Roger Wilkins

Roger Wilkins-- noted civil rights activist, lawyer, professor, and journalist-- discusses the legacy of the civil rights movement, the challenges facing African Americans in post-segregation America, and the lack of white leadership advocating for racial equality. (CUNY Graduate Center, November 13, 1993)

Roger Wilkins began his career working for Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. He later worked as a lawyer in Ohio. At age 33, he was appointed assistant attorney general during the Lyndon Johnson Administration. He left government in 1969 and joined the editorial page staff of the Washington Post. He won a Pulitzer Prize, along with Carl Bernstein, Herbert Block, and Bob Woodward for their work exposing the Watergate burglary. He left the Washington Post in 1974 but continued his journalisitic career working for several major news outlets around the country. He was also a Clarence J. Robinson Professor of History and American Culture at George Mason University until his retirement in 2007.