[1][2] A conservative Republican, Carr was committed to fiscal restraint in state government and opposed the New Deal policies of President Franklin Roosevelt.

[5] In August he sent the Colorado National Guard to quell violence between AFL-organized strikers and non-strikers at the Green Mountain Dam construction site.

[6] In late 1939, when he was mentioned as a possible Republican candidate for vice-president on the national ticket in 1940, he indicated he preferred to seek re-election as governor: "I am not interested in any job outside Colorado right now.

[12] Facing the Democratic incumbent Edwin C. Johnson, a former isolationist who pledged unreserved support for FDR, Carr called for "a return to the two-party system, preservation of constitutional rights and an end to bureaucratic dictatorship".

[14] Following Roosevelt's issuance of Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942, the War Relocation Authority decided to resettle Japanese Americans from the West Coast into internment camps in the interior of the continent.

I am talking to ... all American people whether their status be white, brown or black and regardless of the birthplaces of their grandfathers when I say that if a majority may deprive a minority of its freedom, contrary to the terms of the Constitution today, then you as a minority may be subjected to the same ill-will of the majority tomorrow.In one speech to a large and hostile audience, made up primarily of worried Colorado farmers, Carr said of the evacuees: They are not going to take over the vegetable business of this state, and they are not going to take over the Arkansas Valley.

[16]Carr's advocacy for racial tolerance and for protection of the constitutional rights of the Japanese Americans are generally thought to have cost him his political career.

The inscription reads, in part: "Those who benefited from Governor Carr's humanity have built this monument in grateful memory of his unflinching Americanism, and as a lasting reminder that the precious democratic ideals he espoused must forever be defended against prejudice and neglect.

In 1994, Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko of Japan included a visit to Denver on their tour of the U.S. to honor Carr and Colorado's role in the Japanese internment.

[22] On March 14, 2008, both houses of the Colorado legislature, in a unanimous vote, named a section of U.S. Route 285 between Kenosha Pass and C-470 the "Ralph Carr Memorial Highway.

[24] The inscription includes a quotation from Carr: "When it is suggested that American citizens be thrown into concentration camps, where they lose all privileges of citizenship under the Constitution, then the principles of that great document are violated and lost.