Roger Wilkins, who championed civil rights for black Americans for five decades as an official in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, a foundation executive, a journalist, an author and a university professor, died on Sunday in Kensington, Maryland. He was 85. A black lawyer in the corridors of power, Mr. Wilkins was an assistant United States attorney general, ran domestic programs for the Ford Foundation, wrote editorials for The Washington Post and The New York Times, taught history at George Mason University for nearly 20 years and was close to leading lights of literature, music, politics, journalism and civil rights. Beyond attending a segregated elementary school as a boy and being arrested once in a protest against apartheid, Mr. Wilkins had little personal experience with discrimination. He waged war against racism from above the barricades with political influence, jawboning, court injunctions, philanthropic grants, legislative proposals, and commentaries on radio and television and in newspapers, magazines and books. A lean, intense, soft-spoken intellectual, he grew up in a genteel middle-class family. The customs, attitudes and social currencies of everyday black life “evolved away from me,” he said in a memoir.
参考答案： 罗杰•威尔金斯（Roger Wilkins），基金会执行总监、记者、作家、大学教授，曾在肯尼迪和约翰逊政府就职的五十年中一直力挺美国黑人民权事业，于周日在马里兰州肯辛顿辞世，享年85岁。
作为权力部门的一名黑人律师，威尔金斯先生曾任美国助理总检察长、福特基金会境内项目负责人以及《华盛顿邮报》和《纽约时报》社论作者，并在乔治梅森大学教授了近二十年的历史课程，与文学、音乐、政治、新闻和民权运动等不同领域的标杆人物关系密切。
他在孩提时上过种族隔离小学，曾因参加反种族隔离游行而被捕，除此之外，威尔金斯先生基本没有亲身体会过受歧视的滋味。虽然没有参加抗议活动，但他通过政治影响力、强烈呼吁、法院禁令、慈善资助、立法建议以及广播、电视、报纸、杂志和书刊上的专题报道向种族主义宣战。
清瘦的威尔金斯先生是一名知识分子，做事认真，说话温和。他出生在一个体面的中产阶级家庭，曾在回忆录中说过这样一件事，黑人日常生活中的传统、态度和社会谈资都已“发生了极大的变化，不再是我认识的那样”。