Frank Porter Graham

Frank Porter Graham (October 14, 1886 – February 16, 1972) was an American educator and political activist. A professor of history, he was elected President of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1930, and he later became the first President of the consolidated University of North Carolina system.

Graham was an active champion of many liberal causes including academic freedom, economic justice, civil rights, disarmament and world peace. He served on numerous advisory boards for Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman, and in 1949 he was appointed by the North Carolina governor to fill a vacant seat in the United States Senate. His effort to win election in the following year turned into a bitter and ultimately unsuccessful struggle with conservative Democrat Willis Smith.

In 1951 he was appointed as a United Nations mediator for the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan. He pursued that elusive goal for 16 years, and he continued his advocacy work on many other issues, until failing health forced him to retire from public life in 1967.

Frank Porter Graham was born in Fayetteville, North Carolina in 1886, the sixth of nine children born to Alexander and Katherine Bryan Sloan Graham. His father was superintendent of the Charlotte school system for 25 years, and many of his siblings and other family relations were teachers. His older brother, Archibald Wright "Moonlight" Graham (December 28, 1879 – August 25, 1965), was a professional baseball player with the New York Giants and later a physician (and the inspiration for a character in the 1989 film Field of Dreams). Alexander Graham Middle School in Charlotte is named for his father. It opened in 1920 on Morehead Street near the Grahams' home and is now in a newer building on Runnymede Lane.

Graham attended the original University of North Carolina (UNC, now called University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), from which he was graduated with Phi Beta Kappa honors in 1909. He was an active and popular student, serving as the editor of the college newspaper and the yearbook, president of the debating society, president of the campus YMCA, Senior class president, and the university's head cheerleader. He thereafter studied law and received his license in 1913. He received a graduate degree in 1916 from Columbia University. While he was studying law, Graham worked as a high school teacher in Raleigh, North Carolina. He went on to serve as a history instructor at UNC beginning in 1915. He interrupted his teaching career to enlist in 1917 in the United States Marine Corps for service in World War I. Enlisted as a private, he was discharged as a first lieutenant in 1919.

Graham returned to the History department at UNC and was promoted to a professorship in 1927, despite not having earned a Ph.D. He also served briefly as dean of students.

In June 1930, Graham was elected President of UNC, succeeding Harry Woodburn Chase. As The New York Times put it: "He was literally 'drafted' for the presidency, for he desired to teach, and yielded only to the unanimous vote of the trustees." His formal induction ceremony on November 11, 1931 drew such a large crowd that it had to be held in Kenan Stadium. Graham used the date of Armistice Day to underscore his message that schools and universities have the responsibility of guiding young people away from war. His first cousin Edward Kidder Graham had been President of UNC from 1913 to 1918.

In July of the following year, he married Marian Drane of Baltimore, Maryland. Their wedding ceremony was performed by the bride's father, who was the rector of Baltimore's historic St. Paul's Episcopal Church for more than 50 years.