Vito Marcantonio

Marcantonio was the son of an American-born father and Italian-born mother, both with origins in Picerno, in the Basilicata region of Southern Italy. He was born on December 10, 1902, in the impoverished Italian Harlem ghetto of East Harlem, New York City. He attended New York City public schools, becoming the only member of his class from East Harlem to graduate from De Witt Clinton High School in Hell's Kitchen, and eventually received his LL.B. from the New York University School of Law in 1925. ==Early career==

(left) and Marcantonio, his campaign manager, late 1920s In the 1920 United States presidential election, Marcantonio campaigned for Parley P. Christensen, the candidate of the Farmer-Labor Party. Marcantonio managed La Guardia's successful congressional re-election campaigns in 1926 to 1932. He worked as an assistant United States attorney from 1930 to 1931. He was an important figure in the La Guardia's successful campaign for mayor of New York City in 1933, and was regarded to be La Guardia's political heir apparent. ==U.S. House of Representatives==

Marcantonio was first elected to the United States House of Representatives from New York in 1934 as a Republican. Marcantonio was arguably one of the most left-wing members of Congress, and 1948). He was so popular in that district that he cross-filed in the cross-filing primaries between Democratic and Republican primaries, and won the nominations of both parties. He also gained the endorsement of the ALP, in an example of electoral fusion. There was a strong effort to unseat Marcantonio from Congress in 1946, including a smear campaign by media outlets. However, Marcantonio won re-election by a margin of 5,500. New York City mobster Mike Coppola is believed to have been responsible. In 1947, when the U.S. Congress passed legislation to provide financial aid to fight communism in Turkey and Greece, such as during the Greek Civil War, Marcantonio was the only congressman to not applaud the action, symbolizing his disagreement with the Truman Doctrine. In 1950, Marcantonio opposed American involvement in the Korean War. He argued that North Korea had been the victim of an unprovoked attack by South Korea. He cited articles by I. F. Stone, a radical journalist. Marcantonio opposed the 1947 creation of the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947, arguing that the agency would "under the guise of research and study" conduct espionage trade unions and businesses in order to assert the will of the military upon them. campaign poster featuring Marcantonio as a candidate for reelection to Congress, 1948. Above him the faces of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Fiorello La Guardia, and Henry A. Wallace look on. In 1948, Marcantonio was an avid supporter of former Vice President Henry A. Wallace, who ran for President on the Progressive Party ticket. A campaign film by Carl Marzani shows Marcantonio's district and his efforts on its behalf. Marcantonio became state chairman of the ALP in January, and was re-elected in November. His re-election that year came despite an intense opposition (motivated by opposition to his anti-McCarthyism). In his last term in Congress, Marcantonio opposed U.S. involvement in the Korean War. 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. 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 the Communist Party support for the ALP, the party soon fell apart. ==Later life and death==

After his defeat in mayoral and congressional elections, Marcantonio continued to practice law. It was his law practice, maintained while in Congress, that had generated the money by which he substantially self-financed his political campaigns. At first, he practiced in Washington, D.C., but he soon returned to New York City. In the 1952 presidential election, Marcantonio supported the Progressive Party ticket of Vincent Hallinan for president and Charlotta Bass for vice president. Bass (an African-American woman) was the first woman of color to be nominated for vice president. Marcantonio attended the party's 1952 nominating convention in Chicago. Soon afterward, in personal correspondence, he hailed W.E.B. Du Bois's keynote address to the convention, writing that he fully concurred with assertions made in the speech about black political representation. In supporting the party's 1952 nominees, he characterized a vote for the third-party ticket as highly valuable, remarking, In his address to the party's 1952 presidential nominating convention, Marcantonio remarked, Marcantonio resigned as state chairman of the ALP soon after the 1953 mayoral election, citing an "inherent division" that prevented it from acting as an independent political force. He left the party altogether, and launched a campaign for his former congressional seat, initially as an independent, suffering a fatal heart attack on August 9, 1954 while traveling up subway stairs on Broadway by City Hall Park in Lower Manhattan. As a devout Catholic, he was given conditional absolution and extreme unction, the last sacrament of the Catholic Church. He was nevertheless refused a Catholic funeral, with the Archdiocese of New York claiming he was not practicing and had not been reconciled to the Church at the time of his death. His service at a funeral home was attended by more than 20,000 people. ==Political ideology==

Marcantonio was inspired politically by his Catholic faith. Views on communism and criticism of the Red Scare and Leo Isacson at an event in Washington, D.C. protesting the Mundt Bill, June 1, 1948 Marcantonio, who was arguably one of the most left-wing members of Congress, When accused in his early congressional tenure of secretly supporting the United States Communist Party he remarked, An opponent of the House Un-American Activities Committee, in 1940 Marcantonio accused its participants of using anti-communism to distract public attention away from an anti-worker agenda, remarking, Civil rights at the 1952 Progressive National Convention In 2010, historian Thaddeus Russell described Marcantonio as "one of the greatest champions of black civil rights during the 1930s and 1940s." He sponsored bills to prohibit the poll tax, used by the Southern United States to disenfranchise poor voters, and to make lynching a federal crime. He also opposed U.S. involvement in the Korean War. Puerto Rico Puerto Rican workers, undated Marcantonio served as a strong voice in Congress for concerns relating to the territory of Puerto Rico, which lacked congressional representation. Historian G. J. Meyer noted, In 1939, Marcantonio criticized the prosecution and conviction of Puerto Rican Nationalist Party president Pedro Albizu Campos on charges of sedition and other crimes against the United States. In 1946, Marcantonio introduced legislation to restore Spanish as the language of instruction in Puerto Rico's schools, asking President Harry S. Truman to sign the bill "in the name of the children of Puerto Rico who are being tortured by the prevailing system…to fight cultural chauvinism and to correct past errors." President Truman signed the bill. In 1948, schools were able to return to teaching in the Spanish language, but English was required in schools as a second language. == Personal life ==

Marcantonio was a lifelong Catholic, who, in 1939 at the National Conference of the ILD, described himself as "a Roman Catholic who has not deserted the faith of his fathers." He married Miriam A. Sanders in 1925. ==Legacy==

, 2010 Marcantonio's collection of speeches, I Vote My Conscience (1956), edited by Annette Rubinstein, influenced the next generation of young radicals. Tony Kushner's play ''The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures'' has a main character who is a fictional "cousin" of Vito Marcantonio. ==Works==

Pamphlets written by Marcantonio include: • We Accuse! (1938) • Should America Go to War? (1941) • Security with FDR (1944) ==References==