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Pulitzer journalist delivers MLK speech
Nathan Kotz discussed Lyndon Johnson and the slain civil rights leader's relationship and compared political strategies for promoting civil rights
by Brian Meyers
In spring 2002, the members of Concerned Black Students, in the form of a student initiative, demanded that Grinnell College do something, anything to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
This Wednesday in the Forum South Lounge, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist fulfilled that commitment this year. Nathan (Nick) Kotz, at the invitation of President Osgood and Wayne Moyer, Political Science, lectured on the relationship between Lyndon Johnson and King in 1964 and 1965.
Kotz discussed his recent book Judgement Days, which analyzes the relationship between King and Johnson in the 18 months following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The book also examines FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover in his role, in Kotz's words, as "the Iago to Johnson's Othello."
The Rosenfield Program in Public Affairs, International Relations and Human Rights sponsored Kotz's lecture.
Kotz, a former lieutenant in the US Marine Corps, got his start in journalism working for The Des Moines Register and has also reported for The Minneapolis Tribune and The Washington Post. He won the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting in 1968 after he exposed unsanitary practices in meat packing plants and helped bring about the Federal Wholesome Meat Act of 1967.
His other journalistic honors include the Sigma Delta Chi Award for Washington correspondence, the Raymond Clapper Memorial Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Award and the National Magazine Award. He has also been honored by the American University School of Communications as the university's outstanding adjunct professor.
Judgement Days is Kotz's fifth book. President Jimmy Carter described the book as "an important examination of a critical moment in American history??a battle for our nation?s soul," according to Moyer.
Kotz said he wrote the book because "what happened in those 18 months was absolutely extraordinary. The positive change was absolutely extraordinary." In his 90-minute talk, Kotz spoke about laws passed during that period that transformed the country forever, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
He said he attributed this progress to strong leadership from both King and Johnson. He described the strengths and weaknesses each possessed as leaders, the many similarities between the two and the "tragedy" that eventually destroyed them both, exacerbated by Hoover's machinations.
Kotz concluded his lecture by noting that such powerful leadership seems absent in today's political climate, something that he could only hope would change soon. After the event he remained to talk to students.
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