3. Fantastic.

A great man.