Vito Marcantonio;
The Most Consequential Reformer of 20th Century US !!!!!
The
ANNOTICO Report
I
will tease you with a short introduction to Vito Marcantonio,
but I encourage you to read the Entire article, and be so very proud of
him for the credit Vito was to his Italian Heritage, and mourn that there is no
one like him now, at a time when someone like him is so sorely needed!!!
Vito
Marcantonio was the most consequential radical
politician in the
Vito annually introduced anti-lynching and anti-poll tax
bills a decade before it became respectable. He was a bold outspoken opponent
of
He
was best know for uttering the obvvious
words:
Our
natural resources should be used for the benefit of All
of the American people and not for the purpose of enriching just a Few.
Vito
Marcantonio was born in 1902, into an Italian working-class
family. His father, was an ill-paid skilled
artisan. Young Vito’s community was as much Neapolitan as American. Life
was grim. His
A
good student at Public School 85, young Vito excelled in history and public
speaking. By 1917, when he went to
Marcantonio at 18, was taken under the wing of Fiorello La Guardia, who
was very impressed by this high school student who preceded Fiorella at a Student Assembly , and who
unusually eloquent in an impassioned advocacy for social responsibility.
La Guardia
encouraged Vito to go to NYU Law school,
while he was actively involved in the adult education department of a
newly-formed settlement house, Haarlem House (now La
Guardia House).
Marcantonio met Miriam Sanders, a
member of the professional staff at Haarlem House.
She was as different from him as night from day. A New Englander with family roots in Colonial America, she was eleven years older
and five inches taller than Marcantonio. But she also
shared his engagement with economic and social justice. They were married at
By the
mid-twenties, Marcantonio had joined La Guardia’s law firm and began to cut his teeth in electoral
politics. With the Democratic Party firmly in the corrupt hands of Tammany
Hall, La Guardia operated from his own independent base. Marcantonio
was instrumental in organizing the Fiorello H. La
Guardia Political Association, the main mechanism for La Guardia’s
successful East Harlem Congressional campaigns.
In 1930, La
Guardia obtained an appointment to the United States Attorney’s office
for Marcantonio. In 1933, with Marcantonio
as campaign manager, La Guardia secured the Republican nomination for mayor and
was elected to the first of three terms.
In 1934, Marcantonio used the La Guardia Political Association as
his base for a successful run for Congress,
Just thirty-two
years old, Vito Marcantonio must have cut a figure in
startling contrast to the drawling Southern gentlemen in white linen suits who
ran the House. Marcantonio’s high-pitched,
nasal, machine-gun rapid delivery bespoke the accent and street smarts of
In 1935 Congress
met under extraordinary circumstances. It was the fifth year of the Great
Depression. Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal had been buoyed by relief
programs passed during the celebrated “Hundred Days” of 1933 and by
the president’s radio rhetoric. But the economic recovery he had promised
was still nowhere on the horizon. More than a quarter of the work force was
still unemployed. Despair was rampant. To many, the Democrats and Republicans
seemed bankrupt.
Marcantonio began to stake out a
political position not only far to the left of the major parties, but of the
most zealous of the other radicals.
In a speech which
later became legendary in
If it be radicalism to believe that our natural resources should be used for the benefit of all of the American people and not for the purpose of enriching just a few...then, Ladies and Gentlemen of this House I accept the charge. I plead guilty to the charge; I am a radical and I am willing to fight it out...until hell freezes over.
Marcantonio’s Congressional
accomplishments were notable for a lawmaker outside the two-party machinery
that superintended the Congress. In part his success was due to his diligence.
Throughout his fourteen-year tenure, his attendance record was outstanding. He
never missed an important debate, and as he was after 1938, the sole
representative of the American Labor Party (ALP), he was often the informal
floor leader for liberal Democrats and others on crucial bills—organizing
Congressional and public support, planning and directing parliamentary
strategy, and above all he was practical.
You MUST read
this Entire Article!!!!
Rebel
in the House:
The
Life and Times of Vito Marcantonio
Monthly Review
by John J. Simon
April 2006
You only live once and it is best to live one's
life with one's conscience rather than to temporize or accept with silence
those things one believes to be against the interests of one?s
people and one's nation.
Vito Marcantonio in
Congress
Vito Marcantonio was the most consequential radical politician
in the
.
Empire
City: Vito Marcantonio’s New York
The
Vito Marcantonio was born on
Most
Little actually
was done to improve old law tenements until La Guardia became Mayor in 1933,
when small improvements, such as a workable fire escape, a lighted hallway, a
toilet for each family were required. That is how the millions who made
Still, for its
residents
The Emergence
of Vito Marcantonio
Vito Marcantonio was born into a working-class family. His
father, an ill-paid skilled artisan, proudly boasted that his own father had
marched with Giuseppe Garibaldi, hero of the Italian nation. Young Vito’s
community was as much Neapolitan as American. Shops offered the octopus,
garlic, and chestnuts of the Southern Italian diet. But as colorful as the
neighborhood may have seemed to outsiders, life was grim. An
A good student at
Public School 85, young Vito excelled in history and public speaking. By 1917,
when he went to DeWitt Clinton High School at 59th Street and Tenth Avenue,
Vito was caught up in the radical currents of his community. The environment at
DeWitt Clinton was intense; many saw school as the only way out of the grinding
poverty and monotony of the slums. Some were motivated by a vision of
middle-class success, the American Dream. But a large segment of Clinton’s
students, Marcantonio included, were driven by trade
union activism, social reform, and the vision of socialism.
A significant
event was a student assembly in 1921. Fiorello La
Guardia, then president of the New York City Board of Aldermen, the guest
speaker, was preceded by the eighteen-year-old Vito, who launched into an
impassioned advocacy for social security and old-age pensions:
If it is true that government is of the people and for the people, then it is the duty of government to provide for those, who, through no fault of their own, have been unable to provide for themselves. It is the social responsibility of every citizen to see that these laws for our older people are enacted.
Deeply moved, La
Guardia, gripped the youngster’s shoulder, and used his speech as the
starting point for his own.
Taking Vito under
his wing, La Guardia encouraged him to go to law school. Marcantonio
attended New York University Law School, while being actively involved in the
adult education department of a newly-formed settlement house, Haarlem House (now La Guardia House).
At Haarlem House Marcantonio met
Miriam Sanders, a member of the professional staff. She was as different from
him as night from day. A New Englander with family roots in Colonial America,
she was eleven years older and five inches taller than Marcantonio.
But she also shared his engagement with economic and social justice. They were
married at New York’s Municipal Building in 1925. She remained in the
background, giving him quiet support and invaluable counsel, while pursuing a
long and productive career as a social worker, and, ultimately, director of Haarlem House.
By the
mid-twenties, Marcantonio had joined La Guardia’s law firm and began to cut his teeth in
electoral politics. With the Democratic Party firmly in the corrupt hands of
Tammany Hall, La Guardia operated from his own independent base. Marcantonio was instrumental in organizing the Fiorello H. La Guardia Political Association, the main
mechanism for La Guardia’s successful East
Harlem Congressional campaigns. La Guardia was usually able to get the Republican
line on the ballot. When denied that line in the 1924 election, he won as a
Socialist on the ticket headed by Robert La Follette
for president. During the biennial congressional campaigns Marc (as nearly
everyone now called him) also spoke almost nightly on street corners in
Italian, Yiddish, and English for La Guardia. In 1930, La Guardia obtained an
appointment to the United States Attorney’s office for Marcantonio.
Ernest Cuneo, who
was a law clerk for La Guardia at the same time as Marc, left a striking
description of the young politician at work:
Marc then took over the microphone and there ensued what can only be described as a mass phenomenon. He started slowly and spoke for some time. Then abruptly he struck his heel on the [sound] truck bed; it made a loud hollow noise and the crowd stirred. The cadence of his talk increased and soon the heel struck again. Again the pace quickened....His voice rose and now the heel struck more often with the beginnings of a real tempo. It began to sound like a train leaving the station. The crowd mirrored his growing excitement. At the climax, Marc was shouting at the top of his lungs and he was stamping his foot as hard and as rapidly as a flamenco dancer. The crowd pulsed to the rhythm and at last found release in a tumultuous, prolonged roar of applause. Because it was good theater, it was also good politics.
In 1933, with Marcantonio as campaign manager, La Guardia secured the
Republican nomination for mayor and was elected to the first of three terms. In
1934, Marcantonio used the La Guardia Political
Association as his base for a successful run for Congress, like his mentor, on
the Republican ticket. Marc’s campaign culminated in a huge rally at
116th Street and Lexington Avenue, the “lucky corner” at which La
Guardia traditionally ended his campaigns. Sparked by a ringing endorsement
from the mayor, to be repeated in every campaign as long as La Guardia was
alive, the meeting concluded with another spirited speech from Marc in Italian
and, this time, in Spanish.
Marcantonio in Congress: Minority of
One
Just thirty-two
years old, Vito Marcantonio must have cut a figure in
startling contrast to the drawling Southern gentlemen in white linen suits who
ran the House. Marc’s high-pitched, nasal, machine-gun rapid delivery
bespoke the accent and street smarts of East Harlem. His three-piece,
off-the-rack, broad-striped suits and beige fedoras—they resembled the
wardrobe of Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls—did little to soften
his persona of self-righteous belligerence. An unlikely Don Quixote had arrived
to tilt at the windmills of power.
In 1935 Congress
met under extraordinary circumstances. It was the fifth year of the Great
Depression. Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal had been buoyed by relief
programs passed during the celebrated “Hundred Days” of 1933 and by
the president’s radio rhetoric. But the economic recovery he had promised
was still nowhere on the horizon. More than a quarter of the work force was
still unemployed. Despair was rampant. To many, the Democrats and Republicans
seemed bankrupt, a view held even by the few radicals who had been elected to
the House. Marc began to stake out a political position not only far to the
left of the major parties, but of the most zealous of the other radicals. Marcantonio opposed the military appropriations bill of
1935. He saw the ROTC provisions of the bill as “forcing American youth
to goose step through the classroom,” as stifling “liberal thought
in our institutions,” and as part of “a strong tendency toward government
by edict...an urge for regimentation! .” Marcantonio attacked the FDR administration’s Social
Security bill as inadequate and supported a doomed alternative that provided
for unemployment insurance covering all, to be administered by unions and farm
organizations.
Marcantonio took up the gauntlet for
a stronger National Labor Relations Act; he called for a wealth tax; and he
championed the outlawing of privately owned public utility holding companies.
It was in support of this legislation—the Public Utilities Holding
Company Act—that Marc took the floor and, in a speech which later became
legendary in East Harlem and on the left as well, announced that he was a
radical:
If it be radicalism to believe that our natural resources should be used for the benefit of all of the American people and not for the purpose of enriching just a few...then, Ladies and Gentlemen of this House I accept the charge. I plead guilty to the charge; I am a radical and I am willing to fight it out...until hell freezes over.
Marcantonio’s Congressional
accomplishments were notable for a lawmaker outside the two-party machinery
that superintended the Congress. In part his success was due to his diligence.
Throughout his fourteen-year tenure, his attendance record was outstanding. He
never missed a debate on important legislation and, whether a nominal
Republican or, as he was after 1938, the sole representative of the American
Labor Party (ALP), he was often the informal floor leader for liberal Democrats
and others on crucial bills—organizing Congressional and public support,
planning and directing parliamentary strategy.
Marc was
practical. Despite his view of administration funding requests for the Works
Progress Administration (WPA) and other relief agencies as inadequate, he would
fight for them as better than nothing at all. In 1939, an FDR request for $150
million was bottled up in committee by conservative Southern Democrats. Marc
forced the bill to the floor (and to a vote) by daily tacking an obstructing
amendment on every piece of minor legislation to come up. When one congressman
asked for $400,000 to fight the pink bollworm in his state, Marcantonio
retorted, “One week from today 400,000 pink slips will be delivered to
WPA workers. How about the $150-million for the unemployed?”
Marcantonio’s greatest legislative
crusades were on behalf of two civil rights bills: the Anti-Poll Tax Act and
the Fair Employment Practices Commission Act (FEPC). Marc introduced the first
Anti-Poll Tax bill in 1942. When the bill was pigeonholed in the Judiciary
Committee Marc began a slow campaign to obtain 218 signatures on a petition to
force the bill to the House floor. He ensured that each signature, as well as
the impassioned floor debate received maximum press coverage. Arguing that the
abolition of the poll tax would extend “democracy to disenfranchised
Negroes and whites,” he connected the bill’s passage to the war
effort, saying, “The continuance of the poll tax is discrimination and
makes for disunity....Abolition of the poll tax abolishes this form of
discrimination and makes for unity that is vital to victory.”
The bill passed
the House, only to die in the Senate. Marcantonio
succeeded in having it passed in the next session, using the same tactics, but
it suffered the same fate.
Marcantonio used similar tactics to
garner support for legislation with strong enforcement provisions outlawing
employment discrimination. Marc also clamored for a federally supervised
absentee ballot for soldiers (to ensure that black GI’s would be able to vote
in the 1944 presidential election). The opposition to both measures was led by
the racist Mississippi Representative John Rankin who said “the Gentleman
from New York...is harassing the white people of the Southern States.”
Because the
Democrats’ margin in the House grew smaller with each election, it made
sense for the Democrats to court Marc. By 1942, Marcantonio
had become the leader of the New York County American Labor Party. ALP
endorsement, which Marc was in a position to determine, often was the margin of
victory for Democratic candidates. Moreover Marcantonio
had become nationally recognized. Civil rights, effective price controls, the
rights of organized labor, and preserving the wartime alliance with the Soviet
Union were all topics he addressed on nationwide radio broadcasts. In 1944 Harper’s
magazine ratified Marcantonio’s growing status:
At forty-two Marcantonio is well on his way to becoming a first-class national figure, though one of the most unorthodox sort. Heretofore, his influence in the Congress has been that of a gadfly, not a leader....Lately, however, he has shown real genius in turning his liabilities into assets, in playing the political interstices for all they are worth.
But by 1946 FDR
was dead, and his successor, Harry S. Truman, pursued an anti-Soviet Cold War
foreign policy. Running on the slogan “Had Enough?”
Republicans won both the House and the Senate for the first time since 1928.
The New Deal coalition was dead. Despite this, Marcantonio
was still able to weave his political magic. In April 1945 he had called on
Secretary of Commerce Henry A. Wallace to investigate discrimination against
African Americans in professional baseball, setting off a campaign that was to
break the color line in the national pastime. In 1947 he supported an amendment
offered by Adam Clayton Powell to desegregate public facilities in the District
of Columbia. When Southern opponents of the legislation charged that the Bill
would provoke race riots, Marc replied,
Now we hear the same cry...in respect to a simple request that this Congress rise up to the dignity of the nation—the dignity the world expects us to rise up to, of practicing the fundamental precepts of Democracy for which men died, both black and white....This is Washington which many would make the Capital of the world. Are we going to hesitate to remove from the Capital of the United States the blot of discrimination and segregation?
Unfortunately,
Congress responded, yes.
1946 found most
workers with sharply reduced real wages, a result of inflation during and
especially after the war. Unions in auto, steel, electrical, coal, and oil
industries struck, causing the loss of more working days in 1946 than in any
year since. With increasing frequency, Marcantonio
rose to oppose attempts to repeal the gains that had been made by organized
labor. Marc told the House,
Men do not strike for the fun of it. [They are] provoked by the scheming, uncompromising, unreasoning tactics of profit-bloated, tax-benefited corporations...beating the drums against American workers in order to intimidate Congress to pass anti-labor legislation.
Marcantonio’s last leadership role in
the House was his fight against the Taft-Hartley Act, the turning point in a
formidable anti-union campaign that has lasted to this day and has reduced the
U.S. labor movement to its current pitiable state. He spoke against the bill on
the floor, asking, “What is your justification for this legislation?”
A labor union, he explained, is a worker’s “only defense against
exploitation,”
You are making him “free”—and impotent to defend himself against any attempt by industry to subject him to the same working conditions that existed in the United States 75 years ago. You are giving him the freedom to become enslaved to a system that has been repudiated in the past not only by Democrats but also by outstanding progressive-minded Republicans....Under the guise of fighting communism you are, with this legislation, advancing fascism on American labor.
Marcantonio’s greatest contribution in the
fight against the bill was tactical. Convinced that public opinion could sway
the Congress, he tried to hold up a vote to give citizens time to write, wire,
or phone their Representatives. Employing a rarely-used procedural rule, Marc
demanded a reading of all sixty-nine pages of the act, plus the lengthy report
on it from the House Labor Committee. The national media, almost without
exception supporting the bill, attacked him bitterly as a left-wing
obstructionist.
Marc continued to
fight for labor, civil rights, and public housing. He spoke against Truman’s
Cold War programs and was the only member of the House who refused to join a
standing ovation for the President when he called for Marshall Plan aid for
Western Europe. Seeing the Marshall Plan as Cold War legislation designed to
bolster anti-Soviet policies, he consistently tried to revive the war-time
alliance of the major powers.
In 1948 he was
the informal floor leader for the opponents of the Mundt-Nixon
Bill, which effectively outlawed the Communist Party and required the listing
of “Communist front” groups by the attorney general. But Marc was
leader only by default; others were afraid to do more than cast a vote against
it. Knowing there was no way to defeat the legislation, Marcantonio
asserted, as he had done on other occasions, that history would judge the bill.
He spoke not only to his colleagues but for the historical record.
I know many will succumb to hysteria and others will give us the usual flag-waving and red-baiting, but let us look back in retrospect: 1798-1948, 150 years. The men who opposed the Alien and Sedition Acts—Livingstone, Madison, Jefferson—they constitute the bright constellations in the democratic firmament of this Nation; but those who imposed on the American people those tyrannies of which this bill is a monstrous lineal descendant have been cast into oblivion, relegated where mankind always relegates puny creatures that would destroy mankind’s freedom.
In his remaining
years in the House, Vito Marcantonio would speak his
mind and vote his conscience, but he was alone. In 1950 he lost his seat. The
same year, Richard M. Nixon won election to the Senate by asserting that his
opponent, Helen Gahagan Douglas, had a voting record
that was similar to Marc’s.
Social Justice
in the Neighborhood
The Congress was
only one arena in which Marcantonio represented the
people who elected him. From 1935 on, Marcantonio
returned to East Harlem from the Congress each weekend to the Fiorello H. La Guardia Political Association. There, Marc
maintained a veritable neighborhood social-service clinic that he had started
while La Guardia still represented the district. Seven days a week, spanning
three decades, Marcantonio’s political
organization dealt with the myriad problems of his constituents: health,
citizenship, relief, workmen’s compensation, immigration, tenant, legal,
and family issues.
A visitor to the
club in those days would climb a flight of stairs and enter a large meeting
room arranged with rows of wooden folding chairs facing several desks, behind
one of which sat Marc. The club would be filled with the hubbub of neighbors,
staff, and local campaign aides, originally organized by Marcantonio
as campaign volunteers for La Guardia. They served as poll watchers on election day, district captains, canvassers, and—from
the earliest days—informal social workers. They were neighborhood
Italian-Americans, and despite the sophisticated citywide political
organization constructed by the American Labor Party for Marc’s
campaigns, Marc saw them as the backbone of his political organization—and
his friends.
Constituents
could discuss a problem with Marcantonio himself or
with a volunteer drawn from a circle of teachers, lawyers, social workers, or a
political aide who might phone a city agency to secure a relief payment, solve
a problem at a local school, or find a job in a relief program.
There was nothing
new about this kind of help. Machine politicians had delivered turkeys at
Thanksgiving, supplied coal at Christmas, and found patronage jobs as well. But
the old-line local pols were in it for the business.
If you couldn’t pay your rent, at the club you would find a loan shark.
To get service from a city agency, you might have to buy insurance from the
candidate’s brother-in-law. If the district leader helped you get a job,
he’d expect you to kick back part of your salary. But with Marcantonio and his colleagues, there were no strings
attached. He and his staff were available to everyone. Assistants actually
sought out landlord-tenant problems. In the 1948 campaign a huge billboard
fronting the club read,
Don’t pay rent increases. If your landlord asks for a rent increase report here and I shall help you fight the real estate trust.—Your Congressman, Vito Marcantonio.
The press tried
to paint Marc as a typical big-city political boss running a spoils operation.
But one reporter noticed that the Congressman required “almost
fanatically that no constituent, however lowly or troublesome, get the
kiss-off.” In response to a query about legal fees Marc wrote to a
resident, “As your representative in Congress I am most pleased to do
whatever is proper and possible in this matter without any fee.” He also
held the volunteer lawyers, many of them from other ALP clubs, to the same
standard.
One reporter who
spent a day with Marcantonio at his district office
wrote,
“What do you make of it?” The Congressman asked us. We said that a couple of days like that would drive us nuts. “Well,” said he, “it’s what I get paid ten thousand a year for. It’s their dough.” We also said that we were very grateful we were not a member of Congress. “You probably have something there,” sighed Vito Marcantonio.
Did all this add
up to a political machine? Yes and no. Certainly Marc was able to draw on his
neighbors, who were shop workers, small businessmen, store-keepers, and even
petty hoods. Also, there was the universe of the
But this machine
was voluntary: it was sluggish, inefficient, and inconsistent. Marc would
demand that leaflets be written and printed overnight, and that sound-truck
schedules and canvassing goals be met. Marcantonio’s
papers, now archived at the New York Public Library, are filled with letters he
wrote berating his captains for missing a meeting or union leaders who had
failed to deliver on promises. If this was a machine, it often was, for him,
one of frustrating ineptitude.
The most
important component of the Marcantonio phenomenon was
Marcantonio himself. Gerald Meyer, in his definitive
political biography Vito Marcantonio: Radical
Politician, describes how Marc’s political style and “personalism” fit the traditional Italian culture of
El Barrio
This entire
section describes Marcantonio's dedication to the cause, cocerns, and needs of the Puerto Ricans who began
to settle in
Insurgent Marcantonio: The American Labor Party
Third-party
politics had a long history in
In 1936 Marcantonio was defeated in the
While campaigning
for reelection in 1936, he watched with interest as the leadership of the
needle trades unions formed the American Labor Party to secure the votes of
left-wing, predominantly Jewish workers for Roosevelt and the liberal
Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Herbert H. Lehman. That year Roosevelt and
Lehman were the only ALP candidates. But Marcantonio
immediately saw that the new party could hold the balance of power in local
elections, giving leftists and liberals unparalleled
political leverage.
In the 1936
election, the ALP exceeded expectations. It drew a larger percentage of votes
than the Socialist party previously had and achieved permanent ballot status.
Much to the chagrin of the Tammany bosses, the leadership of New York trade unions,
with the tacit support of FDR—and the open encouragement of Eleanor
Roosevelt—continued to sponsor and
When, in 1938, Marcantonio once again won the Republican nomination,
running as an insurgent in the primary, the focus of his campaign had moved to
the ALP. Following his return to Congress he listed himself not as a Republican
but as the House’s only member from the American Labor Party, a
designation he held throughout the remainder of his congressional career.
By the early
forties, Marcantonio was the acknowledged leader of
the ALP in
Another major
factor, unforeseen by the anticommunist founding organizers of the ALP, was the
support of the CP for coalitions with liberals and others. The CP encouraged
its membership to work within the ALP almost from the beginning. In the late
thirties Communist candidates continued to run for major statewide offices. But
by 1941 nearly all of their electoral efforts were concentrated in the ALP,
resulting in the formation of a powerful leftist grouping in which Communists
played a major role. This grouping, which included many non-Communists as well,
almost immediately found Marcantonio as its leader.
Bitter fratricidal conflict broke out between them and the old
Socialist-influenced garment union leadership of the ALP. There were numerous
primary election battles for control of the ALP, with Marcantonio’s
group winning control of its
It would be easy
to dismiss the ALP, especially in its later years, as a Communist-dominated
political movement and, thus, a victim of all of the disasters (both external
and internal) that befell the Communists. In fact, despite the major role of
Communists, the ALP included a wide range of liberals and other leftists. True,
Communists constituted a strong and essential phalanx of experienced campaign
workers, as Marcantonio recognized. But the
Communists also needed the ALP as one of the few legitimate outlets for their
organizational activity.
In fact, support
for the ALP was relatively broad. In the forties
What
characterized this community was its interest in issues, personal as well as
political. Intellectually curious and socially active, they believed
passionately in the struggle against white supremacy, fascism, and antisemitism. With equal ardor they supported the rights of
labor and equality for African Americans. But their political commitment lay
with the ALP, which they saw as a vibrant, principled and democratic organization,
not with the CP, whose secretiveness, hierarchical structure, dreary meetings,
and catechized political positions they found alien.
In
In 1948, the
American Labor party and Marcantonio supported the
anti-Cold War third-party presidential candidacy of Henry A. Wallace. The
campaign was marked by a crescendo of redbaiting
hysteria. That year Marcantonio was denied both the
Republican and the Democratic nomination. Even so, running for the first time
on the ALP ticket alone, Marcantonio was reelected to
his seventh Congressional term.
The ALP had its
last hurrah in 1949. Marcantonio sought the office of
his mentor, La Guardia, running for mayor in an emotionally charged, viciously
fought campaign. Redbaited from the start, Marcantonio waged a principled campaign: he supported a
return to the five-cent fare, equal housing opportunity, and improved health
and welfare services. As he did in all his campaigns, he connected small issues
with large ones, explaining that the growing anticommunist hysteria and increased
military expenditures directly affected deteriorating municipal services and
the ever-mounting cost of living.
New Yorkers saw
Marc at his best. His campaign became a veritable classroom. Marc spoke all
over the city—often a dozen or more times a day. On the Friday before
election-day, in
In 1950,
Democrats, Republicans, and Liberals joined behind one candidate in Marcantonio’s district. Despite the largest vote Marc
ever received in
In the forties,
in ALP factional disputes and primary battles Marcantonio
and the Communists usually found themselves on the same side. Both committed
themselves to the election of black candidates at a time when few had ever been
elected. For Marcantonio the undertaking to secure
black electoral representation was not, as the press maintained, another
instance of subservience to the CP, but a matter of principle. Marcantonio and the ALP consistently supported Democrats
and Republicans on the rare occasions they had nominated candidates of color.
Marc, although he
had clear political sympathies that would otherwise have drawn him close to the
Communists, treated the party as he did other potential political allies. His
fundamental commitment was to left political organization independent of the
two-party system. So when, in response to Cold War attacks—and their own
reassessment of political realities—Communist policy turned “back
to the mainstream,” away from independent politics to an effort to
influence the Democratic Party, Marc took exception. While never attacking the
CP publicly, he vigorously defended the ALP and the idea of a third party. The
issue came to a head during the 1953 mayoral campaign when Communists urged ALPers to abandon their ticket and support the Democratic
candidate. Following a dismal ALP electoral performance, Marcantonio
attacked Communist policy and resigned as state chairman of the ALP. In 1956
the ALP itself dissolved.
Vito Marcantonio: Prophetic Politician
I have stood by the fundamental principles which I have always advocated. I have not trimmed. I have not retreated. I do not apologize, and I am not compromising.
—Vito Marcantonio, in his last speech to Congress
Marcantonio accepted defeat
defiantly, even with optimism. He returned to an active but penurious civil
liberties legal practice Noteworthy was his successful defense of W. E. B. Du Bois in 1951. Like Marcantonio,
Du Bois had refused to trim his sails. In his
eighties, Du Bois was accused of running a
Soviet-controlled peace advocacy organization. Despite the anticommunist and
racist climate, Marcantonio won dismissal of all
charges. Marcantonio also successfully defended the
African-American leftist leader William F. Patterson, executive secretary of
the Civil Rights Congress, charged with contempt by a red-hunting Congressional
committee.
Despite his
political isolation, Marcantonio continued to serve
his constituents as if he still held public office. Without political power,
with no access to patronage, Marcantonio had to rely
on old friends still in city agencies to solve problems. Nearly every day he
would spend time, at what was now called the Vito Marcantonio
Political Association, assisting his neighbors. At the same time he met with
old campaign workers—former ALP, Democratic, and
Republican precinct workers—to plan a 1954 comeback bid for Congress. The
three-party coalition that had defeated him in 1950 had disintegrated.
Moreover, the Cold War climate of fear was receding a bit. Senator McCarthy was
in disgrace and the Korean War had ended. Marcantonio
planned to run on an ad hoc independent ticket. Old allies and campaign workers
gathered to raise money and stump the district for him. Seasoned politicos
thought he might just make it.
On the morning of
Even in death he
was controversial. Although the ultra-reactionary Francis Cardinal Spellman
overruled
Songs from Marcantonio's 1949 campaign for mayor of New York City,
performed by Pete Seeger and The
Weavers, among others, can be found at the MRzine Web
site, http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org.
A Note on
Sources
In recent years
there has been renewed interest in Marcantonio, his
career, and his impact on his times. Historian Gerald Meyer has written an
important political biography, Vito Marcantonio:
Radical Politician 1902–1954 (Albany: State University of New York
Press, 1989). The biography by Alan L. Shaffer cited above is Vito Marcantonio, Radical in Congress (Syracuse University
Press, 1966). Recently back in print is I Vote My Conscience:
Debates, Speeches, and Writings of Vito Marcantonio,
edited by Annette T. Rubinstein and first published in 1956. It was reissued in
2002 by the Calandra Institute at Queens College of
the City University of New York, and is available from it at 25 West 43rd
Street, 18th Floor, New York, NY 10036. The institute can be contacted by
phone, (212) 642-2094, or by email, calandra@qc.edu.
The new edition contains a bibliography of works about Marcantonio
and a biography of Annette T. Rubin! stein by Gerald
Meyer. Annette Rubinstein is a radical activist, literary critic, educator, and
was a political aide and campaign manager for Vito Marcantonio
for much of his career. Both books have been indispensable sources for this
article; this writer owes a considerable debt to Meyer and to Rubinstein.
The
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