Nicholas Katzenbach, a civil rights champion whose role in both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations helped shape domestic and foreign policy in the 1960s, has died at the age of 90.
Katzenbach's alma mater, Princeton University, said he died at his home in Skillman, New Jersey, on Tuesday.
Katzenbach rose to become U.S. Attorney General under President Lyndon Johnson, but made perhaps his biggest mark earlier in a 1963 confrontation with Alabama Governor George Wallace, who was trying to stop two black students, James Hood and Vivian Malone, from entering the University of Alabama.
As deputy attorney general, Katzenbach - surrounded by television cameras and flanked by federal marshals - read a statement from President John F. Kennedy demanding that the two students be admitted. It was the tensest moment of a face-off that became known as the "Stand in the Schoolhouse Door."
He also served as an adviser in the Kennedy administration on a number of foreign policy fronts, including Vietnam, the Cuban missile crisis and the Bay of Pigs. He later sought to have an independent commission established to look into the Kennedy assassination.
During his time in government, Katzenbach served as assistant attorney general, deputy attorney general, attorney general and undersecretary of state.
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Source and picture: Reuters
Norwegian
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