In his college years, he was one of the many white college students who traveled to the South in support of the civil rights movement for African Americans and joined the March on Washington in 1963. Fredrickson was avid in his protest against the apartheid in South Africa, even "urging Stanford to divest its stock in companies doing business with South Africa" and with the late Stanford sociologist St. Clair Drake, "delivered a petition signed by 206 faculty members to the Stanford Board of Trustees."