Updated at 4:35 p.m. ET
Former Sen. Harris Wofford, a lifelong civil rights advocate and backer of progressive causes, died Monday at a Washington hospital at age 92.
Wofford died after suffering a fall, his son told The Washington Post.
His death on the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s holiday was, perhaps, appropriate. He marched alongside King in Selma and played a key, behind-the-scenes role in the 1960 presidential campaign by encouraging Democratic candidate John F. Kennedy to reach out to Coretta Scott King, after her husband was imprisoned for a minor traffic violation in Georgia.
Wofford was born in New York City in 1926 and grew up in suburban Scarsdale. When he was 11, he accompanied his grandmother on a six-month world tour. He said he saw Mussolini denounce the League of Nations, visited Shanghai after it was captured by the Japanese Imperial Army and, in India, became "fascinated" by Mahatma Gandhi.
He volunteered for the Army Air Corps in World War II and graduated from the University of Chicago in 1948. He later attended Howard University Law School, becoming one of its first white graduates. He also received a law degree from Yale.
He served on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and became a law professor at the University of Notre Dame. After Kennedy's election, he became a special assistant to the president for civil rights, and he helped found the Peace Corps, becoming its special representative to Africa and later an associate director.
After leaving the government, Wofford went into academia, becoming president of the State University of New York at Old Westbury, and then just the second male president of Bryn Mawr.
He also found time to get himself arrested during protests at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago.
He won the special election that November over Republican Richard Thornburgh, in part by making health care his primary issue. In an interview with NPR's Morning Edition, Wofford was asked by host Bob Edwards why it had taken so long for health care to become a major political issue:
But Wofford's tenure in the Senate was short-lived. He was defeated in the 1994 GOP congressional sweep by Republican Rick Santorum.
Wofford returned to public service, becoming CEO of the Corporation for National and Community Service, the parent organization of AmeriCorps.
In 2008, he introduced Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama before his Philadelphia speech on race, "A More Perfect Union."
He also became a commentator for NPR. In 1995, during a national debate over affirmative action, Wofford wrote:
John Gomperts, his legislative director in the Senate and chief of staff at the Corporation for National and Community Service, said Wofford's life "was one giant adventure."
Asked what Wofford's legacy would be, Gomperts said it was "the buoyant and endless pursuit of a better nation, a better world."
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