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David Ginsburg, 98, a liberal lawyer and longtime Washington insider who helped found the Americans for Democratic Action and led the presidential commission on race relations whose report, in 1968, warned that the United States was "moving toward two societies -- one black, one white, separate and unequal," died Sunday of congestive heart failure at his home in Alexandria, Va.

Ginsburg arrived in Washington in 1935 and quickly emerged as one of the brightest of the New Dealers. He helped draft laws on price controls during World War II and served as an adviser on reorganizing the German economy after the Allied victory.

President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Ginsburg executive director of the National Commission on Civil Disorders, which argued that the 1967 riots were a form of social protest by blacks against longstanding injustices.

NEW YORK TIMES