“The Division: John Doar, the Justice Department and the Civil Rights Movement”

Featured Speaker: Prof. Kevin Kruse.- Professor of History; Director of the Center for Collaborative History - Princeton Univ.

John Doar was a vital actor during countless crisis moments in the civil rights movement. He worked with Medgar Evers to secure voting rights, protected John Lewis and the Freedom Riders, fought to get James Meredith into Ole Miss, prosecuted Klansmen for the deaths of civil rights workers (including the infamous "Mississippi Burning" murders), oversaw the implementation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and literally led the way in the Selma-to-Montgomery March. Drawing on the previously untapped papers of Doar, Kruse hopes his forthcoming work will not just provide new insights into these civil rights milestones but also provide a new understanding of the ways in which the federal government worked (and didn’t work) during the racial revolution unfolding across the South.

Kevin M. Kruse studies the political, social, and urban/suburban history of 20th-century America. Focused on conflicts over race, rights, and religion, he has particular interests in segregation and the civil rights movement, the rise of religious nationalism and the making of modern conservatism.

His first book, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism (2005), won prizes including the 2007 Francis B. Simkins Award from the Southern Historical Association (for the best first book in Southern history, 2005-2006) and the 2007 Best Book Award in Urban Politics from the American Political Science Association. His second book, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America (2015), examined the rise of American religious nationalism in the mid-twentieth century and its legacies in American political and religious life. (He discussed the book here with Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air(link is external).)

Professor Kruse has just published Fault Lines: A History of America Since 1974, a trade/textbook with co-author Julian Zelizer. A sweeping history of the past four decades of American history, the book chronicles the origins of the divided states of America, a nation increasingly riven by stark political partisanship and deep social divisions along lines of race, class, gender and sexuality. Co-written with Julian Zelizer, the book tracks not only the course of our current state of political polarization, but also the ways in which an increasingly fractured media landscape worked to aggravate divisions in American politics and society as well.

In addition to these works, Professor Kruse has also served as the co-editor of three collections: The New Suburban History (2006), with Thomas J. Sugrue; Spaces of the Modern City (2008), with Gyan Prakash; and Fog of War: The Second World War and the Civil Rights Movement (2012) with Stephen Tuck. 

Professor Kruse is currently conducting research for his new book, The Division: John Doar, the Justice Department, and the Civil Rights Movement (contracted to Basic Books). The point man for civil rights for the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, Doar was a vital actor in countless crisis moments in the civil rights movement — pioneering voting rights lawsuits, personally confronting segregationists at Ole Miss and the University of Alabama, putting Klansmen on trial for the murders of civil rights workers (including the famous “Mississippi Burning” murders), helping craft and implement the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, literally leading the way in the Selma-to-Montgomery March, etc. Through the previously untapped papers of Doar, he hopes to provide new insights into these civil rights milestones as well as a new understanding of the ways in which the federal government worked (and didn’t work) during the racial revolution unfolding across the South.

After The Division, Kruse will turn his attention to Law and Order: The Politics of Crime and Culture in New York City (contracted to Basic Books). Chronicling the political life of calls for “law and order” in NYC — from George Wallace’s 1968 appearance at Madison Square Garden through 1970s and 1980s scandals like Bernie Goetz and the Central Park Five, from Rudy Giuliani’s “broken windows” policing and the post-9/11 crackdowns, on to Donald Trump’s 2015 presidential campaign announcement at Trump Tower — this book will explore the origins and evolution of a powerful force in contemporary American politics.

Professor Kruse was honored(link is external) as one of America's top young "Innovators in the Arts and Sciences" by the Smithsonian Magazine and selected as one of the top young historians in the country by the History News Network. He has recently been named a Distinguished Lecturer by the Organization of American Historians and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow.