Remembering John Doar

Today is the national holiday of Martin Luther King Day.

TB has written about this holiday before, including this:

When we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

The United States has 10 officially recognized federal holidays.

They are:
New Year's Day
The Birthday of Martin Luther King Jr.
Washington's Birthday
Memorial Day
Independence Day
Labor Day
Columbus Day
Veterans' Day
Thanksgiving
Christmas

According to the official government website, the official name of "Presidents Day" is really "Washington's Birthday," and it offers this explanation:
This holiday is designated as "Washington's Birthday" in section 6103(a) of title 5 of the United States Code, which is the law that specifies holidays for Federal employees. Though other institutions such as state and local governments and private businesses may use other names, it is our policy to always refer to holidays by the names designated in the law.

In other words, only one federal holiday is named after a person who was born in the United States of America.

That's a fairly large group of people, a group that has accomplished some of the singularly greatest moments in the history of mankind, in every single area of human existence (science, religion, government, athletics, women's equality, economics, discovery and on and on and on).

Only one, Martin Luther King Jr., has ever been honored by a federal holiday in his name.

Dr. King was the driving force in the civil rights movement, and his non-violent approach helped achieve monumental successes in a struggle that had begun with an entire race of people literally in chains. 

The holiday falls this year on the Monday after the weekend without any Princeton Athletic events because of first semester exams. There will be events this coming weekend, and then it's the wild month of February, which will see winter Ivy League championships and spring openers in another crossover season.

This weekend, though, was quiet, in contrast to what comes next.

TigerBlog did see the story last week on the main University website and on social media about John Doar and his role in the civil rights movement. Anything with the name "John Doar" in it gets his attention.

John Doar, a member of the Class of 1944, was a native Minnesotan who went on to play basketball at Princeton and then attend law school at the University of California. After that, he practiced law in the family firm in Wisconsin, and there was absolutely nothing that suggested he was about to become a towering figure in the South.

This is from a story TB wrote about Doar almost 20 years ago:
 "I looked around late in 1959 and became conscious from newspaper articles and magazines that nothing had happened with segregation since I left Princeton," he says. "A friend of mine called me and asked if I'd like to go to work for the Justice Department, in the Civil Rights Division. It didn't take me long to say I'd do it. I moved my family to Washington on July 4, 1960."

He'd had conversations with Princetonians from the South about segregation at Tiger Inn, and then all those years later decided to do something about it.

And do something he did.

TigerBlog would end up spending considerable time talking to Doar long after Doar retired. TB also nominated him for the NCAA Inspiration Award, which Doar ended up winning - and then ended up sending TB a handwritten thank-you note that he still has.

You can read TB's feature on him HERE.

You can read the story from princeton.edu HERE. A book about Doar's role in the civil rights movement is in the works from Princeton professor Kevin Kruse. If you read the two stories, you'll get a better sense of who Doar was and what his role was in the South in the 1960s.

If you've never heard of him, he's definitely worth reading up about.

Especially today.