Katzenbach, Nicholas deBelleville (1922-2012), served as undersecretary of state from 1966 until 1968. Katzenbach had previously served in the Department of Justice since 1961. He became acting attorney general in 1964 and U.S. attorney general in 1965. He first gained national prominence in the early 1960’s when he was the federal government’s chief representative in civil rights cases in Mississippi and Alabama.
Katzenbach was born in Philadelphia on Jan. 17, 1922. A prisoner of war for two years in Europe during World War II (1939-1945), he spent most of this time studying economics, law, and literature. Later, he graduated from Princeton and Yale, and attended Oxford University in England as Rhodes scholar. He taught law at Yale and the University of Chicago during the 1950’s. He died on May 8, 2012.
