Presidential Candidate and social reformer. He was born in Marion, Ohio and as a child he worked for the "Marion Star"'s editor, and future president, Warren G. Harding. Thomas attended Princeton University where he studied under Professor Woodrow Wilson, another future president. After graduating from Princeton in 1905, Thomas attended Union Theological Seminary. At the seminary Thomas started reading about the Christian Socialist movement in England and he began a nearly sixty year affiliation with Socialism. In 1911 He became an ordained minister and became a pastor in East Harlem, New York. Thomas was a commited pascifist and strongly opposed the United State's entry in to the first World War. In his efforts to promote peace during the war Thomas co-founded the organizations Fellowship of Reconciliation and the National Civil Liberties Bureau (now known as the American Civil Liberties Union or ACLU). In 1918 he published the first issue of his newspaper the "World Tommorow" and three years later he became an editor of the "Nation". In 1924 he was the Socialist candidate for governor of New York. In 1926, Eugene V. Debbs, the Socialist party's candidate for president in the five of the last seven elections, died. Thomas then became the the Socialist party's "standard bearer", running for president every four years for twenty years beginning in 1928. Thomas was a respected orator and made sure to distinguish the difference between Communism and Socialism in his six tries for the presidency. In 1940 he joined Montana Senator Burton K. Wheeler and famous pilot Charles Lindberg in co-founding the America First Committee which was a leading voice in keeping the United States out of the World War II. However, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Thomas changed his position and supported Franklin Roosevelt's request for a declaration of war by congress despite the fact that Thomas was still a pacifist. Thomas continued to campaign throughout the war and was a outspoken critic of the Roosevelt administration's treatment of Japanese Americans during the war. After his last campaign for president in 1948, Thomas took up other social causes including fighting racism and poverty and he became a critic of the Vietnam War. In the years before his death Thomas also sought to end the arms race between the US and Soviet Union.