Behind Batman stood Alfred. Behind James Bond stood Q. And behind some of the most influential figures of the past century, from presidents to diplomats to Supreme Court justices, stood Grenville Clark.

The New York-born lawyer, activist, and advisor championed academic freedom, fought a successful public battle with good friend Franklin Roosevelt over FDR’s attempt to “pack” the Supreme Court, and worked closely with the NAACP to uphold civil rights during the tumultuous 1950s and ’60s. He devoted his last decades to a quest for world peace through limited but enforceable world law.

Writer Nancy Peterson Hill, administrator of the Diastole Scholars’ Center affiliated with UMKC, discusses her new book on this largely anonymous, but immensely important, American.