a tour of the South in 1951 and becoming a friend and unofficial advisor to Martin Luther King Jr. Wofford was raised an Episcopalian, and converted to Catholicism in the 1980s. Kennedy administration Wofford first met John F. Kennedy in 1947 at a party at Clare Boothe Luce's Connecticut home. Wofford's political career began in 1960 when Kennedy asked him to join his presidential campaign and work with Sargent Shriver on winning over the "Negro vote". When King was imprisoned shortly before the election, Wofford and Shriver persuaded Kennedy to call King's wife, Coretta Scott King, who faced the specter of her husband sentenced to hard labor in a Georgia prison for a minor traffic violation while she was in an advanced stage of pregnancy. This prompted Martin Luther King Sr. to switch his endorsement from Richard Nixon to Kennedy without the knowledge of Ted Sorensen, Ted Kennedy and Kenneth O'Donnell. Following the phone call, Wofford and other Kennedy aides assembled a pamphlet that referenced the call, printed on blue paper and known as the "blue bomb"; some 2 million copies were circulated, mostly through African American churches—"below the registry of the news and white culture. It had enormous influence among black voters." In 1961, Kennedy appointed him as a Special Assistant to the President for Civil Rights. In the White House, he served as chairman of the Subcabinet Group on Civil Rights. Wofford was instrumental in the formation of the Peace Corps and served as the Peace Corps' special representative to Africa and director of operations in Ethiopia. He was appointed associate director of the Peace Corps in 1964 and held that position until 1966. He also participated in the Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965. Wofford's book Of Kennedys and Kings: Making Sense of the Sixties details his years in the civil rights movement and the creation of the Peace Corps. Academic career and private practice In 1966, Wofford left politics to become president of the State University of New York at Old Westbury. At the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, Wofford risked his career by allowing himself to be arrested in protest of police brutality. In 1970, he became president of Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, holding that post until 1978. In 1978, Wofford joined the law firm of Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis LLP. Political career In Pennsylvania After spending seven years in private law practice