John Doar

I can't believe John Doar will finally get a Presidential Medal of Freedom this year, and from this particular White House. I am overjoyed.
Most white people in the 60s civil rights struggles have remained as famous, and not so famous, names of brave persons and deeds, or martyrs.
John Doar has been neither; yet he was one of the most stalwart, most formidable icons in the struggle to get civil rights laws implemented and obeyed that any of us had ever heard of or learned about. And during the grief and struggle immediately following the death of Medgar Evers, John Doar ran into an alley to reason with a large gathering of black youth who had guns and plenty of
anger. They relaxed all the rage initiative fueling them, mainly out of respect for John Doar, and the
legacy of Mr. Evers.
I imagine only a small fraction of the young people who know the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.have ever even heard Mr. Doar's name. But Mr. Doar was in Mississippi at the inception of the
voter rights struggle, long before President Kennedy sent troops to the South to enforce the laws of
our land.
I wonder if when Mr. Doar began at the Justice Department  he had any inkling,while undertaking the work of enforcing the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960, that in about three years he would be
in a photo on the front page of the New York Times, nearly getting his head bashed in with a tire iron at the Farish St. riots in Jackson, Mississippi, once the body of Medgar Evers lay in state there- on the same day a young man took aim at Mr. Doar with a rifle.
Mr.Doar was an enforcer who had a face off with staunch segregationists, and those who sometimes became reactionary toward these lovers of the status-quo.
I doubt he knew.
We know. And we know we owe Mr. Doar a great debt. All of America owes him. At least he is getting a Medal of  Freedom, from the first African-American President of the United States of America.
Thank you Mr. John Doar. Thank you.