If you were around to see news coverage of Nicholas Katzenbach's 1964 confrontation with Governor George C. Wallace at the door of the University of Alabama's Foster Auditorium, you're not likely to have forgotten it.
MSNBC has a tape of it here.
Best line: "I'm not interested in this show."
Interesting stuff from the NY Times obit:
Mr. Katzenbach was educated at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, where he played hockey, and Princeton, where he majored in international relations and public affairs. As a 19-year-old junior he drove to New York to enlist after the Pearl Harbor attack. A month later he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Army Air Forces and became a navigator on B-25 bombers. On a mission in 1943, he was captured when his plane was shot down. (He was awarded an Air Medal and three clusters.) As a prisoner of war in Germany he read, by his count, 400 books in 15 months.A pretty good start.
After the war Mr. Katzenbach convinced Princeton that his reading qualified him for an undergraduate degree. The university had him take nine examinations and write a thesis, and in two months he graduated cum laude, in 1945. Two years later he graduated from Yale Law School, where he was editor in chief of The Yale Law Journal. On a Rhodes scholarship, he studied at Balliol College at Oxford.
2 comments:
He was the Commencement Speaker at my College Graduation and a man who did more than he ever got credit for in my opinion. He also gave a pretty good speech if I still remember it given my state of sobriety at the time.
An amazing video. Anyone who champions "states rights" still sends off a warning signal in my my mind. People like Mr. Katzenbach make me still have faith in the American dream.
Post a Comment