Norman Thomas: Biography from Answers.com Mobile

Norman Mattoon Thomas

(born Nov. 20, 1884, Marion, Ohio, U.S. — died Dec. 19, 1968, Huntington, N.Y.) U.S. social reformer and politician. He was ordained a Presbyterian minister and became pastor of New York's East Harlem Church. He joined the Socialist Party in 1918 and left his parish post to become secretary of the pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation. He helped found the American Civil Liberties Union and served as codirector of the League for Industrial Democracy (1922 – 37). He was the Socialist Party's candidate for governor (1924), for mayor of New York (1925, 1929), and for U.S. president (1928 – 48), and he headed the party from 1926. After World War II, as chairman of the Postwar World Council, he campaigned for nuclear disarmament.

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