Graham was an active champion of many liberal causes including academic freedom, economic justice, civil rights, disarmament and world peace.

He served on numerous advisory boards for Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman, and in 1949 he was appointed by the North Carolina governor to fill a vacant seat in the United States Senate.

He pursued that elusive goal for 16 years, and he continued his advocacy work on many other issues, until failing health forced him to retire from public life in 1967.

[3] His older brother, Archibald Wright "Moonlight" Graham (December 28, 1879 – August 25, 1965), was a professional baseball player with the New York Giants and later a physician (and the inspiration for a character in the 1989 film Field of Dreams).

[9] Graham used the date of Armistice Day to underscore his message that schools and universities have the responsibility of guiding young people away from war.

[19] The University of Virginia left the Southern Conference due to the Graham Plan, indicating that its students could not comply with the regulations without violating its honor code.

[24] Immediately afterward, Graham helped establish the Southern Conference for Human Welfare (SCHW), an advocacy group that organized poverty relief efforts and promoted New Deal policies.

[23] Its first meeting was held in Birmingham, Alabama in November 1938, drawing together progressives from all across the South in "the most significant attempt by Southerners, up to that time, to introduce a far-reaching agenda of change".

But in the following year, Graham was mentioned in hearings held by the House Committee Investigating Un-American Activities for his involvement with the SCHW, which was alleged to be a Communist front organization.

In October 1947, President Truman appointed him to the UN commission arbitrating peace in the Indonesian National Revolution, a thorny affair that seemed to hold little chance for mediation.

[28] Still, the appointment of Graham, together with foreign counterparts of equal gravitas, displayed a clear determination for the peace talks to succeed, a situation recognized in The New York Times which praised "the high character of the Committee".

[28] Graham helped open direct negotiations between Indonesian and Dutch representatives at Batavia aboard USS Renville in December 1947.

After three weeks of intense speculation throughout March as to whom the governor might choose, attention focused on individuals ranging from the senator's widow, who expressed no interest; Scott's former campaign manager, Capus Miller Waynick; another Scott supporter, Major Lennox Polk McLendon, a lawyer from Greensboro, North Carolina; former Senator Umstead; and the governor himself.

Beginning with the death of Senator Josiah W. Bailey in 1946, and concluding with the election of B. Everett Jordan in 1958, no fewer than eight men served in the seat in a dozen years.

Graham faced two opponents in the 1950 Democratic primary, including former Senator Robert R. Reynolds and former Speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives Willis Smith.

The spacious, multilevel building houses various student services as well as an art gallery, eatery, film auditorium, radio station WXYC, and recreational facilities including twelve bowling lanes in the basement.

[33] The Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute, founded in 1966, is among the nation's oldest and largest centers of public policy research regarding children and families.

Since 1968, the North Carolina chapter of the ACLU has acknowledged people who work towards the promotion of civil liberties in the state with the Frank Porter Graham Award.