HISTORIAN, JOURNALIST, ACTIVIST WILKINS DIES

Roger Wilkins, a historian, journalist and activist who held a key civil rights post in President Lyndon Johnson’s administration and helped The Washington Post win a Pulitzer for its Watergate coverage, died Sunday, relatives said. He was 85.

Wilkins, most recently a history professor at George Mason University, died at an assisted-living facility in Kensington, Md., said his wife, Patricia King, and his daughter, Elizabeth Wilkins. The cause of death was complications from dementia, they said.

His uncle Roy Wilkins was the longtime executive director of the NAACP. A lifetime later, his daughter Elizabeth worked in the presidential campaign of thensenator Barack Obama.