It’s one of the iconic photos of the civil rights era. A white man in a dark suit walking alone in the middle of the street with his arms raised. Massed behind him is a line of armed white police. In front of him, and out of camera range, is a crowd of young black men, protesting the murder of Mississippi NAACP leader Medgar Evers, and throwing bottles and bricks at the cops. For Americans of a certain age, the caption on the photo is indelible: “My name is John Doar-D-O-A-R. I’m from the Justice Department, and anybody around here knows I stand for what is right.”
Doar kept walking toward the angry crowd, trying to calm it, until he found a few who would join hands with him. Together they slowly moved the crowd back from the police.
