Former Pennsylvania Sen. Harris Wofford, a longtime civil rights activist who helped persuade John F. Kennedy to make a crucial phone call to the wife of Martin Luther King Jr. during the 1960 presidential campaign, has died. He was 92.
Wofford died in the hospital late Monday night of complications from a fall Saturday in his Washington apartment, his son, Daniel Wofford, said.
Kennedy's phone call to Coretta Scott King when her husband was locked in a Georgia prison cell in 1960 is credited by some analysts with turning the black vote in his favor and perhaps proving to be the decisive factor in the race against Richard Nixon.
FILE - In this Feb. 15, 2013 file photo, President Barack Obama presents a 2012 Citizens Medal to former Pennsylvania Sen. Harris Wofford, in the East Room of the White House in Washington. Wofford, a civil rights activist who staged an upset Senate win in 1991, has died. He was 92. Wofford died late Monday, Jan. 21, 2019, of complications from a fall in his Washington, D.C., apartment, his son, Daniel Wofford, said. (AP PhotoJacquelyn Martin, File)
Wofford was an aide to Kennedy during his administration and worked in government and higher education until his upset Senate win in 1991.
Wofford's activism started in high school. Visits to India left him inspired by Mohandas K. Gandhi, and he marched with King. He became an aide and friend to Democratic presidents over a span of decades.
"He was really blessed to have such a long and full and interesting and happy life," Daniel Wofford said in an interview Tuesday. "As we realized that we were going to lose him, we began to focus on what an amazing career and father and friend he was to so many."
As the head of President Bill Clinton's domestic volunteer program, Wofford was behind the national Martin Luther King Day of Service, which urged Americans to volunteer on the holiday.
U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., on Tuesday called Wofford "a champion of justice and a man of uncommon courage who dedicated his life to service."
"It's only fitting that Harris passed away on the national day of service he helped to bring into existence," Casey said.
Though perhaps best known for his three years in the Senate, Wofford left a large legacy by shaping government programs behind the scenes.
He advised Kennedy on civil rights, assisted in the establishment of the Peace Corps and headed Clinton's Corporation for National Service. He also spent years leading higher education institutions and was an early supporter of Barack Obama's presidential candidacy.
With a philosophy grounded in Kennedy-style liberalism, he promoted an activist government and crafted a career in public service.
"I obviously get a lot of joy out of public service," Wofford said in a 1995 interview. "I've followed ideas in life, and the idea of volunteer service has been with me even before I went to college. It's very hard to imagine life when you're not following ideas."
In 1991, he was appointed by then-Gov. Robert P. Casey to fill the Senate vacancy created by the death of three-term Republican John Heinz in a plane crash.
Six months later, he pulled off a surprise victory in the special election to complete the Senate term. He beat Republican Dick Thornburgh, who was President George H.W. Bush's attorney general and a popular former Pennsylvania governor, by 10 percentage points.
The special election was considered a dry run for Democratic themes in 1992, when Clinton won the presidency. Wofford campaigned on a pledge to guarantee health care for all Americans, much like Clinton would embrace through his first two years in office.
"If criminals have a right to a lawyer, I think working Americans should have the right to a doctor," he repeated in his campaign commercials.
As a senator, Wofford pushed Clinton's doomed health care plan and helped write legislation to create a national service program, which he also ran.
Wofford was known as a bit of an egghead, not a smooth-talking politician. He had difficulty speaking in 30-second sound bites, and many analysts say he preferred the technical nuts and bolts of legislation over ribbon-cutting events and public visits.
In the historic midterm election of 1994, voters soured on Clinton's early efforts and gave control of both houses of Congress back to Republicans for the first time in decades. In Pennsylvania, Wofford fell in his bid for a full Senate term to Republican Rick Santorum, who campaigned against the kinds of government programs that Wofford had an affinity for.
A year later, Clinton named Wofford to head the Corporation for National Service, which included Clinton's beloved AmeriCorps.
He later was co-chair of America's Promise, a group that aims to help young people. In late 2007, Wofford traveled to Iowa to endorse the candidacy of then-Sen. Obama.
According to The New York Times, he told a crowd that he had not felt so inspired "since the days of John Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King. ... Barack Obama picked up the torch that they lit."
In 2016, Wofford, by then a widower of two decades after his wife of 48 years, Clare, died of leukemia, announced in a column in The New York Times that he had found love with a man 50 years his junior.
"At age 70, I did not imagine that I would fall in love again and remarry. But the past 20 years have made my life a story of two great loves," he wrote.
Wofford was 75 when he met Matthew Charlton, who was 25, and they married when they were 90 and 40.
Wofford's activism in civil rights dated to the 1950s.
A close confidante of King, Wofford served as a lawyer for the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and was one of the first white graduates of Howard University Law School in 1954.
After working on Kennedy's presidential campaign, Wofford later served as chairman of Kennedy's White House Subcabinet Group on Civil Rights and helped R. Sargent Shriver form the Peace Corps in the early 1960s.
At the 1968 Democratic Party convention in Chicago, Wofford was arrested in street protests. Charges of disorderly conduct were later dropped.
The author of four books, Wofford was president of the State University of New York at Old Westbury, which began as an experimental college on Long Island, from 1966 to 1969.
A committee of educators later decided the college was too informal — the school had no departments, no failing grades and no exams — and it was reformed in 1971.
He then led Bryn Mawr, the liberal arts institution outside Philadelphia, from 1970 to 1978. After a decade in private law practice and a stint as Pennsylvania's Democratic Party chairman, he joined Sen. Casey's Cabinet in 1987 as secretary of labor and industry.
Born in 1926 in New York City to a successful insurance salesman and a civic activist, Harris Llewellyn Wofford parted ways with his family politically at age 10. For months, he refused to ride in the family car, which sported a bumper sticker for the 1936 Republican presidential candidate, Alf Landon.
Wofford was active during his teenage years in Scarsdale, N.Y., advocating worldwide government as the founder of Student Federalists.
But during a visit to India, he was exposed to Gandhi's teachings and his enthusiasm was tempered by a realization that more practical solutions would be needed for world problems. He and Clare later wrote "India Afire," which was published in 1951.
Wofford found that big ideas come to fruition only with persistence and "that's the key lesson I learned from him," Daniel Wofford said Tuesday.
He is survived by Charlton and three children, Susanne, Daniel and David, and six grandchildren.
PARIS (AP) —
Reuters photographer Mohammed Salem captured this year’s prestigious World Press Photo of the Year award Thursday with a depiction of loss and sorrow in Gaza, a heartrending photo of a Palestinian woman cradling the body of her young niece. The photograph, taken in Khan Younis just days after Salem’s own child was born, shows 36-year-old Inas Abu Maamar holding five-year-old Saly, who was killed along with her mother and sister when an Israeli missile struck their home.
Salem, who is Palestinian, described this photo filed Nov. 2 last year, as a “powerful and sad moment that sums up the broader sense of what was happening in the Gaza Strip.”
The image ”truly encapsulates this sense of impact,” said global jury chair Fiona Shields, The Guardian newspaper's head of photography. “It is incredibly moving to view and at the same time an argument for peace, which is extremely powerful when peace can sometimes feel like an unlikely fantasy,” she added.
The World Press Photo jury praised the shot’s sense of care and respect and its offering of a “metaphorical and literal glimpse into unimaginable loss.”
This is not the first time Salem has been recognized for his work on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; he received a World Press Photo award more than a decade ago for another depiction of the human toll of conflict in the Gaza strip.
In the three other global categories announced Thursday, South Africa’s Lee-Ann Olwage won Photo Story of the Year for her touching series “Valim-babena,” featured in GEO magazine. The project focused on the stigmatization of dementia in Madagascar, a topic she explored through intimate portraits of “Dada Paul” and his family. Lack of public awareness surrounding dementia means that people displaying symptoms of memory loss are often stigmatized.
In the series, “Dada Paul,” who has lived with dementia for 11 years, is tenderly cared for by his daughter Fara. One of the standout images in the series shows him preparing for church with his granddaughter Odliatemix, capturing moments of normalcy and warmth amidst the challenges of dementia.
Photographer Alejandro Cegarra, a Venezuelan native who migrated to Mexico in 2017, won the Long-Term Project award for “The Two Walls,” published by The New York Times and Bloomberg. Cegarra’s project, initiated in 2018, examines a shift in Mexico’s immigration policies, which have moved from being historically open to enforcing strict regulations at its southern border. The jury said the photographer's perspective as a migrant gave it a “sensitive," human-centered perspective, according to a press release.
Julia Kochetova of Ukraine won the Open Format award for “War Is Personal.” The project stood out from coverage of the ongoing conflict by offering a personal look at the harsh realities of war. On a dedicated website, she merged traditional photojournalism with a diary-like documentary style, incorporating photography, poetry, audio clips and music.
The Associated Press won the Open Format award in the regional Africa category with the multimedia story “Adrift,” created by journalists Renata Brito and Felipe Dana. The story investigates the fate of West African migrants who attempted to reach Europe via a treacherous Atlantic route but ended up on a ghost ship discovered off Tobago. The team’s compelling use of photography, cinematography and detailed narrative, enhanced by expert design and multimedia elements, highlights the perils faced by migrants and the human stories behind global migration issues.
The Associated Press' Ebrahim Noroozi won the Asia Stories award for his series “Afghanistan on the Edge,” which documents the country since the Taliban took over in August 2021.
World Press Photo is an independent, nonprofit organization based in the Netherlands, founded in 1955.
This image provided by World Press Photo is part of a series titled Afghanistan on the Edge by Ebrahim Noroozi, Associated Press, which won the World Press Photo Asia Series category and showsAn Afghan refugee rests in the desert next to a camp near the Torkham Pakistan-Afghanistan border, in Torkham, Afghanistan, Friday, Nov. 17, 2023. A huge number of Afghans refugees entered the Torkham border to return home hours before the expiration of a Pakistani government deadline for those who are in the country illegally to leave or face deportation. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
This image provided by World Press Photo is part of a series titled Afghanistan on the Edge by Ebrahim Noroozi, Associated Press, which won the World Press Photo Asia Series category and shows : Since the chaotic Taliban takeover of Kabul on Aug. 15, 2021, an already war-devastated economy once kept alive by international donations alone is now on the verge of collapse. There isn't enough money for hospitals. The World Health Organization is warning of millions of children suffering malnutrition, and the U.N. says 97% of Afghans will soon be living below the poverty line. Three Afghan internally displaced children look with surprise at an apple that their mother brought home after begging, in a camp on the outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan, Thursday, Feb 2, 2023. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
This image provided by World Press Photo is part of a multimedia project by Associated Press' Renata Brito and Felipe Dana titled Adrift, won the World Press Photo Africa Regional Winner Open Format category and shows a mortuary technician opening the door of a refrigerator used to store the remains of migrants recovered from inside the Mauritania boat that appeared drifting near the island of Tobago, in Scarborough, Trinidad and Tobago, Tuesday, Jan. 25, 2022. In May 2021 a boat from Mauritania full of dead men was found off the coast of the Caribbean Island of Tobago. Who were these men and why were they on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean? Two visual journalists sought answers, uncovering a story about migrants from West Africa who seek opportunity in Europe via an increasingly popular but treacherous Atlantic route. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)
This image provided by World Press Photo is part of a multimedia project by Associated Press' Renata Brito and Felipe Dana titled Adrift, won the World Press Photo Africa Regional Winner Open Format category and shows young fishermen walk into the ocean to board an artisanal fishing boat in Nouakchott, Mauritania, Friday, Dec. 10, 2021. In May 2021 a boat from Mauritania full of dead men was found off the coast of the Caribbean Island of Tobago. Who were these men and why were they on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean? Two visual journalists sought answers, uncovering a story about migrants from West Africa who seek opportunity in Europe via an increasingly popular but treacherous Atlantic route. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)
This image provided by World Press Photo is part of a multimedia project by Associated Press' Renata Brito and Felipe Dana titled Adrift, won the World Press Photo Africa Regional Winner Open Format category and shows Moussa Sako, an asylum-seeker from Mali, who survived 22 days aboard a Mauritanian boat drifting in the Atlantic Ocean covers his face during an interview with the Associated Press in Guadalajara, Spain, Sunday, Nov. 14, 2021. In May 2021 a boat from Mauritania full of dead men was found off the coast of the Caribbean Island of Tobago. Who were these men and why were they on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean? Two visual journalists sought answers, uncovering a story about migrants from West Africa who seek opportunity in Europe via an increasingly popular but treacherous Atlantic route. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)
This image provided by World Press Photo and taken by Julia Kochetova is part of a series titled War is Personal which won the World Press Photo Open Format Award. Amidst tens of thousands of civilian and military casualties and an effective stalemate that has lasted for months, there are no signs of peace on the horizon for Russia's war in Ukraine. While news media updates its audience with statistics and maps, and international attention drifts elsewhere, the photographer has created a personal website that brings together photojournalism with the personal documentary style of a diary to show the world what it is like to live with war as an everyday reality. (Julia Kochetova/World Press Photo via AP)
This image provided by World Press Photo and taken by Julia Kochetova is part of a series titled War is Personal which won the World Press Photo Open Format Award and shows a stabilization point near Bakhmut, Ukraine, of the 5th assault brigade and 77th brigade. Hospitalliers battalion - volunteer battalion of combat medics are helping here. Amidst tens of thousands of civilian and military casualties and an effective stalemate that has lasted for months, there are no signs of peace on the horizon for Russia's war in Ukraine. While news media updates its audience with statistics and maps, and international attention drifts elsewhere, the photographer has created a personal website that brings together photojournalism with the personal documentary style of a diary to show the world what it is like to live with war as an everyday reality. (Julia Kochetova/Der Spiegel/World Press Photo via AP)
This image provided by World Press Photo and taken by Julia Kochetova is part of a series titled War is Personal which won the World Press Photo Open Format Award and shows the training of mobilized conscripts of 68th brigade in Donetsk region, not far from frontline. 68th brigade recently liberated Blagodatne village during the Ukrainian counter-offensive. The instructors came from US, working for NGO "Saber".Amidst tens of thousands of civilian and military casualties and an effective stalemate that has lasted for months, there are no signs of peace on the horizon for Russia's war in Ukraine. While news media updates its audience with statistics and maps, and international attention drifts elsewhere, the photographer has created a personal website that brings together photojournalism with the personal documentary style of a diary to show the world what it is like to live with war as an everyday reality. (Julia Kochetova/Der Spiegel/World Press Photo via AP)
This image provided by World Press Photo and taken by Alejandro Cegarra for The New Times/Bloomberg is part of a series titled The Two Walls which won the World Press Photo Long-Term Project Award and shows Carlos Mendoza, a Venezuelan migrant, crossing the Rio Grande river to seek asylum in the United States. Piedras Negras, Mexico, 7 October 2023. (Alejandro Cegarra/The New York Times/Bloomberg/World Press Photo via AP)
This image provided by World Press Photo and taken by Alejandro Cegarra for The New Times/Bloomberg is part of a series titled The Two Walls which won the World Press Photo Long-Term Project Award and shows a migrant walking atop a freight train known as "The Beast." Migrants and asylum seekers lacking the financial resources to pay a smuggler often resort to using cargo trains to reach the United States border. This mode of transportation is very dangerous; over the years, hundreds have fallen onto the tracks and have been killed or maimed. Piedras Negras, Mexico, 8 October 2023. (Alejandro Cegarra/The New York Times/Bloomberg/World Press Photo via AP)
This image provided by World Press Photo and taken by Lee-Ann Olwage for GEO is part of a series titled Valim-babena which won the World Press Photo Story of the Year Award and shows Dada Paul Rakotazandriny (91), who is living with dementia, and his granddaughter, Odliatemix Rafaraniriana (5), get ready for church on Sunday morning at his home in Antananarivo, Madagascar. 12 March 2023. (Lee-Ann Olwage/Geo/World Press Photo via AP)
This image provided by World Press Photo and taken by Lee-Ann Olwage for GEO is part of a series titled Valim-babena which won the World Press Photo Story of the Year Award and shows Joeline (Fara) Rafaraniriana (41) watches her father, Dada Paul Rakotazandriny (91) clean fish at home on Sunday afternoon. A typical Sunday consists of the family attending church in the morning and spending time together in the afternoon. Fara works during the week and as the sole provider and carer for her daughter and father struggles to manage all her responsibilities in the absence of assistance by her siblings who live close by. Mandrosoa Ivato, Antananarivo, Madagascar. 12 March 2023. (Lee-Ann Olwage/Geo/World Press Photo via AP)
This image provided by World Press Photo and taken by Mohammed Salem of the Reuters news agency won the World Press Photo Award of the Year and shows Palestinian woman Inas Abu Maamar, 36, embracing the body of her 5-year-old niece Saly, who was killed in an Israeli strike, at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, October 17, 2023. (Mohammed Salem/Reuters/World Press Photo via AP)
