Norman Thomas ran for president of the United States on the Socialist Party ticket six successive times between 1928 and 1948. He was the leading democratic socialist of his day, and the titular head of the American socialist movement until his death in 1968. Perhaps the most influential left-wing political critic during the 1930s of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal programs Thomas is notable not only as a prolific writer, but also as one of the foremost moral crusaders of the twentieth century. He was a cofounder of the American civil liberties movement during World War I, aided in organizing integrated sharecroppers' unions in the South during the Great Depression, and emerged as one of the leading critics of American militarism during the Cold War.

Born in Marion, Ohio, on 20 November 1884 to Reverend Welling Evan Thomas and Emma, née Mattoon, Norman Mattoon Thomas grew up in a small...