Perhaps best known for the presumptive newspaper headline in his 1948 presidential bid against Harry S. Truman, Thomas E. Dewey, ’23, HLLD’37, was a New York City lawyer and then governor of the state. After being appointed a special prosecutor for Manhattan in 1935, his pursuit and prosecution of organized crime operations and their leaders, including mobsters Dutch Schultz and Charles “Lucky” Luciano, pushed his popularity upward. After one unsuccessful bid, Dewey was elected governor of New York in 1942; he would serve three consecutive terms. In 1945, he signed the Ives-Quinn Anti-Discrimination Bill and established the State Commission Against Discrimination to enforce it.
For a list of notable U-M grads, visit alumnus.alumni.umich.edu/notable-alumni.