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Who was Gerald Ford? Everyone knows he was the 38th president of the United States, the only president never elected. But did you know he was a strong supporter of affirmative action in the University of Michigan case?

When Ford took office in 1974, the White House was in shambles, inflation was in the double digits and the Cold War made for volatile international relations. But in his inaugural address he promised Americans, "I will not let you down." What were his views—and actions—on civil rights, diversity, affirmative action and school integration?

Ford died Tuesday evening, according to a statement issued by his wife, Betty Ford. She did not include the cause, but Ford was hospitalized for 12 days for pneumonia in January 2006 and underwent an angioplasty in August. He also was hospitalized in mid-October for undisclosed reasons.

Ford was widely known as the only unelected president; he assumed the vice presidency when Spiro Agnew was ousted and reportedly cost himself the 1976 presidential election when he pardoned Richard Nixon for "the crimes he may or may not have committed as president." He was known as the president who pulled the last troops out of Vietnam, the loyal, self-confident, upstanding citizen who believed in democracy and cited former presidents Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln in many of his speeches.

Affirmative Action and Diversity

In a 1999 op-ed piece for The New York Times, Ford, a former all-star football player for the University of Michigan, reminisced about his friend Willis Ward—a black man who was "among the best players" on the Wolverines. When the squad went to play at Georgia Tech, the southern university wanted Ward dropped from the roster. That was something Ford never could understand.

"So long as books are kept open we tell ourselves, minds can never be closed," Ford wrote. "But doors, too, must be kept open. Tolerance, breadth of mind and appreciation for the world beyond our neighborhoods: these can be learned on the football field and in the science lab as well as in the lecture hall. But only if students are exposed to America in all her variety."

Ford wrote the piece in response to the two anti-affirmative-action lawsuits brought against the University of Michigan, which resulted in a split Supreme Court ruling in 2003. Ford supported affirmative action and issued a call to Michigan and to the country to do the same.

Recalling how lacking diversity in his 1935 class diminished the educational opportunities, he wrote: "Times of change are times of challenge. I don't want future college students to suffer the cultural and social impoverishment that afflicted my generation. If history has taught us anything in this remarkable century, it is the notion of America as a work in progress."

"To eliminate a constitutional affirmative-action policy would mock the inclusive vision Carl Sandburg had in mind when he wrote: 'The Republic is a dream. Nothing happens unless first a dream.' Lest we forget: America remains a nation with have-nots as well as haves. Its government is obligated to provide for hope no less than for the common defense."

A moderate Republican, Ford opposed the poll tax, which would keep poor people, primarily blacks, from voting, and he supported the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which was renewed earlier this year. He was against school busing to achieve school integration, however, which alienated some Congressional Black Caucus members, only one of whom—Rep. Andrew Young of Georgia—voted to confirm him as vice president, according to The Washington Post.

During his presidency, Ford appointed William Coleman as Secretary of Transportation, the second black to serve in a presidential Cabinet (after Robert Clifton Weaver) and the first appointed in a Republican administration.

"Of all the triumphs that have marked this as America's century—breathtaking advances in science and technology, the democratization of wealth and dispersal of political power in ways hardly imaginable in 1899—none is more inspiring, if incomplete, than our pursuit of racial justice," Ford wrote in his op-ed.

The Early Days of Gerald Ford

Ford earned his bachelor's degree at the University of Michigan and later earned his law degree from Yale before serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II. He was released from active duty with honorable conditions in February 1946 after being promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Commander.

Upon returning from the war, he was elected to represent Grand Rapids in Congress in 1948. He became House Minority Leader in 1963 and served there until 1973 when Agnew resigned and Nixon appointed him vice president.

Ford married Elizabeth Warren "Betty Ford"—an outspoken advocate of the Equal Rights Amendment who underwent a mastectomy and later opened the Betty Ford Center, a place for substance abuse, after she battled her own addiction to drugs and alcohol. They had four children.

He was a member of the Warren Commission, which investigated the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. In 1999, former President Bill Clinton awarded him the Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.

"With his quiet integrity, common sense, and kind instincts, President Ford helped heal our land and restore public confidence in the Presidency," President George W. Bush said in a statement Tuesday evening. "The American people will always admire Gerald Ford's devotion to duty, his personal character, and the honorable conduct of his administration."

Ford will be buried in the courtyard of his presidential museum in Grand Rapids.

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