Vito Marcantonio

Vito Marcantonio
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York's 18th district
In office January 3, 1945 – January 3, 1951
Preceded by	Martin J. Kennedy
Succeeded by	James G. Donovan
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York's 20th district
In office January 3, 1935 – January 3, 1937
In office January 3, 1939 – January 3, 1945
Preceded by	James J. Lanzetta
Succeeded by	Sol Bloom
Personal details
Born	Vito Anthony Marcantonio December 10, 1902 New York, New York
Died	August 9, 1954 (age 51) New York, New York
Nationality	American
Political party	American Labor Republican
Alma mater	New York University

Vito Anthony Marcantonio (December 10, 1902 – August 9, 1954) was an American lawyer and democratic socialist politician. Originally a member of the Republican Party and a supporter of Fiorello LaGuardia, he switched to the American Labor Party.

Early life

An Italian-American, the son of an American born father with origins in the region of present day Basilicata and an Italian born mother, Marcantonio was born in New York City and attended the public schools there. He graduated from New York University with a law degree, and began practicing law. He was an assistant United States attorney from 1930 until 1931.

Congressional career

Marcantonio was first elected to the United States House of Representatives from New York in 1934 as a Republican. He served in the House from 1935 until 1937, after being defeated for reelection in 1936. In either 1937 or 1938 Marcantonio became a member of the American Labor Party. He was elected to the House again from New York in 1938, and served this time for six terms, from 1939 to 1951 being reelected in the elections of 1940, 1942, 1944, 1946, and 1948. In 1949 he ran for mayor of New York City on the American Labor Party ticket, but was defeated. In 1950 he was defeated by Democrat James Donovan, after a particularly vociferous campaign against him because of his refusal to vote for American participation in the Korean War. Donovan had the broad-based popular support of the Democratic, Republican, and Liberal Parties in that election. The passage of the Wilson Pakula Act in 1947 also played some part in his defeat. The law prevented candidates from running in the primaries of parties with which they were not affiliated. It was widely perceived as being directed against Marcantonio.

Political ideology and relationship with other political parties and movements

Marcantonio, who was arguably one of the more left wing Members of Congress, said that party loyalty was less important than voting his conscience (he was, however, usually the only member of his party in office). He was sympathetic to the Socialist and Communist parties, and to labor unions. He was investigated by the FBI, as many were suspicious of him because of his alleged sympathy with communism and ties to the Communist Party. In 1940, he helped form the American Peace Mobilization, identified as a communist front group, to keep the U.S. from participating in World War II, and served as its vice-chair. He appeared in a newsreel in 1940 denouncing 'the imperialist war', (the line taken by Joseph Stalin and his supporters until the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941). Marcantonio was also a Vice President of the International Workers Order, a fraternal benefit society unofficially affiliated with the Communist Party.

Marcantonio's district was centered in East Harlem, New York City, which had many residents of Italian and Puerto Rican origin. Fluent in Spanish as well as Italian, he was considered an ally of the Puerto Rican community and an advocate for the rights of the workers and the poor.

He was so popular in that district that he sometimes won the Democratic and Republican primaries, as well as the American Labor Party endorsement. Aside from Marcantonio, the only American Laborite congressman was Leo Isacson, who served in Congress from 1948 to 1949, after winning a special election but being defeated in a general election. As the sole representative of his party for most of his years in Congress, Marcantonio never held a committee chairmanship. After his defeat in 1950 and the withdrawal of Communist Party support for the ALP, the party soon fell apart. At the time of his death in 1954, he was running for Congress as the candidate of a newly formed third party, the Good Neighbor Party.

Though he initially opposed US entry into World War II, he became a supporter after the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union. He later campaigned in 1942 to expand the U.S. military commitment to a second front in Europe, a special interest of the USSR, which had ordered Communists throughout the world to promote the idea. He opposed American involvement in the Korean War, while suggesting that the Soviet-imposed regime in North Korea had been the victim of an unprovoked attack by South Korea, citing articles by the radical journalist I.F. Stone.

Later life

After his defeat in mayoral and congressional elections, Marcantonio continued to practice law. It was his law practice, maintained while in Congress, that gave him the money to substantially self-finance his political campaigns. At first he practiced in Washington, D.C. but he soon returned to New York City, where he died from a heart attack after coming up the subway stairs, on Broadway by City Hall Park, August 9, 1954.

Marcantonio's collection of speeches, I Vote my Conscience edited by Annette Rubenstein had an effect on a generation of younger radicals. His defense of workers rights, his mastery of parliamentary procedure, his ability to relate to the workers in his district while also engaging in worldwide issues, made him a hero to a certain section of the left.

In literature

In 2009 American playwright Tony Kushner completed his play The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures, whose main character is a fictional cousin of Vito Marcantonio. The play premiered in Minneapolis in 2009 and had a brief run off Broadway in New York in 2011.

Marcantonio is referenced in the 2010 book A Renegade History of the United States by noted historian Thaddeus Russell in the section "Italian Americans: Out of Africa" as "one of the greatest champions of black civil rights during the 1930s and 1940s" (p188. He is also said to have "sponsored several civil rights bills, led the congressional fight against discriminatory poll tax in southern states, and worked to make lynching a federal crime" (188).

External links

• United States Congress. "Vito Marcantonio (id: M000122)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
• "Rebel in the House: The Life and Times of Vito Marcantonio" by John J. Simon

• Works by Vito Marcantonio at Project Gutenberg
• Vito Marcantonio's Gravesite
• I Vote My Conscience: Speeches Writings Debates of Vito Marcantonio, edited by Annette T. Rubenstein
• Vito Marcantonio Library