Who Is Joe Lieberman?

Jan. 2 -- Sen. Joe Lieberman describes his childhood in almost idyllic terms.

He was raised in an Orthodox Jewish family in Stamford, Conn., a city he recalls as ethnically diverse but unified. "Sometimes when I look back at my youth, I feel as if I was in Happy Days," he said.

The 62-year-old Democratic presidential candidate spent the first eight years of his life at his grandmother's house, until his father built up his own liquor business and was able to buy a house for the family. His grandmother, who had emigrated from Central Europe to the United States, was his connection to "the old country," he says.

Lieberman was devout at an early age, and says he never faced any religious discrimination in his youth. "I have no recollection of a single anti-Semitic experience in my entire upbringing in Stamford," he said.

A Transforming Experience

It was in the 2000 presidential election that Joe Lieberman became familiar to all Americans as Al Gore's running mate, but Lieberman has a long history in political activism. It began in the early 1960s. He remembers being in Washington, D.C., during the historic civil rights march in August 1963.

"I had the privilege of marching with those 100- or 200,000 behind Dr. King in the march on Washington," he said, adding that Martin Luther King's stirring "I Have a Dream Speech" was a magnificent moment that "really did transform my life."

Inspired by King's message, Lieberman went to Mississippi to work for civil rights. It was there that he says he first felt personally the emotional impact of racial segregation. "In the most simple human terms I was fearful in the general community and safe in the black community."

Some of his fellow civil rights workers were beaten and harassed. Just a year after the march on Washington, three civil rights workers, members of the Congress of Racial Equality were killed in Mississippi.