Of his groundbreaking experience as the first African American on the editorial boards of the Washington Post and the New York Times, as well as the first black columnist for the New York Times, Montgomery Fellow Roger Wilkins modestly said, "Those are things I'm fairly proud of."
Wilkins, who is on campus as part of the Montgomery Endowment's series on truth and ethics in journalism, has spent the past few days meeting with and teaching students. In his career, he served as an advisor to President Lyndon Johnson on civil rights and informed a generation through his opinion pieces in the Washington Post and the New York Times.
In an interview yesterday with The Dartmouth, Wilkins said that his time as one of Johnson's principal advisors on civil rights was perhaps the most exciting experience of his distinguished career. He recalled being part of a meeting chaired by then Vice President Hubert Humphrey at which he and others urged Johnson to send the Voting Rights Act to Congress in 1965.
"It was an enormously important thing to do, and it was hugely gratifying that I was at the right place at the right time," Wilkins said.
At that time, Wilkins worked in the Department of Commerce as the Associate Director of the Community Relations Service. He later became an Assistant Attorney General.
Wilkins, a Democrat, left the government for the Washington Post when Richard Nixon was elected president.
"I didn't like Nixon. The Nixon people asked me to stay ... and I didn't want to work for Nixon," he said.
Wilkins went on to write virtually all of the editorials published in the Washington Post about the Watergate scandal that led to Nixon's resignation. For his work, he shared that year's Pulitzer Prize with reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein and cartoonist Herb Block.
Wilkins, however, said he met with difficulties as a result of his race while working for the Washington Post and the New York Times.
"I didn't see the world exactly as my white superiors saw it. Since I was writing opinion for the newspapers, we sometimes had clashes," he said.
Wilkins remembered one such clash he had at the Washington Post, in which he wrote an obituary-editorial honoring Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., a figure his superiors saw in a less favorable light.
"My editors wanted me to write an editorial saying he was a bum," Wilkins said.
Although he recognized his shortcomings, Wilkins admired Powell for being an instrumental voice in Congress for the passage of Johnson's Great Society legislation.
"He was a very significant Congressman and a very flawed human being," Wilkins said. "He was a great champion for the rights of ordinary people."
After revising his editorial three times, Wilkins refused to edit the piece further. The Washington Post printed it "pretty much as I did it," he said.
Wilkins soon left for the New York Times, a newspaper he later left in part because of a "massive" racial clash involving the executive editor of the newspaper, who he said was "really quite bad on racial issues both in covering the news and managing the newsroom."
After working briefly for the now defunct Washington Star, he joined a think tank and was recruited to teach at George Mason University, where he is now a professor of history.
On campus, Wilkins had a busy schedule that involved a lecture Sunday night and attending classes and meeting students yesterday, before returning home.
