Medal of Freedom

President Obama plans to award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to 13 people, including Bob Dylan, John Glenn, Toni Morrison and John Paul Stevens, the White House announced Thursday.

  NYTimes Blog

You can look at the list of honorees current and past (Estée Lauder?) and decide for yourself whether the medal of “Freedom” is being appropriately awarded. Sadly, the medal is no longer much more than a political party favor and as such carries no real honor, including recent recipients such as George Tenet and Tony Blair – not to mention Dick Cheney in '91, but there is a man among this year's group who should have received the medal a long time ago – maybe when it was still meaningful: John Doar.

John Doar spent most of this time in the Justice Department investigating civil rights abuses in the South and bringing suits against people who violated the 1957 Civil Rights Act. He first filed suits over voter intimidation in Tennessee. In early 1961, he and fellow Department of Justice attorney Bob Owen began investigating voter discrimination in southwest Mississippi with Bob Moses' help. While Doar primarily investigated voter intimidation cases, he also accompanied James Meredith as he enrolled in Ole' Miss in September of 1962. After arranging for Meredith to be registered despite a confrontation with the governor and riots on the school grounds, Doar stayed with Meredith in his dorm room for several weeks, accompanying him to his classes with federal marshals.

In 1964, Doar was involved in the investigation of the murder of James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman during Freedom Summer. He authorized the F.B.I. to investigate the case, and he was the lead attorney in the federal trial that led to the conviction of several people for violating the civil rights of the three civil rights workers. Doar also investigated and successfully prosecuted the murder of Viola Luizzo, who was killed while bringing marchers back to Selma from Montgomery. Doar had been present during the entirety of that march. One of Doar's most famous actions occurred after the death of Medgar Evers. Mourners wanted to march up the main street in Jackson, MS, but they were stopped by police. When marchers began throwing bottles and bricks and county police were brought in with shot-guns, Doar stepped between the two groups and convinced the marchers to disperse peacefully.

  Washington University Film & Media Archive

John Doar should be as nationally celebrated as any other civil rights hero in this country, but how many of us even remembered (or even knew) his name and the history of his actions in the crises of the 60s civil rights events? You might say he was just another lawyer making hay of the situation and a name for himself, but how would you explain his stay with James Meredith or his physical intervention in what would have been a riot?  Watch this interview with him in Jnuary 2009 (he was 87 and still practicing at the time):

BTW: He's a "Lincoln" Republican.