He Hated It When You Called Him "Big Daddy"

"Much of the resistance occurred in Unruh's Assembly district, which extended west from USC. Most of his constituents were like him, working-class whites. And yet Unruh, who never forgot the depredations of poverty and segregation he'd lived with and witnessed in Texas, despised bigotry. Those days left him with an anger that persisted throughout his life. However, he also understood the need to walk the fine line between his own feelings and those of his white constituents. But when his friend and aide, Marvin Holen, told him about an African American girl being denied admission to a Hollywood professional school, Unruh acted. He had Holen, a lawyer, write the bill that became the 1959 civil rights law."

In the Los Angeles Times, Bill Boyarsky recalls Jesse Unruh, one of California's most important politicians of the postwar era.

And Peter Schrag reviews Boyarsky's new Unruh biography.