Frank Sinatra was an avid supporter of civil rights. He was a generous financial supporter of Martin Luther King Jr, and was recruited by him to join the civil rights marches in the south. He would go on to receive a lifetime award from the NAACP.
In the forties and fifties, America was in apartheid, and the courts, legislations, laws, churches and institutions converged with the blessing and rationalization to justify it. It is surprising to think that a skinny kid from Jersey, born in 1915, would then go on to champion the rights of all people both publicly and his private life.