John W. Douglas ’43

John was a pillar of the class during our college years. His later career in government and private law in Washington epitomized “Princeton in the nation’s service.” John died June 2, 2010, of stroke complications in Washington, D.C.  

In 1963, President John F. Kennedy appointed John as assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s civil division. He became the administration’s point man for the August 1963 March on Washington, at which Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech. A year earlier, he and classmate Nicholas Katzenbach helped negotiate the release of prisoners from Cuba after the Bay of Pigs invasion. John resigned from Justice in 1966 and returned to the Covington & Burling law firm. He became president of the D.C. Bar.  

John’s father was Sen. Paul Douglas (D-Ill.). Born in Philadelphia, John prepared at Deerfield Academy. At Princeton he majored in politics, played on the football and baseball teams, served as class president junior and senior years, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He earned a law degree from Yale in 1948 and was a Rhodes scholar.

In 1945 he married Mary St. John, who became an honorary 1943 classmate. She died in 2007. John’s survivors include his son, Peter; daughter Kate Douglas Torrey; a brother; a half-sister; four grandchildren; and a great-grandson.