Before his career as a journalist and while in law school, Roger Wilkins, ’53, JD’56, HLHD’93, was an intern and mentee of former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, the founder and first director-counsel of the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
In 1966, President Lyndon Johnson appointed Wilkins to lead the Community Relations Service, an agency overseen by the Department of Justice. Later, he worked at the Ford Foundation, overseeing funding for job training, drug rehabilitation, and education for the poor. In 1972, he joined The Washington Post’s editorial board.
His commentary on the Watergate scandal helped garner a Pulitzer Prize for the newspaper a year later.