Frank Murphy (1890-1949), American jurist and diplomat, campaigned against municipal corruption and crime as U.S. attorney general. He was a liberal sympathizer of the Filipino independence movement when he was governor general and high commissioner of the Philippine Islands.

Frank Murphy was born in Harbor Beach, Mich., on April 13, 1890. He developed an enduring hatred against "industrial slavery" as a boy worker in a local starch factory. With his mother's teaching of racial equality and Christian love, Murphy evolved into a dynamic defender of the underprivileged. He worked his way through the University of Michigan. After receiving his law degree in 1914, he worked as a law clerk in Detroit and taught in a night school.

At the outbreak of World War I Murphy enlisted and served in France. After the war he studied law in Trinity College, Dublin, and in Lincoln's Inn, London. He was chief assistant to...