National Affairs: It Is the Man

To the University of North Carolina's scrappy little President Frank Porter Graham, discretion has rarely been the better part of valor. As far back as North Carolina's bloody Gastonia textile strike in 1929, History Professor Graham stuck his academic neck out to fight for a better deal for labor. Over the years, he fought against racial discrimination and restriction of academic freedom. He joined numberless "liberal" committees. Franklin Roosevelt often used him on commissions on social and economic problems.

Some of the committees which Graham joined were Communist-front groups. He sponsored the 1940 and 1941 conferences of the American Committee for Protection...

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