The amazing Thomas Wentworth Higginson

Can I recommend that you read Mr. Southwick's column today on Worcester's Thomas Wentworth Higginson? He's most famous, probably, as the publisher who encouraged Emily Dickinson in her poetry, but he was so very much more.
As a Worcester School Committee member, I have a special fondness for this:

As a member of the Worcester School Committee he was the sole supporter of Catholic parents complaining about having their children read to from the King James Bible. For that he was dropped from the committee.

 (it was the 1800's. Worcester also fired a superintendent for seeming too fond of the Catholics.)