In 1964, two years after graduating from Harvard, Barney Frank went to Mississippi as a civil rights worker. That August, at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, N.J., a group of blacks calling themselves the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party asked to be seated as the state’s official delegation.

Some liberals thought white Mississippians might support the Freedom Party’s bid, but Barney was deeply skeptical. He sent a telegram to his friends in Atlantic City, warning them not to count on that help “until you’ve heard the ayes of their whites.”

We’ve told that story many times because it was Barney at his best: a brilliant political strategist who also happened to be the wittiest guy around. And he turned out to be right. Convention delegates, urged on by President Johnson, rejected the Freedom Party because they were afraid of angering Southern conservatives.

When Barney announced recently that he was leaving Congress after 32 years, the reaction in Washington was extraordinary. The newspaper Politico ran the story across the top of Page One under the headline, “Frank Legacy: ‘One of a Kind.’” And he was certainly the only Jewish, gay, left-handed congressman who spoke with a thick New Jersey accent while representing suburban Boston.