"Who were the patriots, those who said yes, and those who followed, or were the real patriots those who refused to follow and faced the firing squads and were placed in concentration camps?"

-- Congressman Vito Marcantonio

Contents

Acknowledgements

New Introduction to I Vote My Conscience

1: Vito Marcantonio - Congressman

2: The Seventy-fourth Congress 1935-1936

3: The Seventy-sixth Congress 1939-1940

4: The Seventy-seventh Congress 1941-1942

5: The Seventy-eighth Congress 1943-1944

6: The Seventy-ninth Congress 1945-1946

7: The Eightieth Congress 1947-1948

8: The Eighty-first Congress 1949-1950

9: Puerto Rico and Its People 1935-1950

10: Lawyer for Civil Liberties

Index

Vito Marcantonio: Bibliography

Annette T. Rubinstein: Author, Educator, Activist

About Gerald Meyer

Images

Acknowledgments

The reprinting of I Vote My Conscience: Debates, Speeches and Writings of Vito Marcantonio, 1935-1950, almost fifty years after its original publication, could not have happened without the interest and support of many. Especially because of the hefty size of this tome and its inclusion of some thirty pages of photographs, the cost of this enterprise was high. Surmounting the daunting financial hurdles became possible through the generous financial support of the National Italian American Foundation and FIERI International as well as the willingness of the editor-author of I Vote My Conscience to forego any remuneration. The professional and financial support of the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute (Queens College, CUNY) and specifically Joseph V. Scelsa, Vincenzo Milione, and Carmine Pizzirusso proved to be essential to this process. Peter Vellon of the Calandra Institute proofread portions of the book.

The reprinting of this volume and its presentation on December 8, at an assembly in the Museum of the City of New York, which is located in Marcantonio' s Congressional District, constitutes a modest but meaningful celebration of a great Italian American, who sacrificed everything in the fight to make American democracy work for all. Keeping alive the memory of this much maligned very good man contributes to the unending effort to compel society to remember the forgotten men and women who are after all responsible for all the good things of the society.

This volume is part of the Calandra Institute's Historical Monograph Series conceived by Philip V. Cannistraro, Distinguished Professor of Italian American Studies, Queens College/CUNY.

Vito Marcantonio (1902-1954) was a rare phenomenon in American political life: a radical, who was elected seven times to Congress (1934 to 1950). He represented a district coterminous with East Harlem, a working class quarter that contained large communities of Italians, Jews, and later Puerto Ricans. (In 1944, the district was expanded to include Yorkville, which at that time was home to large German and Irish American, and smaller Czech and Italian American communities.) He aroused the enmity of powerful interests by championing all those left out of the American dream. His parliamentary acumen, oratorical skills, and personal charisma made him one of the most prominent New Yorkers of his day; his unrivaled role as spokesman for the agenda of the Left made him, depending on political predilection, a figure of national notoriety or fame.

Marcantonio was born in Italian Harlem (the largest and the most Italian Little Italy in the United States), which was located in the eastern half of Manhattan's East Harlem, from East 96th Street to East 135th Street and from Fifth Avenue to the East River. To the west of Italian Harlem lay Jewish East Harlem, an area containing a large community of Eastern European Jews. Starting in the 1920's, El Barrio, a community of Puerto Ricans, began slowly, and then after World War II, to rapidly grow. Smaller communities of African Americans and Greek Americans also took root in East Harlem.

East Harlem's prevailing radical politics influenced Vito Marcantonio in his youth. It was a Socialist Party bastion, which in 1917 elected a Socialist Alderman and a State Assemblyman, and in 1919 an Assemblyman. (The State Legislature ejected the latter, along with four other Socialists, on the grounds that "he had been elected on a platform which is absolutely inimical to the best interests of the State of New York and the United States.") The Socialist leader Morris Hiliquit nearly won East Harlem's Congressional seat in 1916 and 1918, and was defeated in 1920 only because the Democratic and Republican parties opposed him with a fusion candidate. From 1922 until 1932, Fiorello La Guardia represented East Harlem in Congress (in 1924 he ran on the Socialist and the Progressive party lines), where he served as a unique voice for urban populism.

Marcantonio had imbibed oppositional politics as a student at De Witt Clinton High School, where teachers had been fired for their radical politics. His Italian teacher there, Leonard Covello, greatly influenced his life's trajectory. Marcantonio became an officer of the Circolo Italiano, a club Covello had organized to remedy the academic difficulties of the Italian American students. Covello, who had been active in the settlement house movement, encouraged club members, including Marcantonio, Chairman of its Executive Committee, to work in Italian Harlem to provide tutoring and to assist those seeking to become naturalized American citizens. Under Covello's guidance, Marcantonio adopted the values of service for, and devotion to, his community as well as a fluency in Italian, all of which greatly contributed to his subsequent electoral career.

His future was also decisively shaped by Fiorello La Guardia who serendipitously Marcantonio met when they both appeared as speakers at an assembly at De Witt Clinton. La Guardia, whose home district had been Greenwich Village, appointed Marcantonio as his aide in charge of managing his local political organization and providing services for his constituents. La Guardia, who lost both his wife and his infant daughter in 1921, adopted Marcantonio as his surrogate son. He clerked in La Guardia's law firm and, for a short time, lived in his home. For Marcantonio, who had lost his father while he was a high school student, La Guardia was an invaluable and honored mentor. When La Guardia was elected mayor in 1933, his protégé succeeded him in Congress. There, from an even further left position, he championed all his predecessor's causes. In 1925, Marcantonio entered into a childless but supportive marriage with Miriam Sanders, the "headworker" at Haarlem House (present day La Guardia House), where they initially lived in a small apartment on its upper floors that was reserved for housing the staff.

During his first term, Marcantonio vocally supported the most radical measures proposed, including government operation of idle factories based on the principle of "production for use." Like La guardia, Marcantonio had first run as a Republican, not because of his agreement with the Republican political agenda, but as a reaction to the corrupt big city machine politics of Tammany Hall which was dominated by Irish Americans, who had all but excluded Italian Americans from political representation. Defeated in the Democratic landslide of 1936, Marcantonio assumed national prominence as the President of the International Labor Defense (ILD), a position he held until 1942. Marcantonio further announced his commitment to the Left when in 1937 (along with La Guardia) he registered in the newly formed American Labor Party (ALP). In 1938, after a successful race where he ran on both the Republican and American Labor party lines, he identified himself as the ALP's sole representative in Congress. In New York, he soon became the leader of this party's left wing, by 1944 its de facto leader, and by 1948 its State Chairman. Running as the ALP's mayoral candidate, in 1949 he garnered a majority of East Harlem's, one third of the City's Little Italys, and almost 15 percent of the citywide vote.

In the House, Marcantonio distinguished himself as the major leader for civil rights legislation by sponsoring anti-lynching and anti-poll tax bills as well as the annual fight for the Fair Employment Practices Commission's appropriation. He served as de facto congressperson for Puerto Rico, insuring that it was not excluded from appropriations bills. He also submitted five bills calling for the independence of Puerto Rico (which he called "the greatest victim of United States imperialism") with an indemnity for the damage done to the island by the United States business interests which had replaced tens of thousands of small farms with sugar plantations. Often alone in Congress, he defended the most defenseless, the foreign born, whom he described as "the industrial cannon fodder of the labor exploiters."

Serving as the only Italian American Congressman from New York State, he never forgot that he was the son of an Italian-born mother and a second generation father. Marcantonio merged the personal and the political when in the House he upheld the dignity and interests of Italian American people, a nationality subject to widespread defamation and outright discrimination. In 1942, for example, he demanded that the government lift the "enemy alien" status assigned at the beginning of World War II to the 600,000 Italian Americans who had not obtained citizenship since "the contributions of Americans of Italian extraction in blood, toil, and wealth is the devastating answer to those who seek to discriminate against them." After the coup that toppled Mussolini in 1943, Marcantonio urged that, in view of the critical assistance of the Italian Resistance to the German Army's defeat, Italy be treated as a liberated country and not as a conquered territory.

Marcantonio is perhaps most widely remembered because of his repeated insistence that the Communist Party was "An American political party operating in what it considers to be the best interests of the American working class and people." Especially during the postwar witch-hunt, he defended Communists as "the first victims of Fascism," and repeatedly argued that anti-Communism was a device to divide and defeat "the progressive forces." Although he was never a member of the Communist Party, their political positions were often closely aligned. In the postwar period, on the floor of the House, he fought the prevailing bipartisan foreign policy as "Wall Street imperialism" and as "war measures [intended to] buttress a decadent capitalism." Simultaneously, he led an increasingly lonely battle against the political repression of the Left. Ultimately, he cast the sole vote in opposition to United States intervention in the Korean War.

Marcantonio also played an important role in promoting dozens of left organizations. As the President of the ILD, he led campaigns against lynching and vigilantism aimed at labor activists and strikers. Among the most famous of these was the movement that contributed to the pardoning by the governor of California of Tom Mooney after he had served twenty-two years of a life sentence for what was believed a false accusation that he had thrown a bomb at a pro-war parade. He also opposed the police actions directed by Frank ("I Am the Law") Hague, the mayor of Jersey City, to prevent political opponents from holding public meetings and CIO organizers from distributing leaflets. Marcantonio supported the anti-Fascist Italian American community by serving as the Chairman of the Board of Directors of L' Unità del Popolo, an Italian language weekly, and maintaining close ties to the Garibaldi-American Fraternal Society, the Italian language section of the International Workers Order (IWO). On May 8, 1941, he introduced HR 4688, a bill to "guarantee minimum income and social security," that embodied the IWO's "Plan for Plenty." Closer to home, he acted as Chairman of the Harlem Legislative Conference, which combined almost one hundred political, religious, fraternal, and social organizations in African American, Latino, and Italian Harlems for the purpose of identifying and promoting legislative initiatives to address the common problems of these contiguous, but often competitive, communities. In turn, these organizations marshaled the foot soldiers for his electoral campaigns, and their publications lionized "our Marc."

Marcantonio also served the progressive movement as a courtroom attorney. He can be credited with two of the very few court cases won by targets of the ever-widening repression: In 1951, he successfully represented the then eighty-five year old Dr. W. E. B. DuBois, who was indicted as an unregistered agent of a foreign government because of his sponsorship of the Stockholm Peace Petition. That year, he also brilliantly and successfully argued the case of William Patterson, the President of the Civil Rights Congress, who had been indicted for contempt of Congress for refusing to produce the names of contributors to the bail fund of the arrested Communist leaders. From 1951 to 1953, despite his growing disagreement with the Communist Party about the appropriate political strategy for the Left during that period of repression, he served as co-attorney with John Abt and Joseph Forer, in arguing its case before a panel of the Subversive Activities Control Board. This Board, which was empowered to decide whether or not the Party and its members were required to register with the Attorney General, was one of the products of the McCarran Subversive Activities Control Bill (the Internal Security Act), legislation the legal team described as "enabling legislation for a police state." After the panel ruled against the Communist Party and ordered it to register as a subversive organization, which de facto outlawed it, Marcantonio collaborated in preparing its appeal to the Supreme Court. Unfortunately, it was not until November 16, 1965, eleven years after his death, that the Supreme Court unanimously nullified the registration requirement of the McCarran Act. In its decision, it accepted Marcantonio's argument that the act exposed the members of these organizations to prosecution under the Smith Act and other Federal laws, and thereby denied them their right to remain silent as guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment. (The previous year, the High Court had declared unconstitutional the section of the same law that allowed the State Department to deny passports to Communists, and it had also thrown out the proceedings against two alleged Communist front organizations for refusing to register.) Marcantonio's defiance of the domestic and foreign policies of the major parties stirred up a firestorm of opposition. He was regularly vilified in the press, which called him "Moscow's mouthpiece" and "the Red Congressman."

At the beginning of his career, Marcantonio ran in both the Democratic and Republican party primaries, where previously he had always won one, and in 1942 and 1944, both of their designations. In 1947, the New York State Legislature passed the Wilson-Pakula Act (a law which Marcantonio said had his picture on it), which effectively restricted candidates to contesting the political primaries in which they were officially enrolled. Nonetheless, in 1948 running solely on the ALP line, he again won. Marcantonio had always been able to overcome tremendous opposition because of the loyalty of his East Harlem constituents for whom he provided prodigious amounts of service. He had also benefited from the concentration of the resources of the ALP and other left organizations and unions to the goal of his reelection. However, in 1950, although he won a larger percentage of the vote than in 1948, he lost to James Donovan, a Tammany Hall' Democrat, who ran as a fusion candidate of the Democratic, Republican, and Liberal parties a tripartite coalition that he termed the "gang up".

Amidst the disarray and destruction of the Left, Marcantonio and his erstwhile ally the Communist Party fell out. Marcantonio blamed the pitiful 53,045 votes garnered by the ALP's 1953 mayoral candidate, Clifford McAvoy, on the Communist Party which had withdrawn its resources from the ALP in order to build support for the Democratic candidate, Robert Wagner, Jr. The Communist Party's behavior in this election was based on its assumption that the United States was on the verge of full blown fascism, while Marcantonio and the leftists (including Annette T. Rubinstein and many of his other closest associates) gathered around the leftist weekly, The National Guardian, believed that the worst of the political repression had already passed. Beyond this question, however, the Communist Party, fearing political isolation and irrelevance, was moving away from participation in the American Labor Party in New York and the Progressive Party nationally, which were attracting fewer and fewer votes. Conversely, Marcantonio and the Guardian insisted that under any and all conditions the Left needed to maintain, albeit in a much diminished form, independent political organizations such as the ALP that could actually contest elections.

In 1952, Marcantonio did not contest his old Congressional seat; but, in 1954, in order to challenge the increasingly unpopular incumbent, he began to organize a new local political association, the Good Neighbor Party. His plans for a political comeback, however, were ended when on August 8, 1954, he fell dead of a heart attack in City Hall Park directly across from the Woolworth Building. In an attempt to discover his identity, a policeman found Catholic religious amulets. He then summoned a priest who administered the last rites of the Catholic Church. This was consistent with his life, as he had always identified himself as a Catholic. For example, in 1939, while speaking before the National Conference of the ILD, he had preceded his declaration that "Father Coughlin has forfeited his right to priesthood in the Roman Catholic Church" with a description of himself "As a Roman Catholic who has not deserted the faith of his fathers." Nonetheless, the Archdiocese of New York, acting on the orders of Cardinal Spellman, refused him a Catholic burial on the grounds that "he was not reconciled with the Church before his death."

Marcantonio's death in mid-career devastated all those whom he had touched. Its suddenness, and the Cardinal's singling out a dedicated tribune for the oppressed for what one mourner called "ecclesiastical malice," aroused a massive demonstration of respect and loss at his funeral. For two days, at a rate of one thousand an hour, weeping people passed his bier in Giordano's funeral parlor. A funeral procession of more than a hundred vehicles, headed by fifteen coaches filled with flowers wended its way though a community where black-bordered signs, reading "We Mourn Our Loss," hung in windows and black wreaths were affixed beside doors. The cortege passed his political headquarters, 247 East 6h Street (where La Guardia had previously served this community) then his residence, 231 East 116th Street, which was a mere four blocks from the house in which he had been born and next door to the home of his mentor Leonard Covello. After this massive outpouring of grief, the People's Politician (as he liked to be known) was laid to rest near La Guardia in Woodlawn Cemetery, a nondenominational resting place in the Bronx, where on the tombstone under his name is etched: "Defender of Human Rights."

Within a month or two of his death, a group of his closest associates and friends organized the Vito Marcantonio Memorial. Miriam Sanders served as its Honorary Chair and Arthur Schutzer, who had long been the ALP's Executive Secretary, served as its Secretary. The other members of the Board included: Leonard Covello; David Freedman (the law associate who had identified Marcantonio after his death); Louise Berman, who had contributed much time and money to Marcantonio's campaigns; her husband, Lionel Berman, who had worked closely with Marcantonio in his attempt to organize "The Good Neighbor Party"; Bill Price, a New York Daily News photographer, who had helped with the organization of the Good Neighbor Party; Virginia Rosen, who had done much research for Marcantonio's Congressional speeches; Robert Rusch, a close friend and political associate; and Annette T. Rubinstein, a close personal and political associate.

The founders of the Memorial began the laborious and inevitable process of fund raising by mailing handsomely printed brochures with enclosed envelopes which solicited contributions within a four tier range starting from $1 for "Regular Associate" to $100 for "Endowed Associate." Those who responded received a membership card with a photo of Marcantonio and the dates of his birth and death. An immediate expense was the maintenance Marcantonio's two headquarters: 247 East 116th Street, and 1484 First Avenue, a large loft between 77th and 78th Streets, that had served as his Yorkville headquarters. (Even after his defeat in the 1950 election, Marcantonio had continued providing services from these offices for the District's residents, who continued to call him "Congressman.")

The stated mission of the Marcantonio Memorial was "to keep alive and ever-present among the people of his community and of this country, the meaning and the memory of the life and activities of Vito Marcantonio." The Memorial Association planned to accomplish this goal by a series of events and projects, including: 1) "the assembling, publishing, and distributing of the record of his life [and] and his writings and his speeches"; 2) "creating enduring memorials [including] scholarships, essay awards"; 3) "holding annual and other public assemblies"; and 4) "establish [ing] and maintain[ing] a headquarters of the Vito Marcantonio Memorial." Also in response to the reality that he had died virtually penniless, it pledged "to assume and to discharge those financial obligations and commitments incurred by Vito Marcantonio in connection with his public service." This obligation was fulfilled when the Association paid $1,200 to defray expenses for Marcantonio's funeral.

The Memorial Association fulfilled another goal when it scheduled a "Vito Marcantonio Memorial Meeting" to take place on December 7, 1954, at Manhattan Center. Publicity for the assembly was modest, consisting of three small ads in the Daily Worker and one smaller ad in the National Guardian, which said little more than "Vito Marcantonio Memorial Meeting." This event was also promoted by free publicity: the Daily Worker published an article about the upcoming meeting; and in advance of the meeting, the National Guardian printed a banner headline across the top of the first page in the issue as well as a news article which identified the Vito Marcantonio Memorial as "dedicated to keeping the Marcantonio record straight and making it a continuing force." Lastly, the Guardian published a resolution issued by the then nearly defunct Progressive Party in support of the meeting. Residents of his Congressional District, also received a letter encouraging attendance, which noted that: "Here he lived, a good neighbor to every family, a dependable rock of strength for everyone who needed help, a fighting Congressman for all the people, a leader with vision and faith, and integrity."

The Daily Worker, which along with the Guardian, was the only newspaper which covered the event, reported that 3,500 people attended the meeting. The audience was addressed by a number of residents from Marcantonio's district who had received services from him, including one woman among many who had been rescued from eviction by his efforts. W.E.B. Du Bois, who had run as the ALP candidate for Senate in 1950 for the expressed purpose of helping Marcantonio's electoral chances, listed Marcantonio's "seven great crusades" which he thought revealed his philosophy. These included: casting the sole vote against the Korean War, opposing the doctrine of "trying to defeat Communism by force," and "fighting for democracy for the Negro, white, and the foreign born." His barber, Luigi Albarelli, who spoke in Italian at his funeral service, spoke directly to Marcantonio: "You lived fearlessly and courageously with affection in your heart for the common man." John Bernard, former Congressmen from Minnesota, read messages from Congressmen Arthur Klein who represented the Lower East Side, and John Blatnik, who represented a district in Minnesota. Gilberto Concepción de Gracia, the leader of the Puerto Rican Independence Party, declared that he had flown from Puerto Rico in order to "pay tribute.., in the name of the Puerto Rican people whom he loved so much." He further spoke of the "tears in Puerto Rican eyes" for the man who was "the greatest friend" that the cause of Puerto Rican independence ever had. Covello reminded the audience that "Marcantonio never abandoned his community or his people." He further declared that his death had left "A void in the East Harlem community... and in the lives of thousands of his East Harlem neighbors, to whom he was deeply devoted and for whose welfare he gave so completely of himself. It has left a void among the ranks of those who are struggling to eliminate poverty, disease, and hunger and to bring to all people, the abundant life....Marc decided to throw his lot completely with that one-third of the nation which President Roosevelt described as ill-housed, ill-fed, and ill-clad." The audience rose for a one minute silent tribute and a pianist played Beethoven's "Death of a Hero." Despite the excellent attendance and the balanced program, this was the first and last public meeting that the Memorial sponsored.

Another major goal of the Memorial Association was rapidly accomplished. On September 22, 1955, Miriam Marcantonio donated to the Manuscript Division of the New York Public Library her deceased husband's papers. After the physical transfer of the bulk of the papers from Marcantonio's Yorkville headquarters, the Library staff organized them into eighty four boxes containing everything from a letter signed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt to bills from printers. The Marcantonio Papers contain extensive correspondence with various left organizations and trade unions, campaign materials, texts of speeches and bills presented in the House of Representatives, as well as two cartons of photographs and tapes of his speeches.

Twenty cartons are filled with correspondence from constituents and other citizens from near and far who sought the help of "their Marc." One letter from a Puerto Rican woman requesting "a small turkey for my children who have no father," closes by saying that she was certain that he would not disappoint them because: "You are the bread of the poor people." Many of the letters document the vast extent of deprivation in this land of abundance. In 1950, a woman wrote "with hopes that you will be able to help me as I have heard you have helped so many others .... We're a family of three living in one room, a very small room." Another letter from an Italian cab driver consoling Marcantonio after his defeat in the 1949 mayoral election, stated: "They say you are a Communist, but to many a working man you are a prince."

The correspondence between his constituents and his office documents the remarkably extensive efforts he made on their behalf. For example, there are twenty four pieces of correspondence and two interviews over a span of one and one-half years which were generated by his effort to secure for a constituent a transfer from a WPA job in Staten Island to one nearer to home. Six other boxes carry weekly reports from members of Marcantonio's staff. There are innumerable logs of "contracts", that is, requests made by constituents for service. In 1950, for example, one aide, Leonard Fink, disposed of more than three hundred legal cases. All the ingredients that made a uniquely successful radical politician are documented by this collection: the legendary delivery of service to constituents; a vast political organization manned by men and women dedicated to a vibrant Left movement consisting of an extensive interlocking set of organizations and newspapers in more than a score of languages; and the painstaking work and passionate commitment of an advocate who dedicated every ounce of his strength for the benefit of all those left out of the American dream.

After its initial flurry of activities, the problems of financing the Marcantonio Association loomed. The maintenance of Marcantonio's two headquarters represented the major expense: the monthly rent for the Yorkville office was $100, the rent for the East Harlem office was likely less. Yet, the two spaces now served little purpose other than as a mail drop. Aside from the few meetings that were held there by a group which had not grown beyond its original small band, the only public use of these spaces was the organization of a special exhibit of over one hundred photographs mounted in December 1956 at the 247 East 116th Street office. These headquarters, however, more than any other site represented Vito Marcantonio. It was no coincidence that Alfred Santangelo, who in 1956 succeeded in defeating George Donovan in the Democratic primary and went on to win Marcantonio's Congressional seat, established his headquarters at 1484 First Avenue, that is, Marcantonio's Yorkville office.

The Marcantonio Association's attempt to raise funds by seeking dues from "associates" had met with only modest success, and the December 7th Memorial meeting had generated only a small profit. A serious setback for the fiscal health of the organization was the poor result of a letter composed and signed by W.E.B. Du Bois soliciting donations from the thirty thousand subscribers to the National Guardian, which despite the affinity of the audience for Marcantonio and the great prestige of its solicitor, failed to attract sufficient money even to cover its expenses.

Ultimately, the financial viability of the Marcantonio Memorial was underwritten by its most significant and lasting accomplishment: the publication of I Vote My Conscience. Debates, Speeches, and Writings of Vito Marcantonio, a five hundred page compilation of Marcantonio's Congressional debates and speeches, accompanied by thirty pages of photographs, edited and introduced by Annette T. Rubinstein. Dr. Rubinstein (who herself had been blacklisted) spent one full year on this labor of love. Others in the Association assisted Dr. Rubinstein: Lionel Berman created many of the captions identifying the excerpts prior to each chapter, and Virginia Rosen had selected the photographs. Annette T. Rubinstein accepted the recommendation of Miriam Marcantonio (who simultaneously thanked her for the "devotion and care, and work you are putting into this project") that the proposed cover design, which was a composite of a number of photographs, be replaced with "a single picture of Marc ... because its simplicity is more striking."

Annette Rubinstein's thirty four page introduction provides the background for the heart of this work. There she aptly described the volume as a "partial political autobiography." The body of the book consists of more than 150 excerpts of Marcantonio's Congressional speeches and debates, which are organized into the seven chapters based on the seven sessions he served in the House. In recognition of his devoted work on behalf of Puerto Rico and the Puerto Rican people, there is a separate chapter, "Puerto Rico and Its People," which spans his entire political career. Lastly, there is a chapter of his legal briefs on behalf of McCarthyism's intended victims.

Dr. Rubinstein was inspired with the book's title when she noticed that Marcantonio used a similar phrase in his first and last term in the House. On May l4, 1936, in support of his vote for a bill to prevent family farm foreclosures, he affirmed that although "I have no farmers in my district... I shall vote my conscience on this bill." In 1950, before casting the sole vote in opposition to President Truman's order for the deployment of United States air and sea forces to support the South Korean forces, Marcantonio told his colleagues: "It is best to live one's life with one's conscience than to temporize or accept with silence those things which one believes to be against the interests of one's people and one's nation."

I Vote My Conscience evidences Marcantonio's connectedness to the people of East Harlem and his extraordinary ability as advocate for minorities and the working class throughout the United States. His effectiveness was made possible by his fearless populism, which allowed him the freedom to speak on behalf of the exploited and oppressed without looking over his shoulder for approval from leaders and organizations dedicated to upholding the status quo.

Excerpts from Marcantonio's argument on behalf of labor illustrate his politics. In 1944, in defense of the C.I.O.'s Political Action Committee, he declared: "Labor has the right to organize, not only on the economic front, but labor has a right to protect itself and its legitimate interests on the political front." In 1946, he informed his colleagues: "Workers are human beings contributing to the wealth and welfare of America and are entitled as a matter of right to a decent living. They have earned the right to organize and to strike to obtain it." The following year in arguing against a piece of anti-labor legislation, he sardonically characterized the measure as giving the workers "the right to be free, freeing him from unionization, freeing him from his hard-earned protection, freeing him from his union, his only defense against exploitation. You are only making him free to be exploited." This is the voice of an American populist, not an American liberal.

I Vote My Conscience also traces another extraordinary contribution of Marcantonio, that is, his step-by-step, root-and-branch opposition to United States Cold War foreign policy. Here and throughout his political career Marcantonio assumed that United States foreign policy was motivated by imperial interests and his sympathies were always on the side of those forces seeking political liberation and social justice. In 1946, while arguing against United States aid to Greece, he asserted that "under the guise of 'stop Communism', we are aiding a regime which is shot through with Fascists, with Nazi collaborators, petty and big Quislings .... Monopoly capital and its agents set up the same cry in an attempt to stop the forward march of mankind toward freedom from fear and want." In 1949, he insisted that military aid to Korea represented: "The same thing as we did in China, aiding tyranny and corruption."

Dr. Rubinstein's summation of the excerpts from his debates and speeches noted that they were infused with "A passionate concern for the dignity and well being of man and an unabashed and genuine patriotism." In the most general terms possible, this book documents what one brilliant and determined leftist could accomplish.

Five thousand copies of I Vote My Conscience were printed: 2,000 cloth, 250 "deluxe editions" (slipcased); and 2,750 of a "union edition," that is, paperbacked books. The sale and distribution of these volumes represented a major undertaking for this small band functioning during a time of the Left's decimation and demobilization. Albert Kahn composed a letter that went out to the Association's mailing list suggesting that "this new, handsome, generously illustrated 500 page book" would make a great Christmas present. A widely circulated brochure announced that I Vote My Conscience contains "fourteen years of history as he saw it and made it!" The official launching of I Vote My Conscience took place on July 4th 1956. In a two column editorial in the National Guardian, its editor, John McManus, noted that: "The far extent of Marcantonio's concern for the people's interest is well documented [in the book] whether it be in behalf of quarry strikers in Vermont or in defense of the Hollywood Ten against contempt citations ... . He brought to bear on every question the incisiveness of a fine lawyer, the humanity of an American radical..." Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, the only other media notice of this book was the Daily Worker's longish and somewhat plodding review.

The promotion and distribution of I Vote My Conscience became the sole remaining purpose of the Marcantonio Memorial, and its major source of income. The production of the volume came to $1.72 per copy, which meant that the balance after the sale of the five thousand copies at an average price of $5.00 per copy was $6,400. Most, but not all, of the copies were sold. By January 1963, Virginia Rosen reported that there were 758 hard cover copies on hand. She proposed that one hundred copies be kept as a reserve and the remainder be donated to libraries. Copies of the book, which were sent to these libraries unsolicited, were accompanied by a letter signed by Leonard Covello, which suggested that the book "will be useful to students of American History, Law,and Political Science, filling in the scanted areas of radical thought from 1935 to 1950." The reception of these gift books varied. The principal order librarian of Oakland California's library returned the book because: "the history reference librarian has decided not to add the title to our collection. We regret returning the book to you." On the other hand, the Oregon State Library and the University of Santa Clara Library requested additional copies. By this time, the Memorial Association was operating from a post office box. On May 13, 1963, Ms. Rosen reimbursed herself for some of the money she had lent the association, and left a balance of $6.35 in order to accommodate the possibility that some of the delinquent accounts might still be paid, and the Vito Marcantonio Association closed its account and ended its business.

Since the demise of the Vito Marcantonio Memorial, a number of events have occurred that have served its proposed mission to keep "alive and ever-present among the people of his community and of this country, the meaning and the memory of the life and activities of Vito Marcantonio." On November 25, 1975, Public School 50, which is located at 433 East 100th Street, was dedicated to Vito Marcantonio. The ceremony brought together a large contingent of East Harlem's political power structure: Angelo Del Toro, the Assemblyman from East Harlem; Anthony Alvarado, the Superintendent of East Harlem's School District; and the Hon. Charles Rangel, the District's Congressman. The individual who had had the power to ensure that this still controversial radical could be memorialized by having a public school dedicated to him was the keynote speaker, Paul O'Dwyer, the President of the City Council, whose political sympathies were further left than his politics. O'Dwyer could not have forgotten that in 1948 when he was running as the Democratic candidate for Congress from Washington Heights against Jacob Javits, the Republican-Liberal candidate, the ALP's county chair, Vito Marcantonio, had secured for him the ALP endorsement, which though insufficient to provide victory, constituted approximately 23 percent of his vote. Today, the Vito Marcantonio Elementary School remains the only physical monument to this extraordinary man. (Unfortunately, this impressive structure with Vito Marcantonio's name etched on its facade in large letters, is not visible from the street, since it is located within Metro North, a complex of low income and subsidized housing.)

A number of memorial meetings have been held subsequent to the activities of the Memorial Association. An assembly dedicated to Marcantonio's memory took place on December 19th, 1976 in El Museo del Barrio. This brought together a group of prominent local leaders, including: Jack Agueros, the Director of the Museum; GiIberto Gerena ValentIn, a member of the City Council; and Joseph Monserrat, the future President of the Board of Education. After the event, El Diario reported that some of the participants of the meeting walked to the nearby Central Park where they threw roses on the waters of a lake "in memory of the best friend that the Puerto Ricans had in the United States Congress when they did not have a voice that could be raised in order to defend their civil rights nor the right of Puerto Rico to be a people free and sovereign." On October 15, 1979, the American Institute for Marxist Studies hosted a memorial meeting for Vito Marcantonio which filled the Community Church of New York City to hear Gerald Meyer, discuss Marcantonio's special relationship with the Puerto Rican people; Simon Gerson, the Communist Party's Chair for New York State, evaluate Marcantonio's successes in coalition politics; and Carl Marzani introduced a ten-minute film he had produced for his 1950 campaign.

In 1991, the Vito Marcantonio Forum, a short-lived group, was founded for the purpose of "commemorating and continuing the work of a great leader of the American Left." The one major event of the Forum was the organization of a daylong conference on November 9, 1991, at the Brecht Forum in New York City, on the topic of "Multicultural Education: Recovering Progressive Traditions," which the organizers saw as consonant with Marcantonio's insistence that genuine democracy requires the inclusion of all communities. At this Conference, the first Vito Marcantonio Award was presented to Annette T. Rubinstein, whom the Forum's founders saw as "a human being whose life's work has advanced the cause Marcantonio dedicated his life to." Aside from her editorship of I Vote My Conscience, Annette had played a major role in the American Labor Party: she had chaired an Assembly District club on the Upper West Side, twice run for office on its line, and served as its Vice President. After the demise of the ALP, she continued to work with independent political organizations while simultaneously developing an international reputation for her Marxist interpretations of the literary work of both Great Britain and the United States. Some of the Vito Marcantonio Forum's work, and specifically the presentation of the Vito Marcantonio Award was continued when in 1992 two of its founders, Gil Fagiani and Juliet Ucelli, organized Italian Americans for a Multicultural United States (IAMUS).

On December 10, 1994, a consortium that included the East Harlem Historical Organization, the Museum of the City of New York, Union Settlement, and IAMUS sponsored a conference on Vito Marcantonio and Coalition Politics. This assembly attracted nearly two hundred residents of East Harlem and New Yorkers of his generation as well as young people curious to learn about a principled radical who was able to get elected seven times. At this meeting, the second Vito Marcantonio Award was presented to Pete Pascale, a life-long resident of Italian Harlem, who worked in Fiorello La Guardia Memorial House (formerly Haarlem House) as an executive director and board member. Pascale, who personally knew and revered Marcantonio, had spent his entire life being of service to the youth of East Harlem.

In May 1997, the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute of Queens College sponsored a conference on the Lost World of Italian American Radicalism, whose plenary session was dedicated to Marcantonio. On May 1st, the authors of the four books about Marcantonio (Annette T. Rubinstein, Alan Schaffer, John Salvatore LaGumina, and Gerald Meyer) were scheduled to speak although Schaffer was unable to participate. This plenary session attracted almost two hundred people from a wide variety of backgrounds: The largest group were Italian Americans interested in either celebrating or learning about a part of their own background which has generally been denigrated or ignored; radicals from his time and the 60s; and the curious drawn by what amounted to an "event." What contributed to the interest was the presentation by IAMUS, of the third Vito Marcantonio Award to Ralph Fasanella, the renowned social realist artist who had personally known the radical Congressman. Indeed, in 1949 when Marcantonio was running as the ALP's candidate for mayor, Fasanella ran for Yorkville's City Council seat on that line. Two of his most important canvases "Campaign: Lucky Corner" and "Death of a Leader" depict Marcantonio. Fasanella combined his political activism with paintings that reflected the daily lives of working class families and their struggles.

The largest gathering, since the first memorial meeting organized by the Vito Marcantonio Memorial in December 1954, took place at New York University on November 12, 1998, where almost four hundred gathered to participate in "Vito Marcantonio: A Recognition and Celebration." The large attendance and the inspiring character of the program were the result of a yearlong effort led by Roberto Ragone, then Chair of Public Relations and Public Affairs of FIERI National, an association of young Italian American professionals, and Gerald Meyer. Prior to the NYU event, FIERI organized three preparatory gatherings in order to raise funds and build interest. The four sponsoring organizations were: the American Italian Historical Association, the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, FIERI National, and NYU's il Circolo Italiano, of which Marcantonio had been a member when he attended NYU Law School. Forty other organizations endorsed this meeting, including the American Labor Museum (Botto House), the Center for Migration Studies, the East Harlem Historical Organization, Hunter College Center for Puerto Rican Studies, the Italian American Legal Defense and Higher Education Fund, and the Italian American Writers Association. An advisory board of over fifty dignitaries from many different fields was assembled. Among the prominent individuals who aligned themselves with this effort were: Sal Albanese, former City Council member; Fernando Ferrer, Bronx Borough President; Herman Badillo, former Congressman; Msgr, George Cascelli, Director, Italian Apostolate, New York Archdiocese; Msgr. Peter Rofrano, Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church, East Harlem; Frank Stella, Chairman, National Italian American Foundation; and Pete Seeger. The program of speeches was enlivened by Charles Keller's demonstration of "chalk talk" (a lost art form that transforms a few seemingly random lines into a drawing while the artist narrates the subject) that he had employed to attract and hold the crowds at the street corner rallies which were Marcantonio's primary means of reaching his constituents. The Celebration's audience was also moved by the presence of nine of Marcantonio's relatives, including two cousins, Frank Marcantonio and Mark Varicchio.

"Vito Marcantonio: A Recognition and Celebration" was seen by its organizers as the launching event of the Vito Marcantonio Project which was "dedicated to the goal of making known the life and work of Vito Marcantonio and others like Fiorello La Guardia, Leonard Covello, and Edward Corsi, who lived and worked together with him in what was the largest Little Italy in the United States, Italian Harlem." The Project intended to organize a series of Marcantonio-related activities: an exhibit of memorabilia relating to Marcantonio's life and work; a plaque for his house and political headquarters; a street named for him in East Harlem; the development of school curricular materials about him; presentations of events about him in East Harlem; the celebration of a memorial Mass; and the republication of I Vote My Conscience. The fulfillment of this last goal could hasten the realization of the others. In their totality, they could help secure for Marcantonio his rightful place among our truly great American leaders and thereby contribute to the restoration of this country's real history.

Vito Marcantonio was born on December 10, 1902, in East Harlem, lived in East Harlem all his life, and was buried from East Harlem three days after his sudden death on August 9, 1954.

His political life was, from the very beginning, closely associated with that of his friend and early mentor Fiorello H. La guardia In his own memorial tribute to La guardia Marcantonio tells how they met.

"I first met La guardia when I was attending De Witt Clinton High School. He addressed the school assembly the same day when I made a speech. I shall never forget it. I spoke in favor of old-age pensions and social security. La guardia made this the theme of his speech to the students."'

Even as a high school youngster Marcantonio was aware of the special hardships of the poor and crowded East Harlem community. The great majority of his neighbors, like his own family, were immigrant Italian Americans. In addition to economic insecurity a large number faced language difficulties and the disturbing effects of a new culture on old family ties and traditions. The frequently hostile attitude of older Americans towards newcomers intensified their problems. Derogatory references to East Harlem in newspaper reports, then as now, made it harder still for many of its people to envision for themselves acceptance as equals or a full participation in American life.

Marcantonio, who never lost his profound feeling of identification with his community, developed early in his high school years an equal sense of kinship with the democratic spirit of America as it was expressed in the lives and writings of Jefferson and Lincoln.

Unlike many young people who became embittered or cynical as they saw the discrepancy between the glowing picture of American life as they were taught it, and its reality in such communities as East Harlem, Marcantonio kept his faith in the people's ability to make the American dream come true. He set himself the job of interpreting the unrealized possibilities of democracy for his neighbors, and of helping them to achieve the dignity and security they deserved and needed.

As a first step he led a group of schoolmates in organizing Citizenship and English classes for adults at a neighborhood church, and he continued to teach similar evening groups for many years. In this and in other practical ways he began, in his teens, to express the active farsighted devotion to his community and his country that characterized his life to the end.

Concern with individual human problems and attempts to solve them through social action were always, for Marcantonio, the very essence of politics. In a sense then his political career began when, at 18, he became a leader of the East Harlem Tenant League and conducted its successful 1920 rent strike. But in the more customary meaning of the word his first step into actual political life was taken at the request of La guardia As Marcantonio himself told the story:

"The next time I met him was the summer of 1924 when both of the two old parties had ganged up on him. That year La guardia decided to support Senator LaFollette for President on the Progressive Party ticket. The Republican Party refused La guardia the Republican nomination. The Democratic Party, as usual, sought to defeat him. La guardia asked me to actively participate in that campaign, and together with a handful of our friends and neighbors in East Harlem, we conducted a successful campaign for him and for LaFollette in our congressional district."

Marcantonio, who had been graduated from law school in 1925, managed the campaigns which returned La guardia to Congress on the Republican-Progressive ticket in 1926, 1928 and 1930. In 1930 the young lawyer was appointed assistant United States attorney, a position which he resigned two years later. La guardia was defeated for Congress by a Democrat in the New Deal victory of 1932 and Marcantonio worked with him to organize the City Fusion Party, an anti-Tammany coalition which elected "the Little Flower" Mayor of New York City in 1933.

With La guardia's enthusiastic support Marcantonio then determined to represent his community, La guardia's former constituency, in Congress. Despite the opposition of the "Old Guard" he secured the Republican nomination and, endorsed by the City Fusion Party, won a bitterly contested election, defeating the incumbent Member for the 20th Congressional District by 247 votes in November 1934. He took his seat in the 74th Congress in January, 1935.

At the beginning of his first term Marcantonio established the pattern of regular daily personal service to the people of his community. His unpretentious headquarters on the ground floor of an old brownstone house at 247 E. 116 Street, which had formerly been La guardia's center, was open seven days a week throughout the year for all who wished free assistance with health, citizenship, relief, workmen's compensation, tenant, immigration, or other legal and family problems.

While Congress was in session these services were necessarily provided by Marcantonio's associates, but every weekend, despite his extraordinarily heavy program of legislative work in Washington, he returned to New York to meet personally with the hundreds of neighbors who needed his help. This custom remained unbroken during his subsequent terms in office. At the same time his attendance record on the floor of the House for the next fourteen years was outstanding, and the volume of outside work he did studying and writing bills, organizing congressional and public support for, or opposition to, specific legislation, planning and directing parliamentary strategy, was certainly unexceeded and probably unequalled by any other Congressman.

With all Marcantonio's great personal popularity in his district, and the fact that he was one of the strongest supporters of New Deal policies in the 74th Congress (1935-36), the landslide for President Roosevelt in 1936 carried practically every Democratic candidate in New York City to victory and Marcantonio was defeated.

In local New York City politics, being a Republican then often meant, essentially, an anti-machine, anti-Tammany position. This was true in such neighborhoods as East Harlem. La guardia had, for example, been elected as a Republican to the 68th Congress and as a Socialist to the 69th Congress and Marcantonio strongly expressed the same anti-Tammany viewpoint throughout his life. But on the national scene Republican opposition to relief expenditures, social security, and other health and welfare appropriations, ran counter to Marcantonio's profound convictions. This rapidly became evident to his colleagues on both sides of the House and gave rise to such exchanges as the three-sided one with a Democratic Congressman, O'Connor, and Republican leader Martin, which took place in the House on July 29, 1935:

Mr. O'Connor: What has really been happening here? Practically every Republican member voted the other day to adjourn this House [without acting on an emergency relief appropriation requested by the President] and go home.

Mr. Marcantonio: Is not the gentleman in error in that?

Mr. O'Connor: I will make an exception, yes; the gentleman from New York, my good friend Mr. Marcantonio did not.

Mr. Martin: He is not a Republican.

Mr. O'Connor: My affection for him is so strong that it somewhat coincides with that opinion. I really hope he is not.

During his first two years in Congress it had become clear to Marcantonio that many of the Democratic Members of the House were unwilling to go even as far as the President on social welfare legislation; and that the administration itself often fell short of measures Marcantonio considered necessary to protect civil liberties, the rights of labor, the foreign born, and other minority racial or political groups.

In the spring of 1936, for example, the administration bill for supplementary W.P.A. (Works Progress Administration) appropriations was less than a third of the amount requested the previous year. Marcantonio remarked bitterly: "The New Deal has substituted in the place and stead of the Hoover myth of two chickens in every pot the stark reality of two wolves at every door." Congressman McCormack, an administration spokesman, objected: "We have given $3,000,000,000 a year [to the unemployed]. It is $3,000,000,000 more than Hoover gave." Marcantonio then aroused laughter with the reply: "Is the gentleman proud of being just a little better than Hoover? Is that all the gentleman has to offer?" And a rhetorical question by Mr. McCormack, "Where would they [the unemployed] be if the present administration had not engaged in the humane policy that it has...," elicited the quick retort, "...you should ask me where would the administration be? The unemployed owe the past appropriations to their own mass pressure."

The newly organized American Labor Party was far closer to expressing Marcantonio's political philosophy than even the New Deal Democratic platform, and from the first he affiliated himself with the A.L.P. In November, 1938, he was elected to Congress as the only American Labor Party Member. He had also won the Republican nomination, defeating the regular organization nominee in the primaries, and therefore ran on both tickets. Although his vote was 10,059 on the Republican line and only 8,901 on the A.L.P. line he asked specifically that his designation in the Congressional Directory be solely "American Labor Party."

In 1940 he was elected as American Labor Party candidate with Republican endorsement, but in 1942 the regular Republican organization leadership again refused him the nomination. He replied by entering himself in both the Republican and Democratic primaries and winning in both, but continued to list himself solely as American Labor Party.

In 1944 a New York State redistricting made possible a new attempt to defeat him by removing part of his old district and adding to the new 18th Congressional District the thickly populated community stretching from 59th to 99th Street. In spite of this radical change in his constituency he again won both major party primaries. Since he was also the American Labor Party candidate he carried the district by a majority of 66,390.

An article in the April issue of Harpers, commenting on the redistricting before the 1944 primaries, said:

The Twentieth Congressional District no longer exists. the New York Legislature, dominated by upstate Republicans who have nothing to fear from Marcantonio, has reapportioned the state and tried to gerrymander Marcantonio out of office. In the new Eighteenth District, he will still have most of his East Harlem Spaniards and Italians but life will be complicated by the addition of vast German and Irish hordes from the adjoining Yorkville area."

For the campaign in his greatly enlarged district Marcantonio had opened another office in a loft above a Five and Ten Cent Store in the very heart of Yorkville First Avenue near 77th Street. This remained a permanent headquarters to assist the people of the community. Soon the numbers who came to 1484 First Avenue for advice and help exceeded even the crowds at his uptown East Harlem Club. Two articles, published in the spring and fall of 1944 by magazines which were sharply opposed to Congressman Marcantonio politically, report visits to his two headquarters.

Richard Rovere, writing in the April Harpers, begins:

"The scene in the La guardia Club after one o'clock on Sunday looks like nothing so much as a busy day in the clinic of a great city hospital. Marcantonio and three or four secretaries sit at desks on a platform in the front of the main hall. Before them on wooden camp chairs are about a hundred constituents, many of them cradling infants in their arms ... as many as four hundred may come and go in an afternoon .... They speak in Spanish, Italian, English, and various mixtures of the three. Marcantonio can always answer in kind, throwing in a little Yiddish if the need arises. Mostly their problems concern money or jobs. During the depression, the majority were relief applicants.

Today the same people are back for army dependency allotments. Many want... war plant jobs. Some need legal aid.

Marcantonio sees personally about thirty thousand ... in the course of a Congressional term."

And Walter Davenport, in the October 14 issue of Collier's presents an even more vivid eye witness account:

"For an hour before the Honorable Vito Marcantonio trots into the F. H. La guardia Political Club in East Harlem, New York City, the hail reeks with woe. But not hopeless woe. Marc will listen. Marc will know the answers.

In at least six languages the crowd compares troubles ... in Italian, Spanish, Polish, Yiddish, Hungarian and English the latter in a wide assortment of dialects: Irish, native Negro, West Indian Negro, New York.

When Congress is in session, he spends Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays in Washington, Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays are spent in his two New York offices .... His office hours are plainly marked on the doors from 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. However, he seldom leaves until seven or eight. When Congress is in recess he is at these offices daily .... Gas bills, landlord complaints, complaints against landlords. Naturalization. Sickness. Wayward children. O.P.A. [Office of Price Administration] violations. Nonsupport. Pensions. Army allotments. Jobs.... Like this for hours.

Somehow, along about seven o'clock the lists are exhausted. So are the Congressman and his aides. The chairs are empty. Three hundred and twenty-seven of Vito Marcantonio's constituents have been heard, advised, helped. Tomorrow it will start all over again. It's quiet for a few minutes and then the Congressman ... and the rest of the staff compile and catalogue the disposition of the day's cases.

'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 ten thousand a year for. It's their dough!"

In 1946, Marcantonio won in the Democratic primary and ran on the American Labor Party and Democratic tickets. Newsweek, reporting the election in its issue of November 25, 1946, stated:

"Despite an all-out Republican effort to unseat him, synchronized with a vigorous anti-Marcantonio campaign conducted by leading newspapers he won by 5,500 votes... [in the year of] a GOP landslide."

The 1946 effort to defeat Marcantonio had attracted nation wide attention. The conservative Saturday Evening Post ran an article in its issue of January 11, 1947, entitled "They Couldn't Purge Vito." In this Sidney Shallet, who had covered the campaign for the magazine, explained the failure to unseat Marcantonio in terms of his personal relationship to the people of his district, saying in part:

What matters to them is not whether Marcantonio is red, pink, black, blue or purple, but that he is 'their' Congressman a ... tireless fighter for the man on the streets of East Harlem.

He is willing to live in their slums, rub elbows with the best and the worst of them, work himself to the thin end of a frazzle for them. He spends his dough on them, takes up their battles against the landlords .... On occasions ... the Congressman even has carried scuttles of coal personally to heatless tenements. Anyone who wants to see him...can do so.

The Marcantonio system of personal service is unique. Whereas some congressmen pride themselves on developing routines for dodging troublesome constituents, Marcantonio insists almost fanatically that no constituent, however lowly or troublesome, get the kiss-off...."

Mr. Shallet concluded his article with an account of the final election eve rally:

"All previous campaign color was eclipsed on election eve when Marcantonio made his traditional appearance at his 'Lucky Corner' 116th Street and Lexington. This was La guardia's 'Lucky Corner' when the Little Flower was active in New York politics. Marcantonio inherited it along with the La guardia seat in Congress.

A fifteen-foot electric sign, LUCKY CORNER -- REELECT MARCANTONIO, blinked down on the crowd of 10,000. There was no mistaking the crowd's wild admiration for their Champion. The Hymn of Garibaldi greeted his appearance, and the crowd, predominantly Italian American, erupted for three full minutes. Flowers, songs, and tri-lingual tributes were lavished on the candidate. Then Marc made the same campaign speech, but again it was the man, not the words, that mattered."

In 1947 the New York State legislature passed the Wilson-Paula law prohibiting any candidate not enrolled in a political party from running in that party primary without the official approval of the party's county executive committee or other designated officers. This kept Marcantonio from entering himself in either or both of the major parties' primaries as he had done in the past. He was, nevertheless, reelected in 1948 on the American Labor Party ticket alone by a majority of 5,067, in the face of high-powered and virulent campaigns by the Democratic and Republican organizations.

Marcantonio's opposition in the 81st Congress to both major parties on such fundamental issues as foreign policy, labor relations and civil liberties had become so outstanding that extraordinary measures were taken to prevent his reelection. A three party coalition of the Democratic, Republican and Liberal parties, supported by every major newspaper in New York City, backed a single candidate against him. The New York Times, for example, ran a series of editorials on three successive days urging his defeat. Nothwithstanding this concentration of forces Marcantonio won over 40% of the votes in the 18th congressional district, exceeding the Democratic vote for his opponent by 10,880, the Republican by 17,065, and the Liberal by 30,892. The combination was, however, sufficient to defeat him by 13,353.

After his defeat he maintained his two neighborhood offices. Thousands came to see him every year just as they had when he was their elected Representative. To his neighbors he was still "the Congressman" -- the man everyone called Marc -- close to their problems, ready to help them as lawyer and advisor, warm and understanding friend.

During this period, as an individual and as a leader of the American Labor Party, his main concern was what it had been in Congress to secure world peace. In a speech delivered in 1952, during the presidential election campaign, he said:

"Tragically, after 27 months of killing in Korea, with 119,000 American casualties, some of us accept the Korean conflict as we do the flowing of the Hudson River. After 14 months of talk at Panmunjom some have come to feel that this so-called "police action" or "little war" is something with which we can live. They have forgotten that war in our time is like cancer if it is not stopped it spreads. If this Korean war is not stopped now, it too will spread.

The overwhelming majority of Americans, no matter how they are divided on other issues, are united on the objective of cease fire in Korea.

The resolving of every other issue, civil rights, labor, civil liberties, agriculture, the economic well-being of the American people, depends on cease fire in Korea."

Marcantonio was among the first in our country to call for acceptance of the resolution presented to the United Nations in January, 1951, by the delegation from India, as a solution for the Korean conflict.

He directed the energies of the American Labor Party in a many-sided effort to bring pressure on Washington to negotiate a truce and then settle the one remaining question, the return of war prisoners, without further bloodshed. Thousands of posters appeared in the streets of New York with the slogan "The Best Defense of America is Peace with China." Leaflets asking support for the proposal of Senator Johnson of Colorado, which called on the United Nations to seek an armistice, were widely distributed. The American Labor Party conducted a "peace ballot," obtaining the signatures of tens of thousands of New Yorkers to a petition urging a cease fire in Korea.

While peace was his major interest Marcantonio and the A.L.P. acted on many other issues. Noteworthy were the intense though unsuccessful fight to halt the "legal" lynching of Willie McGee, executed in Mississippi on a charge of rape, and continuation of the long struggle to win greater representation for the Negro people in public office at all levels.

In 1950 the American Labor Party nominated the first Negro candidate for United States Senator from New York. In 1951 Marcantonio placed in nomination the first Negro to be designated for the post of Borough President of Manhattan. This then became the office on which the Negro people concentrated their efforts for a breakthrough in New York City. In 1953 all parties named Negroes for the position, and the first Negro Borough President of Manhattan was elected in that year.

But despite the New York State vote of 509,559 for Henry Wallace in the 1948 presidential election, and the impressive tally of 356,626 for Marcantonio in the 1949 New York City Mayoralty campaign, many began to question the feasibility of independent political action by a third party. This became especially true when the earlier American Labor Party policy of backing some major party candidates for local or national office was no longer practicable, either because the nominees of the Democratic and Republican parties would not accept minimum planks of the A.L.P. or because they were not permitted to accept its endorsement.

In 1952 many independent voters felt it might be necessary to support what Marcantonio called "the alleged lesser evil." In a series of debates with I. F. Stone in the New York Daily Compass, and in a pamphlet "The Other Evil," published during the last weeks of the campaign, Marcantonio vigorously upheld the need for a third party. He said:

"... [A vote for the Progressive Party in 1952] is a vote as valuable as that cast for the Liberty Party in 1840 against slavery, and for the Free Soil Party in 1848 and 1852 against extension of slavery. It is a vote similar to the one that made up the one million votes for Eugene V. Debs in 1920, which in turn led to the four million votes for LaFollette in 1924 and for victory for Roosevelt in 1932.

Great causes were never won by sacrificing a real fight and substituting for it the seeming lesser evil...

In the New York Mayoralty race of 1953 a considerable section of the American Labor Party leadership opposed, at preconvention meetings, the nomination of an independent candidate for mayor. Marcantonio argued for a full slate of A.L.P. candidates. His position finally won the almost unanimous vote of the delegates at a party convention which chose American Labor Party nominees for all citywide offices.

As the campaign progressed it became clear that there was still a fundamental divergence of opinion between Marcantonio and many other leaders of his party on the question of full independent political action. Division on this basic question weakened support for the ticket and lessened the effectiveness of the campaign. After the election, in November 1953, Marcantonio resigned from the American Labor Party. In resigning he said, in part:

"I shall continue to strive as an independent for the things for which I have striven so hard. I shall continue to do so as an independent endeavoring for the political realignment which is inevitable. It is as inevitable as the failure of the Republican and Democrat foreign policy and the economy that is based upon it." In the early months of 1954 Marcantonio began to canvass opinion in his district and by spring he had decided he could run successfully for his former congressional seat, even though a coalition against him remained in force. In June he announced his candidacy as an independent. On Monday, August 9 when, hurrying to his office, he died of a sudden heart attack, he had on his desk the first stack of nominating petitions with which he was to open the actual campaign for his reelection to Congress in November.

Reporting his death the World-Telegram and Sun which had opposed him in 1950, indicated the probability of his victory in 1954. It said, in part:

"Death claimed the fiery little lawyer-politician as he was planning a campaign to regain the Congressional post from which he was ousted in 1950.

There had been signs of a rift in the Democratic-Republican coalition and observers saw a good chance that Mr. Marcantonio could succeed."

His death elicited extraordinary tributes from former associates and political opponents in Congress, as well as from many other public figures. Expressions of regard by Representatives of both parties appear in the Congressional Record of Tuesday, August 10, 1954.

Congressman John A. Blatnik, (D. Minnesota) said:

" ... . Many Members of this body have disagreed with the political principles held by Vito Marcantonio. However, I am sure that of those who have known him including those who disagreed with him most strongly will all admit that he was a most honest, courageous, sincere and warm-hearted person who served his constituents well in the Halls of Congress.

During the 80th and 81st Congress I came to know Marc very well. I liked him personally very much, and I respected him for his courage and for his willingness to stand up on an issue even when he stood alone. It is always a simple matter to take a position when one is part of the majority, but it takes real conviction to stand up and be counted when you are by yourself or with only a small minority. Vito Marcantonio was a man of such convictions who never hesitated to fight for that in which he believed ....

Vito Marcantonio was a real friend of mankind who always fought for the underdog. Few Members of this distinguished body were his equal as a parliamentarian and floor strategist .... He fought the good fight and did it well."

Congressman Emanuel J. Celler (D. New York) said:

"One may have disagreed with him but one could never find any fault with his method of disagreement. He was a Member of this House who always fought hard for what he deemed right. He always fought fair. He had great courage and determination, a determination as firm as a rock you hold in your hand and a courage as fierce as lightning. He brought to bear upon his services in this House erudition, keen intelligence, hard work, and what to him was a sincerity of purpose .... He ever stood for the preservation of fundamental liberties, and, using the words of our distinguished Chaplain this morning, he always sought the enhancement of human rights and human welfare."

Congressman Herman R. Eberharter, (D. Pennsylvania) said:

"... Of his many sterling attributes, what impressed me most in my personal contacts with him was his true concern for the oppressed, for those who were among the less fortunate, his ever-ready sympathy for the poor and downtrodden.

I believe that he was possessed of a good heart and a pure soul, and our memory of him, as we saw him in action on the floor of this House will be to many of us an inspiration, for without doubt he possessed exceptional ability coupled with immense strength of character..."

Congressman Clare Hoffman, (R. Michigan) said:

"He not only knew the parliamentary procedure which governed the House, but he never lacked the courage to use that knowledge to further the legislative program to which he adhered.

He was so far to the left that I could not go along with his views. Perhaps I was too far to the right. However that may be, no Member of the House, so far as I know, ever doubted his sincerity, ever failed to recognize his ability or his effectiveness.

Our colleague served the people of his district vigorously, consistently, and sincerely."

Congressman Eugene J. Keogh, (D. New York) said:

"... Mr. Speaker, while one might disagree with his philosophy of government, all who observed him and served with him had to respect the indefatigability and application to duty of our late colleague, Vito Marcantonio, whose death occurred under such tragic circumstances. He was often alone on the floor of the House, but his sudden death was a shock to us all. He worked hard and he lived hard, and literally died while at work ...

Congressman Arthur Klein, (D. New York) said:

"...Mr. Speaker, I am sorry that I am somewhat overcome by emotion, but what I really wanted to say was that 'Marc' was my friend, even though some people thought it was politically unwise to admit such friendship because of his political views. I differed with him many times in the past. I said on many occasions in speaking about him during his lifetime that I would undoubtedly disagree with him in the future. I cannot say that any more. As the gentleman from New York [Mr. Celler] pointed out, when he thought he was right there was no way of changing his views. He was consistent, he was hard working, and represented his constituents ably. Many of us will miss him. I know that every Member of this House who knew him respected him and liked him, although I suppose not many will get up here and say so. No one can find fault with his personal life, even though we disagreed with him politically..."

Congressman Eugene J. McCarthy, (D. Minnesota) said:

"Mr. Speaker, I would like to join with my colleagues in saying a word in regard to the gentleman from New York, concerning whose death we have just received notice. I think most of us know that on many occasions his name was made a kind of byword; the fact that one had voted with him was used as argument that one was unfit to serve in the Congress. I knew him during only one term in this Congress, and I judge him only by his actions on the floor of this House and by things he said while I was a Member here with him. And I say quite frankly that never did he support anything on the floor of this House or advocate anything which any good American allowing for the great differences of opinion among Americans, might not have advocated and any Christian might not have advocated..."

Congressman Abraham J. Multer, (D. New York) said:

"Mr. Speaker, many of us had our differences with our late colleague, Vito Marcantonio. Many on my side of the aisle, when he first came here in 1934, having been elected to this House as a Republican, members of my party, differed with him politically. I did, too. Later when he led the American Labor Party, many of us on both sides of the aisle differed with him politically. But he was truly a good American. Despite his differences politically with us, he was always honest in his convictions. He was fair in his political warfare. As a man, we respected him in life and it is fitting that we pay tribute to his memory today.

There were few who were as good parliamentarians in this House as was Congressman Marcantonio when he was with us. But, knowing all of the intricacies of parliamentary law, he never took unfair advantage of any one; he always gave due notice of what he intended to do, and when he gave his word it was his bond."

Marcantonio would have valued even more the silent tributes by the endless stream of anonymous mourners who came for three days to pay their last respects to him in the small neighborhood funeral chapel. For, as he said in his memorial to La guardia a few years before:

"His funeral was attended by the great in all walks of life. However, that was not what impressed me. The line of thousands upon thousands of common people who came to pay their respects ... was the most impressive tribute .... The people who stood in line were workers, storekeepers and of the professions. They were New York City."

THE PRESENT VOLUME IS, in a sense, a partial political autobiography. The material presented here has been chosen from the exceptional number of arguments, debates and comments Congressman Marcantonio made on the floor of the House during his fourteen years as a Member, and from the radio addresses, public speeches, letters and other documents he thought important and relevant enough to have inserted in the Congressional Record.

There is, therefore, no material included from the years before Marcantonio's first election to Congress in 1934, and none from even such major non-Congressional activities as his New York City Mayoralty campaign of 1949. Nevertheless these pages do, we believe, give a comprehensive picture of his political philosophy and his stand on the important issues which faced the people of the United States from 1934 to 1950. To indicate the nature of some of Marcantonio's work during the last four years of his life there are, in the appendix, substantial excerpts from four of his legal cases.

A passionate concern for the dignity and well being of man and an unabashed and genuine patriotism are evident in Marcantonio's speeches from his earliest term in Congress to his latest. The very first words which appear in the RECORD on February 19, 1935, are an indignant inquiry, addressed to a speaker who wished to reduce immigration by forbidding the extra-quota admission of resident aliens' wives and minor children:

"Does the gentleman believe it is wrong for families to be reunited, and unAmerican and detrimental to the economic welfare of this Nation?"

And sixteen years later Marcantonio reaffirmed his fundamental faith that no inhuman policy could be good for America, saying:

"the difference between me and those who want to repress people is that I have faith and confidence in the intelligence of the American people .... Those who are against them say they want this kind of repressive legislation."

This tireless concern for human rights and American democratic traditions was expressed on many different issues in many different ways. But it is possible to see Marcantonio's work in Congress as falling into three more or less homogeneous periods, each with its own predominant central problems. These roughly coincide with the prewar, war, and postwar years of his congressional service.

DURING THE PRE-WAR DEPRESSION YEARS OF 1935-1940 Marcantonio's major preoccupation was, of course, welfare, the economic needs of the one-third of the nation which was ill-fed, ill-housed and ill-clothed.

Here as always he showed an unusual ability to present a long-range program of sweeping fundamental reform without ever losing sight of the comparatively small immediate gains which might be won through persistent day by day demand. His farsighted plan to meet the needs of the unemployed, his strong support of the Frazier-Lundeen social security bill, and his opposition to "placing the burden of caring for the poor on the shoulders of the poor" were all integrated with his pressure for increased W.P.A. and relief appropriations, additional housing, and enforcement of minimum labor standards.

He was also most vigilant in guarding against measures which threatened to deprive those on relief of their right to organize or to engage in political activity in defense of their economic interests. He characterized an amendment to the Hatch Act, which would have barred W.P.A. workers from participation in politics, as "a step in the direction of government by the rich and well-born" and repeatedly defended such organizations of the unemployed as the Workers Alliance.

The use of "the red herring... to conceal the lack of pork chops" was a frequent target of his scathing criticism. Effective examples are his defense of the National Youth Congress and the Federal Music Project. In the spring of 1940 the Project had arranged for participation by young musicians from its rolls in an orchestral tour of South America, to be financed almost entirely by private sponsors and led by the renowned conductor, Leopold Stokowski. Although only $3,500 was to be spent by the Project itself for incidental costs in the selection of those who were to comprise the orchestra, several Congressmen made an attempt to have the entire appropriation for the Music Project unfavorably reconsidered because of its participation in "such subversive activities" as the tour. Marcantonio ironically remarked:

"I want to say the gentleman is absolutely correct with regard to Stokowski and alien subversive activities. What does his orchestra play? Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner, Verdi absolutely alien and subversive ... "

The bitter competition for jobs during the '30s made a climate of opinion in which it was easy to attack the foreign born, and many a demagogue posed as a friend of labor in sponsoring legislation to bar resident aliens from work relief and subsidized housing projects.

Marcantonio fought these demagogues with a variety of weapons. Sometimes he used logic, analyzing such attacks on the alien worker and showing them to be part of a strategy aimed at the organization of labor and at all American workers. Sometimes he used ridicule, as in his sarcastic comment on a bill to prevent non-citizens being elected to union office:

"I do not believe the amendment goes far enough. I believe... we should restrict leadership of American unions to the descendants of those who came over on the Mayflower." (Laughter and applause)

It is not surprising that the son of Italian immigrants, whose father was a carpenter, should have realized the identity of interest between native born and foreign born workers. But it is, perhaps, surprising that this son of the city streets, who had lived his entire life in East Harlem, should have been equally aware of the unity of interests between farmers and workers.

In 1935, during Marcantonio's first term in Congress, spokesmen for organized labor, including William Green, President of the American Federation of Labor, opposed a bill to prevent foreclosure of family farms by refinancing mortgages at lower interest rates, on the grounds that this would lead to inflation and thus lower real wages. Many of the urban pro-labor Members of the House in arguing against the bill, cited a letter sent to all Congressmen by Mr. Green. But the junior Member from New York supported the farm relief proposal with a clear statement of the need for farmer-worker unity. After speaking of his own pro-labor voting record he concluded:

"I have followed Mr. Green on matters of labor legislation when I felt that his position was in the best interests of the American workers; but when Mr. Green attempts to throw the weight of the organized workers of America on the side of the Liberty League and the Economy League and other reactionaries who are opposed to this bill, then I refuse to follow Mr. Green's leadership and shall vote my conscience ... "

During his second term in Congress Marcantonio urged the same truth of the need for farmer-worker unity from another angle in his successful appeal to Representatives from the farm areas for their support of a city slum clearance project.

This independence of approach quickly won a degree of interest from his colleagues not often accorded to a freshman Congressman. For example, in June 1935 Marcantonio noticed that a Rear Admiral had an article in the Washington Herald over a byline which gave his name and rank without including the required statement that the views expressed were not those of the United States Navy. When he brought this to the attention of the House the following discussion took place.

Mr. Marcantonio: "... the Navy Department should not permit admirals of the United States to violate the regulations and go around making jingoistic statements advocating war with a friendly nation, a nation we have recognized. I think the Navy Department should take action and discipline this admiral, otherwise we shall have set a vicious precedent. If it had been an enlisted man who had violated the regulations, he would have been disciplined ... (Applause)

Mr. Vinson: [Georgia] The gentleman has no apprehension that the Navy Department will not require the admirals as well as enlisted men to live up to its rules and regulations?

Mr. Marcantonio: They have to show me.

Mr. Vinson: Well, suppose we cross that bridge when we come to it.

Mr. Marcantonio: I am going to cross that bridge when I come to it, and the date is on Monday, because I am going to call on the Navy Department and see whether or not they have taken any disciplinary action in this matter."

When Marcantonio returned to take his seat in the 76th Congress in 1939 he found in existence the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities, then better known by the name of its chairman as the Dies Committee, and he soon became one of its leading opponents. Several of his speeches on the committee are included in the text.

Another important fight Marcantonio made in these prewar years was the one against the Hobbs anti-alien bill, which he called the "concentration camp" bill. This was defeated in the Senate, but was reintroduced into the House in several succeeding Congresses, and Marcantonio continued to campaign against it successfully until similar legislation was finally passed in 1950 by the 81St Congress.

In 1939 and 1940 Marcantonio resisted every step which seemed likely to involve the United States in the war in Europe. On July 9, 1940, he said:

"Our entry into it will bring no gain to the American people, but only the loss of the lives of American youth and of our free institutions ... . I am not a pacifist, I am willing to fight for the defense of my country and in any war in which the interests of our American people are involved. The present war is no such war and I am therefore resolved not only to oppose our entry into it but to warn my fellow countrymen against that scheme of things which will make our entry unavoidable."

The alien registration law which required the fingerprinting of non citizens., the proposal for peacetime conscription, and efforts to deprive "labor of its economic and social rights by the ripping up of labor's magna charta, the National Labor Relations law," all strengthened Marcantonio's determination to preserve American neutrality in the Congressional session of 1940-41.

During the summer of 1941, however, he examined new factors which entered the international situation, and came to the conclusion that these had changed the character of the war. In October 1941, after much discussion with his constituents, he made a definitive analysis of the change in a speech on the floor of the House. Here he said:

"What are the reasons which lead me to believe that a war which was predominantly imperialist has become essentially a war of national defense for the people of the United States?

The first reason is one of geography. A look at the map will demonstrate that a conquered Soviet Union would place a Nazi military bridgehead within a rowboat distance of our own northwestern shores, Alaska .... Secondly, in the world of 1940 and the early part of 1941 Hitler could not move against the Western Hemisphere. We were not in military danger as long as Hitler had on his eastern boundary a powerful well-armed Soviet Union. The defense interests of the United States and the Soviet Union were interdependent. The existence of a Soviet Union depended on an unconquered United States. The existence of the United States depended on an unconquered Soviet Union. A Hitler conquest of either made a Hitler conquest of the other almost a certainty.

In supporting these very measures which I have opposed in the past, I am supporting them for the same reasons which motivated my opposition, namely defense of our nation and its liberties .... The character of the war has changed and I have no other consistent course to follow but to support a war of defense as vigorously as I opposed a war of imperialist aggression."

AFTER WE WERE ATTACKED AT PEARL HARBOR, Marcantonio was most effective in winning Congressional approval for vital war measures. The organizational role he played from 1942 to 1945 in mustering support for F.E.P.C. [Fair Employment Practices Committee], anti-poll tax bills and Federal soldier vote legislation, for example, is difficult to illustrate by direct quotation but it is indicated by the comments of colleagues and reporters.

Although Marcantonio once remarked, "I would like to make a political speech [from the floor of this House] but realizing that I am a one-man party here I find myself at a terrific disadvantage," yet he was an unofficially acknowledged leader of the most advanced group of President Roosevelt's supporters there during the war.

The 1944 Harper's article, referred to previously, said:

"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."

The Collier's article, quoted earlier, spoke of the important part Marcantonio had taken as a leader in supporting the most progressive New Deal legislation in the House, and also explained the lack of official recognition in terms of Committee appointments.

"In Congress, Mr. Marcantonio has invited and received the deep disregard of all Southern Members. His fight to abolish poll taxes, to strengthen the Fair Employment Practices Committee and to enact tough anti-lynch legislation has made him so many enemies.

In 1943, the House Committee on Committees designated Mr. Marcantonio for the Judiciary Committee ... With one accord, the Southern members plus a large number of Northern Democrats ... vetoed that designation and Mr. Marcantonio was rejected..."

Perhaps even more telling and certainly more interesting are the many emphatic statements made in the heat of debate by angry colleagues giving Marcantonio full credit or blame for specific pieces of legislation, particularly civil rights measures.

On October 12, 1942, when Marcantonio had succeeded in forcing the first anti-poll tax bill on to the floor of the House, Congressman Cox of Georgia who had been leading the opposition, said:

"Let me make one statement, and to you, the gentleman from New York [Mr. Marcantonio], I salute you, sir. I salute you for having at least attained that burning ambition which you carry in your soul of becoming for one moment in your life the master of this House. You bring it to you, Sir, on its knee and, again, I congratulate you."

On December 14, 1943, Congressman Rankin of Mississippi objected to:

"the gentleman from New York [Mr. Marcantonio] backing up this rump organization known as the Fair Employment Practice Committee that is harassing the white people of the Southern States."

Four days later in the course of debate on a federal soldier vote bill Congressman Rankin said:

"Mr. Speaker, on yesterday, the gentleman from New York [Mr. Marcantonio] in his attack on southern Democrats and the Southern States generally, accused me of leading the Republicans. I do not know whether any Republicans are following my leadership or not, but I do know the Democrats are not following the gentleman from New York .... He does not represent any real Democrats."

On the same day Congressman Hoffman of Michigan (R.) discussed the situation in which New Dealers, with some Republicans, found themselves opposing a bipartisan coalition of conservative Democrats and Republicans. He said that he, at least, would never accept Marcantonio's leadership:

"Now, the gentleman from New York [Mr. Marcantonio] last night, I think it was, I noticed it in the RECORD said I was a 'Rankin Republican.' ... I will say this, at least, if I am a Rankin Republican, at least there are two of us, which is one more than the party which the gentleman represents has in Washington. I will say another thing, we have been talking a long time, some of us have, some people in this country, about a coalition. Now the parties are beginning to line up. It is no longer, as has been said here so often, Republicans against Democrats or Democrats against Republicans.

There has been a sort of New Deal, a New Deal Party which has taken over the Democratic Party, and perhaps there has been some disagreement on our side along certain lines .... Now if the time comes when I must make my choice, and I think it has, as between Democrats from the South, West, or the North, who believe in the Old Constitution and in the customs and practices of America as we have known them for the last one hundred and sixty-odd years, if that day comes when I must make a choice to go along with those men or to join with that group of new dealers or bureaucrats and wild, woolly and fuzzy headed individuals or whatever you want to call them, professors, then I will not hesitate one minute, not one minute, I will go with the Democrats who believe in the Constitution if I am forced to make a choice. And if I am forced to choose, as the gentleman seems to think I am, between the gentleman from Mississippi [Mr. Rankin] and the gentleman from New York [Mr. Marcantonio] much as I hate to make the choice, great as my grief may be, weeping as I make that choice, I will go with the man from Tupelo, the gentleman from Mississippi [Mr. Rankin]."

Most surprising of all, the Senate also took cognizance of the situation in which a "Member of the House of Representatives who is neither a Democrat nor a Republican" had assumed leadership, for the anti-poll tax fight, of the majority forces in the lower house.

On May 9, 1944, the anti poll tax bill, which had passed the House, was presented on the floor of the Senate, and Senator Connally of Texas challenged Senator Mead of New York, who was sponsoring it, to name the author of the House bill. When Senator Mead replied: "There were several, perhaps," Senator Connally persisted: "Marcantonio was one." Senator Mead answered: "And there were several others." Senator Connally then exclaimed:

"...Marcantonio! The rules of the Senate as to comity between the two bodies of the Congress prohibit me from discussing any individual members of the House. However, I cannot forget the part a similar name played in Roman history."

Two days later on May 11, 1944, Senator Bankhead of Alabama took the floor to prove that Congressman Marcantonio was really responsible for the passage of an anti-poll tax bill in the House of Representatives. The summary description which follows is one of the most explicit statements to be found in the Congressional Record of "the leadership of Mr. Marcantonio" in organizing support for civil rights legislation. Senator Bankhead said:

"Yesterday a good deal was said about the authorship of the pending bill. It was directly charged by Senators on the floor of the Senate that a man by the name of Vito Marcantonio, of New York, was the author of the bill. The junior Senator from New York [Mr. Mead] apparently did not want him to have that position so he insisted that three or four Representatives from the State of New York had introduced the bill .... Yesterday I telephoned the Clerk of the House of Representatives and was informed that Mr. Marcantonio was the first one to introduce the bill. There were others who subsequently introduced similar bills.

I assume that other Members of the House of Representatives and they were chiefly from the State of New York wished to follow the leadership of Mr. Marcantonio, so they proceeded to obtain copies of his bill and introduced it in their own names.

A little later this same Member of the House of Representatives, who is neither a Democrat nor a Republican, in fact, I do not know what his politics may be, Mr. Marcantonio, filed a petition with the Clerk of the House of Representatives to require the Committee, under the House rules, to report the bill. When he obtained a sufficient number of signers to the petition of discharge, he made a motion to discharge the Rules Committee and to send the bill to the calendar.

The result of that situation is that it is clearly shown that Mr. Marcantonio, and I am not criticizing him, he had the right to do what he did, is the leader of this program, this bill, this measure, this assault, as we call it, upon the Constitution of our Country. The thing that is surprising to me is that he found so many men who would follow his leadership on a constitutional question."

Senator McKellar of Tennessee then added:

"Yesterday I called attention to the fact that the bill was passed by the House, word for word, line for line, with the dotting of 'i's' and the crossing of 't's' all the way through just as Mr. Marcantonio had written it."

On May 15, 1944 Senator Barkley of Kentucky, in an unsuccessful attempt to get a vote on the anti-poll tax bill, introduced a motion to close the debate. He concluded:

"Much has been said here in criticism and in sarcasm regarding the name of the author of the bill, and regarding the organizations which support it. Mr. President, I hope that no Senator will vote, either on the motion which I have made to close debate, or ... on the bill itself, because of any prejudice against anyone who has a name which does not meet his particular favor, or against any organization which he does not happen to like.

Two years later in 1946, when F.E.P.C. legislation was passed in the lower House and presented to the Senate, Senator Bankhead again made Marcantonio his target.

"... Mr. President, the next development [after the first wartime executive order for F.E.P.C.] was the introduction of a bill in the House of Representatives by Representative Marcantonio.

He is not a Democrat; he is not a Republican. I do not know whether he is a Socialist. Of late, since the American Labor Party was organized, he has belonged to it. I do not know what his record was prior to that time. However, he is the author of the first legislative bill which was introduced on this subject in the Congress of the United States. It is surprising to see so many able strong Members of the Congress, both in the House of Representatives and in the Senate, following the leadership of Mr. Marcantonio on this subject.

Now let us consider the record. Mr. Marcantonio introduced his bill on July 20, 1942. It is House Bill 7412. I ask unanimous consent that it may be printed at this point in the RECORD as a part of my remarks.

[The Bill in full was then included in the RECORD.] ... Mr. President, I wish to call attention to the similarity between Senate Bill 101 and the Marcantonio Bill. I ask students of the subject to compare section 1 of the Marcantonio Bill with the corresponding section of the pending bill. I ask them to compare section 3 of the pending bill, Senate Bill 101, which defines unfair employment practices, with section 3 of the Marcantonio Bill.

[Senator Bankhead continued with a series of similar comparisons between 7 more sections of the two bills.]

Then following the introduction of Mr. Marcantonio's Bill, Mr. Scanlon introduced his Bill [in the House]. It is exactly like the one we are now considering, Senate Bill 101. Mr. Scanlon was a Democrat.

Then along came Mr. Dawson. On the day after Mr. Scanlon introduced his Bill, Mr. Dawson introduced exactly the same Bill. He is a Democrat from Illinois.

Then came Mr. LaFollette. On the same day he introduced House Bill 4005. He is a Member of the House of Representatives and is a Republican from the State of Indiana. The Bill he introduced follows the real pattern in fashion set in the Marcantonio Bill.

Then came the first Chavez Bill on June 23, 1944 .... That Bill was the one which was introduced by the Senator from New Mexico [Mr. Chavez] and other Senators, the same authors as those of the pending Bill [Senate Bill 101] ....

Mr. President, the authors of those Bills comprise about six Republicans and about six Democrats. It looks as though there were a scramble of Representatives to secure a good position on this subject ... ."

Marcantonio's effectiveness in winning such backing long remained vivid in the memory of Congress. In 1950, during the brief debate on the McCarrart Bill, Congressman Carroll of Colorado, one of the 20 who voted against it, disassociated himself from Marcantonio who was leading the fight against the bill. Congressman Carroll said:

"... The voting record of not only myself but other Members of the Democratic Party of the North and West with reference to international affairs is, on every important issue, separate and distinct and in opposition to the voting record of the gentleman from New York [Mr. Marcantonio]."

Congressman Cohner of Mississippi objected:

"if we are going to make comparisons and count noses, when the philosophy of the gentleman from New York [Mr. Marcantonio] was being opposed, before it was popular to do so, and when there was a little group in this House that consistently followed him, it was not the southern group ... "

One of the reasons Marcantonio was able to achieve the organization of a bloc in support of key progressive legislation during the war years of 1942-45 was his willingness to allow more conservative colleagues the major part in House debates. Thus during the years of his greatest influence in Congress we find him speaking there less than at any other period.

The liberal attitude which had generally characterized the nation and the federal government during these years, and made possible the phase of Marcantonio's legislative activity just described, showed some signs of deterioration even before the war ended. With victory in Europe in sight, and President Roosevelt's death, the deterioration became more rapid. The Congressional election of 1946, in which the Republicans won a majority, saw all but a few members of the "progressive bloc" defeated. The January 11, 1947 Saturday Evening Post article "They Couldn't Purge Vito" said, considering the new Congress and Marcantonio's position there:

"... In the last and preceding sessions of Congress, he was an effective gadfly in the interest of a number of pet causes and in opposition -- often victorious -- to what he would describe as 'Fascist' - that is, anti-labor, and so on - measures. His opponents respected him as a tireless and shrewd fighter; he knew the parliamentary tricks well, and he knew how to marshal every available vote [in the House].

The energy he will expend as a gadfly will be undiminished in the new Republican Congress, but many of the liberals and the more arrogant left-wingers who formerly would vote in his phalanx now are gone. His opponents claim he cannot count definitely on more than a dozen votes now...

IN THE POST WAR CONGRESSES Marcantonio did find himself more isolated each year in his uncompromising attempts to preserve real international cooperation and aid through U.N.R.R.A. and the United Nations instead of unilateral United States action in his continuing efforts to protect the status of organized labor and to maintain and extend the wartime gains made by the Negro people; and in his lonely rear guard fight to protect the Bill of Rights against erosion by Democratic "loyalty orders," Republican "loyalty bills" and the unconstitutional power of Congressional investigating committees.

It became increasingly necessary for Marcantonio to take the floor day after day -- sometimes even two or three times in a single day -- to carry on a dogged fight for the absolute repeal of Taft-Hartley; for civil rights; against the contempt citation of witnesses who had invoked the Fifth Amendment; in opposition to aid for Chiang KaiShek and Franco.

Less than a year after the war ended, during a miners' strike, Marcantonio spoke of "the same 'lynch labor' spirit being engendered here that I witnessed at the time this House rushed through the Smith-Connally Bill" [in May, 1943] Under the guise of attacking John L. Lewis you direct your attack against the men who are engaged, and have been engaged for the better part of their lives, in the production of coal."

Two weeks later, on May 25, 1946, Marcantonio was one of the few who objected to President Truman's request for drastic emergency legislation to force the striking railroad workers back on the job. The emergency was over before the Senate acted on President Truman's proposals, but other anti-labor action was urged in the House almost immediately. Marcantonio worked energetically to defeat the Case Bill: "The purpose of this legislation" he said, "is to destroy labor's right to strike."

For the rest of his time in Congress he was out in front with a small group, striving to hold the advances won by labor since the La guardia Anti-Injunction Act.

In a speech against the Labor Management Act of 1947 -- later substantially embodied in the Taft-Hartley Act -- Marcantonio asserted: "The whole philosophy of industrial relationship based on equality of bargaining is destroyed by this legislation."

On April 27, 1949, he cautioned labor that the "promises and pledges" made in the campaign of 1948 for the repeal of Taft-Hartley were "being washed out through a series of diabolical deals and compromises." A week later he assessed the substitute measure finally enacted as constituting "Taft-Hartley all over again."

From then on, in and out of Congress, Marcantonio took every opportunity to advocate "the outright repeal of Taft-Hartley and the reinstatement of the Wagner Act," even though the climate of opinion made his stand seem almost Utopian.

It is true that in the 80th and 81st Congresses Marcantonio rarely managed to win a majority on the floor of the House, but his appeals to the conscience of his colleagues almost always rallied a few more votes, and always encouraged many groups and individuals outside Congress to demand that their Representatives act to protect the peace, freedom and welfare of the people of the United States. And he himself never lost hope. In the darkest days of his Congressional career he repeatedly expressed his faith in ultimate victory in such statements as the one he made on the Mutual Defense Assistance Pact in August, 1949:

"It is abhorrent that in the United States today one's patriotism is subjected to attack when one stands up and fights for peace.

But let us see how history has passed judgment on those who refused to follow ... the program of the thirties in Italy and Germany.

Who were the real patriots, those who said yes, and those who followed, or were the real patriots those who refused to follow and faced the firing squads and were placed in concentration camps?

We are asked to forget everything everything that brought about the last World War.

When will this insanity cease? I know -- it will stop when the American people learn the truth."

Again, in speaking on F.E.P.C. in January 1950, he said:

"We may as well face it, gentlemen, irrespective of the maneuverings that are going on in this House, the American people are going to have their way with respect to F.E.P.C. The majority of the American people want it. All attempts to negate their will will fail because on this issue more than on any other issue the American people will make themselves heard. The people will win this fight despite the Truman double talk and the maneuvers of the leaderships of the Democratic and Republican parties."

And opposing the Internal Security Act of 1950 in August, he declared:

"The day is not far off when Americans will act as they have at other periods when we have had similar situations. Remember the Alien and Sedition Acts .... The American people rose up and defeated the tyranny of those days .... They have always thrust through to keep this democracy alive".

THESE POSTWAR CONGRESSIONAL YEARS also saw a new high point in Marcantonio's efforts in behalf of the independence of Puerto Rico and the well-being of its people, both on the island and here on the mainland of the United States.

During his first term in Congress he had introduced a bill for the genuine independence of Puerto Rico. In his second term he said to the House: "Puerto Rico is part of the United States and until its status is changed it is our duty to give as much attention, as much care, as much sympathetic treatment to Puerto Rico and its problems as we do to the problems of any of the people of the United States."

Marcantonio did his best to get Congress to fulfill this duty. Time and again he urged adequate relief appropriations, enforcement of the minimum wage law, changes in the coastwise shipping laws as they affected the island, and revision of the Sugar Act to improve Puerto Rico's economic situation.

He called the attention of Congress to every evidence, great or small, of "colonialism" as it affected the Puerto Rican people, and opposed not only the government of the territory by the United States, but also "... the rough hand of certain misguided Puerto Rican leaders [which] cloaks the direction that comes from the American financial and sugar interests on the mainland."

As early as August 1939, in describing an open denial on the island of civil liberties guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, Marcantonio warned: "There is no place in America for political prisoners... When we ask ourselves: 'Can it happen here?' the Puerto Rican people can answer, 'it has happened in Puerto Rico.'"

By 1949 the demands of the Puerto Rican people for independence had reached a point which forced a congressional committee to consider the matter and in March 1950 they presented H.R. 7674, a bill for "the Puerto Rican Constitution." Marcantonio called this a "reaffirmation of the status quo in Puerto Rico under the guise of a meaningless self-government."

In his fight against H.R. 7674, Marcantonio made a complete analysis of its significance. Failing in his attempt to secure hearings on the bill in Puerto Rico, he placed in the RECORD evidence of the "profound opposition" to it by all kinds of organizations, publications and individuals on the island, most of whom were unable to attend the hearings in Washington.

ONE FURTHER ASPECT of Marcantonio's work in the House requires mention. Both friends and enemies agreed that he was altogether unsurpassed and almost unequalled in his mastery and daring application of the minutiae of House rules. Some remarks made by his congressional colleagues on his ability as a parliamentarian have already been quoted. As Congressman Celler said:

"He was one of the most skilled debaters in the Congresses he attended. He was an adept, artful parliamentarian. No one knew the rules better than he and he used that parliamentary knowledge and art with telling effect."

The RECORD contains innumerable examples of Marcantonio's use of this art. For instance, he often raised a point of order to prevent the passage of legislation tacked on to an appropriations bill; he was frequently the only one alert enough to call "no quorum" when there was an attempt to rush through some reactionary piece of legislation; he repeatedly called for the "yeas and nays" to induce Members, whose individual votes would then be recorded, to stand by their election pledges. On at least two occasions his surprise request for "an engrossed copy of the bill" on a Friday gained a two day postponement which allowed time for constituents at home to bring pressure to bear on their Representatives in Washington. In the spring of 1947 a bill for universal military training was defeated by a very narrow margin after such a delay. On March 16, 1949, the Herald Tribune headlined a Washington dispatch, "MARCANTONLO BALKS 70-GROUP AIR FORCE VOTE." It read in part:

"In the House, Representative Vito Marcantonio, American Laborite, of New York, used the parliamentary ruse of calling for reading of an 'engrossed copy' of the seventy-group bill just before the measure was to be called up for a vote. Since the bill was not in this final form and could not be so prepared until Monday, further consideration of it had to be postponed until that time under House rules. Representative Carl Vinson, Democrat, of Georgia, Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and sponsor of the Bill, said that Marcantonio was 'within his rights' in his delaying tactics but predicted that the measure would pass 'almost unanimously.' He added that the New York Representative's 'real hope and strategy' had been to get the bill recommitted so that he could add an amendment -- which he has tried to tack on to numerous other measures -- to bar racial discrimination in the armed forces and in the industries supplying their equipment..."

The RECORD also reveals many occasions when Marcantonio took the floor to explain to his colleagues complicated parliamentary maneuvers which were being used in an attempt to defeat popular legislation. He showed them how these might be counteracted. To some extent he even succeeded in popularizing his parliamentary knowledge for his constituents. The best example of this is probably his newspaper article entitled, "Truman Can Pass or Kill F.E.P.C."

WITH THE EXCEPTION of the appendix, the material in this book has all been chosen from the 206 volumes of the Congressional Record which cover Marcantonio's congressional career. Hundreds of his bills, thousands of his votes and millions of his words are printed there.

In selecting from this wealth of material we have made every effort to give as full a picture as possible of Marcantonio's activities as a Representative of the people in the 18th Congressional District and the entire United States.

There is a great preponderance of extemporaneous debate and comment in the following pages. These vividly recall Marcantonio's personality, his ability to seize the essential point at issue with extraordinary rapidity, and to express himself on it at once. A good example is the impromptu speech in which he alone, of all those present who resented Congressman Rankin's slighting reference to Congressman Celler as "a Jewish gentleman," succeeded in organizing his thoughts quickly enough to protest immediately.

There are, of course, also a number of his longer, more definitive prepared speeches included. Many of these, like the criticism of the Hobbs bill, the analysis of the United States "foreign aid" program, and the opposition to an alliance with Franco's Spain, are examples of a closely reasoned, well-knit, complete argument where the logical structure succeeds in dealing with a multiplicity of details and presenting them in a unified and apparently simple manner.

However, the informal arguments show an even more revealing picture of the processes of Marcantonio's thought than do prepared talks or documents. They illustrate the way in which he could cut through formal logic to give the real meaning and weight of the matter under consideration. His discussion of F.E.P.C. and his summation to the jury in the defense of William Patterson' are examples of his skill in clarifying the essential implications of an issue for his audience.

Marcantonio was a serious student of American history as well as of current events but his concern in speaking was always the practical impact of his knowledge and understanding upon those who heard him, whether his audience stood about him on a street corner, sat before their radio and television sets at home, or faced him on the floor of the House.

That he had a strong feeling for the judgment history would pass on contemporary questions is amply illustrated by such statements as the one with which he concluded his argument on the European Recovery Plan on March 31, 1948:

"Mr. Chairman, I realize the effort we are now making is a futile one .... I know that nothing I can say or anyone else can say here this evening will change the course of events in this House. However, in the final analysis, our efforts are not futile because we believe that judgment on this matter will not be finally rendered here today. Final judgment on this far-reaching issue will be given by time and events and the American People. So as to have the record complete, and so that the record will demonstrate that efforts have been made by some of us to preserve the peace of the world, I have offered this substitute."

He cared very little, however, for the literary quality of his speeches, or for any admiration he might win by originality or variety of expression. Thus when he found an apt and popular phrase for a program or policy like "housing with an eyedropper," or a telling historical analogy, he would use it over and over. Marcantonio never forgot the time-tested rule learned early in street speaking: first tell them what you're going to say; then say it; then tell them what you have said.

Even for those who never heard him, the stylistic disadvantage such repetition presents in reading seems slight when weighed against the effect of immediacy and personal involvement these informal talks achieve. As for those who did know him, they may well, in many of these pages, again hear the characteristic inflections of sarcasm or emphasis, and see the quick gestures with which he punctuated his speech.

There is practically no subject on which Marcantonio spoke in the House that is not represented in the selections which follow, and there is, generally, a rough proportion between the number of times he spoke on a specific topic and the number of such speeches included.

To achieve this representative quality it has been necessary to give many speeches in part rather than in full. All omissions have been indicated by the customary ... and often substantial cuts are also marked by a bracketed statement of the nature of the material omitted.

The only other changes in the text are occasional corrections in punctuation. The RECORD is, essentially, a stenographic transcript; proofs are printed immediately after each day's session and the Members then have only three hours in which to make any necessary corrections in the reports of their speeches. Often this process leaves uncorrected obvious errors in punctuation all of which was, of course, supplied by the stenographer. Where these errors seemed simply to interfere with ease of reading they have been corrected, but wherever there was a possible ambiguity of meaning they have been left unchanged. Similarly a number of verbal errors have been kept as they stand in the RECORD, and the few such corrections which appeared really necessary have been indicated by placing the changed or inserted word in [ ]. Annotations brief explanations, additions of a proper name or geographical designation, and so forth -- are also placed in brackets.

With the exception of the material on Puerto Rico, everything is arranged in chronological order. Each of the seven Congresses constitutes a chapter with a table of contents in its opening pages. The speeches, letters and bills dealing with Puerto Rico are listed in order of date in these tables of contents but the material itself will be found in a separate section immediately after the 81st Congress.

The section on Puerto Rico t