
Roger Wilkins was an African-American civil rights leader, professor of history, and journalist. He worked as a welfare lawyer in Ohio before becoming an Assistant Attorney General in President Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration at age 33, one of the highest-ranking blacks ever to serve in the executive branch up to that time. Wilkins was sworn in as Director of Community Relations Service on Friday 4 February 1966 in a ceremony at The White House as per page 2 of President Johnson’s Diary for that day. Leaving government in 1969 at the end of the Johnson administration, he worked briefly for the Ford Foundation before joining the editorial staff of The Washington Post. Along with Carl Bernstein, Herbert Block (“Herblock”), and Bob Woodward, Wilkins earned a Pulitzer Prize in 1973 for exposing the Watergate scandal that eventually forced President Richard Nixon’s resignation from office. He died March 26, 2017