I read his name in “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72,” but I never really understood who he was. This was back when the Democrats were the racist party and the Republicans were the party of Lincoln, decades before LBJ and Nixon tacitly agreed to exchange those positions. Here’s what he said in 1948:

Friends, delegates, I do not believe that there can be any compromise on the guarantees of the civil rights which we have mentioned in the minority report. In spite of my desire for unanimous agreement on the entire platform, in spite of my desire to see everybody here in honest and unanimous agreement, there are some matters which I think must be stated clearly and without qualification. There can be no hedging – the newspaper headlines are wrong. There will be no hedging, and there will be no watering down – if you please – of the instruments and the principles of the civil-rights program.

My friends, to those who say that we are rushing this issue of civil rights, I say to them we are 172 years late. To those who say that this civil-rights program is an infringement on states’ rights, I say this: The time has arrived in America for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadow of states’ rights and to walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights.