Growing increasingly anxious about opportunities for black students, he became the first Southern governor to call for an end to racially discriminatory employment practices in 1963 and used law enforcement to protect civil rights demonstrators.

[4] He and his brother worked odd jobs to make money in their youth, including raising chickens and pigs, selling vegetables, picking cotton, planting tobacco, and delivering newspapers.

[29] In late February, the 517th Regiment was recalled to Joigny in preparation for a new airborne operation, but it and subsequent assaults were dropped as Allied ground forces made steady advances over German-held territory.

[50] Sanford shared a room with another legislator at the Sir Walter Hotel in Raleigh while the North Carolina General Assembly was in session and worked at his law firm in Fayetteville in the evenings and on weekends.

He criticized Sanford as a proponent of a "spend and tax" platform and pledged to oppose the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and ensure that schools remained segregated.

He also attacked Lake's professional background, insisting "I was raised around the cotton patches and tobacco fields of Scotland County, and I know how to handle the racial situation better than a theoretical college professor.

Despite convincing the legislature to appropriate an additional $50 million (equivalent to $497,608,696 in 2023) towards public schools during the 1963 session, by the end of his tenure North Carolina's national rankings in educational expenditures had fallen.

"[120] He enrolled his daughter Betsee and his son Terry in the integrated Murphy School (it was attended by a single black student), an action which received attention in the state and national press.

[121] Sanford had considered racism to be immoral since he was student at the University of North Carolina,[122] but initially wished to avoid dealing with issues of racial equality directly as governor, viewing it as a distraction from his main platform and politically dangerous.

[126] In May 1961 a multiracial group of civil rights activists known as Freedom Riders prepared to enter North Carolina on intercity buses to ensure the desegregation of them and related transit facilities in the South.

"[137] The same day Sanford announced the creation of the Good Neighbor Council, a biracial panel aimed at developing voluntary nondiscriminatory hiring practices and encouraging youth to prepare for gainful employment.

[140] Sanford also requested that the heads of state agencies adopt nondiscriminatory hiring policies[141] and supported a bill that reduced racial barriers in the North Carolina National Guard.

[145] In late May and early June, 400 black students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College in Greensboro were arrested for breaking segregationist practices in cafeterias and movie theaters.

"[145] He told them that their enemy was not white people; instead, it was "a system bequeathed to us by a cotton economy, kindled by stubbornness, intolerance, hotheadedness, North and South exploding into war and leaving to our generation the ashes of vengeance, retribution, and poverty.

[147] In January 1964, James Farmer and Floyd McKissick of the Congress of Racial Equality demanded that the city of Chapel Hill, already one of the most integrated communities in the state, fully desegregate by February 1 or face a wave of demonstrations.

Sanford hosted Farmer and McKissick at the Governor's Mansion in an attempt to broker a solution, but the situation was not resolved until a local committee reached an agreement between the demonstrators and municipal officials.

Sanford felt betrayed by civil rights leaders, since he thought that their insistence on continuing demonstrations in Chapel Hill had aggravated white resentment and damaged Preyer's electoral prospects.

[160] Sanford also urged the Research Triangle Institute to study affordable housing proposals and established a commission to plan for the future of development and growth in the Piedmont Crescent region.

[163][164] In his final publicly broadcast address as governor, he asserted, "If our weapon against poverty and bigotry is education, we can conquer all battles and make North Carolina a leader of all the rest of the nation.

He was embittered by the disdain with which the delegates treated the outgoing President Johnson, and disapproved of Humphrey's choice of Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine for as his vice presidential candidate.

[173] He subsequently served as chairman for the Citizens for Humphrey-Muskie Committee[172] and in that position helped fundraise for Humphrey's campaign and encouraged the candidate to break from Johnson's views on the controversial Vietnam War.

[184] Croom would canvas the private schools for such students and, if he determined that their enrollment at Duke would financially benefit the university, he would recommend Sanford personally review their application—even if they had earned lower grades or test scores.

Determined to prevent the university's operations from being interrupted, he refused to call police on campus and instructed his staff to make themselves available to students to hear their grievances while he went to the protestors' gatherings to engage with them.

[191] He objected to Vice President Spiro Agnew's criticism of student protestors in a New York Times op-ed, writing, "The deep troubles of our society do not begin on college campuses, are not bred there, and are not centered there.

[192] In July 1979 Sanford began a year-long sabbatical and used the time to write A Danger of Democracy, a book which proposed reforming political parties' presidential nomination processes.

[215] He struggled to gain media attention, and ran on a platform of eliminating tax loopholes for rich people, establishing price controls on food, increasing Social Security payments by 25 percent, supporting equal rights for women, creating a national health insurance plan, and devolution of power from the federal government to the states.

Sanford believed the commission's work hastened the end of the Contra War and reoriented local focus on economic recovery, reflecting, "I consider it the most significant thing I did in Washington.

[250] Sanford kept a journal during his Senate tenure, and often wrote about his irritation with the body's deference to member seniority instead of better ideas, the existence of incomprehensible legislative rules, and jurisdictional feuds between committee chairs.

Sanford also finished his last book, Outlive Your Enemies: Grow Old Gracefully, a narrative about aging and health, and began work on a novel about a journalist addressing major issues of the 20th century.

[297] Sanford served as a role model to a number of Southern governors, including his protégé Jim Hunt of North Carolina, William Winter of Mississippi, and Bill Clinton of Arkansas.