Roger Wilkins
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Roger Wilkins (born 1932) is an American civil rights leader, professor of history, and journalist. He is best known for his role as one of the journalists to expose the Watergate scandal.
Wilkins was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and grew up in Michigan. He was educated at Creston High School in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and received a bachelor's degree in 1953 and a law degree in 1956 from the University of Michigan, where he interned with the NAACP. He worked as a welfare lawyer in Ohio before becoming an Assistant Attorney General in President Lyndon B. Johnson's administration at age 33.
Leaving government at the end of the Johnson administration, he worked briefly for the Ford Foundation before joining the editorial staff of The Washington Post, where, along with Carl Bernstein, Herbert Block ("Herblock"), and Bob Woodward, he earned a Pulitzer Prize in 1972 for exposing the Watergate scandal that eventually forced President Richard Nixon's resignation from office. He left the Post in 1974 to work for The New York Times, followed five years later by a brief stay at the now-defunct Washington Star. In 1980 he became a radio news commentator, work he still does today for National Public Radio (NPR).
He is now a Robinson professor of history and American culture at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, and is publisher of the NAACP's journal Crisis.
He is also the nephew of Roy Wilkins, a past executive director of the NAACP.
[edit] Books
Books written or edited by Wilkins include:
- A man's life: an autobiography. 1982, reprinted 1991. New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0-671-22673-8.
- Quiet riots: race and poverty in the United States. Edited by Wilkins and Fred Harris. 1998. New York: Pantheon Books. ISBN 0-679-72100-2.
- Jefferson's pillow: the founding fathers and the dilemma of Black patriotism. 2001. Boston: Beacon Press. ISBN 0-8070-0956-3.
