US Government Official, Civil Rights Figure, Author. He went from a key adviser to President Lyndon B. Johnson on urban Civil Rights matters to a journalist with the Washington Post who helped break the "Watergate" scandal along with fellow newsmen Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in 1974. His efforts helped the paper receive a Pulitzer Prize. Born in Kansas City, Missouri, his father was a successful journalist with the publication, The Kansas City Call, his mother served as the first black national president of the Y.W.C.A., Roger was the nephew of "Civil Rights" advocate and NAACP leader Roy Wilkins. Following his father's death when Roger was nine years old, he moved with his family to Harlem and later Grand Rapids, Michigan. He received his Bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan and attained his degree in Law in 1956. Wilkins acquired valuable experience while interning for Thurgood Marshall at the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund. He followed this with a period as a social worker in Cleveland and later, he practiced law in New York City, prior to landing the position of special assistant to the head of the Agency for International Development within the Kennedy Administration. He remained with President Johnson and played an important advisement role in such major issues as "Civil Rights" legislation and the "Voting Rights Act of 1965". In 1966, he was appointed Assistant Attorney General under Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach (1966 to 1969). After leaving the government, he joined the staff at the Washington Post, where he contributed editorials. He moved on to the New York Times and became the first African American to serve on the publication's editorial board. Wilkins later became a professor of History at George Mason University. He authored the books "A Man's Life" (1982), "Quiet Riots" (1988) and "Jefferson's Pillow" (2001). He died of complications from dementia one day after his eighty-fifth birthday.