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Mitt Romney rarely mentions his father’s efforts on civil rights and declined an interview request to discuss how that work influenced his own agenda on those issues, which have not figured prominently in his own career or presidential campaigns, the Los Angeles Times reports.

The piece contrasts that with Romney’s father, who was a civil rights pioneer among Republicans in the 1960′s.

theGrio: Mitt Romney overshadowed by his father in Michigan

“George Romney began pushing reforms to end discrimination toward minorities in housing soon after taking office in 1963 — work that would lead to his highly controversial effort to integrate the nation’s white suburbs as President Nixon’s secretary of Housing and Urban Development. He launched his own 1968 presidential run after a 19-day tour of the ghettos of 17 cities, turning a spotlight on the decay and overcrowding that had contributed to riots in Detroit and elsewhere,” according to the paper.