Corliss Lamont was an American socialist and humanist philosopher and advocate of various left-wing and civil liberties causes.
35 Facts About Corliss Lamont
2.
The next year Corliss Lamont began graduate studies at Columbia University, where he studied under John Dewey.
3.
Corliss Lamont taught at Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, and the New School for Social Research.
4.
Corliss Lamont became a radical in the 1930s, moved by the Great Depression.
5.
Corliss Lamont wrote a book about the Soviet Union and praised what he saw there: "The people are better dressed, food is good and plentiful, everyone seems confident, happy and full of spirit".
6.
Corliss Lamont became critical of the Soviets over time, but always thought their achievement in transforming a feudal society remarkable, even as he attacked its treatment of political dissent and lack of civil liberties.
7.
Corliss Lamont was a onetime chairman of the Friends of the Soviet Union.
8.
Corliss Lamont began his 30 years as a director of the American Civil Liberties Union in 1932.
9.
In 1936, Corliss Lamont helped found and subsidized the magazine Marxist Quarterly.
10.
Corliss Lamont wrote an introduction to the anti-Polish pamphlet Behind the Polish-Soviet Break by Alter Brody.
11.
Corliss Lamont was a key founder of the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship.
12.
Corliss Lamont served as its first chairman from 1943 to 1947.
13.
Corliss Lamont remained sympathetic to the Soviet Union well after World War II and the establishment of satellite Communist governments in Central and Eastern Europe.
14.
Corliss Lamont authored a pamphlet entitled The Myth of Soviet Aggression in which he wrote:.
15.
In 1944 Corliss Lamont wrote a preface to a book by Alter Brody that popularized the Soviet falsification of the Katyn massacre in the West.
16.
Corliss Lamont ran for the US Senate from New York, in 1952 on the American Labor ticket.
17.
Corliss Lamont received 104,702 votes and lost to Republican Irving M Ives.
18.
Judge Edward Weinfeld of the US District Court found the indictment against Corliss Lamont was faulty, but the government, rather than seek a new indictment, appealed that ruling.
19.
In 1951 and 1957, Corliss Lamont was denied a passport by the State Department, which considered his application incomplete because he refused to answer a question about membership in the Communist Party.
20.
Corliss Lamont sued the State Department in June 1957 seeking a hearing on its action.
21.
Corliss Lamont obtained his passport in June 1958 following a Supreme Court decision in another case, Kent v Dulles, and left the US for a world tour in March 1959.
22.
Corliss Lamont ran again for the US Senate from New York in 1958 on the Independent-Socialist ticket.
23.
Corliss Lamont received more than 49,000 votes out of more than 5,500,000 cast, losing to Republican Kenneth B Keating.
24.
In 1959, Corliss Lamont became an enthusiastic supporter of Fidel Castro and his revolutionary government in Cuba.
25.
Corliss Lamont won a similar lawsuit against the Central Intelligence Agency in federal court the same year.
26.
In 1979, Corliss Lamont founded Half-Moon Foundation, Inc Half-Moon Foundation was a 501 non-profit organization and was incorporated in the state of New York.
27.
Corliss Lamont was president emeritus of the American Humanist Association and in 1977 was named Humanist of the Year.
28.
In 1998, Corliss Lamont received a posthumous Distinguished Humanist Service Award from the International Humanist and Ethical Union and he was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto.
29.
In 1986, Corliss Lamont married Beth Keehner; she survived his death.
30.
Corliss Lamont died at home in Ossining, New York, on April 26,1995.
31.
Corliss Lamont funded the collection and preservation of manuscripts of American philosophers, particularly George Santayana, as well as Rockwell Kent and John Masefield.
32.
Corliss Lamont was the great-uncle of Ned Lamont, the governor of Connecticut.
33.
Corliss Lamont wrote, co-wrote, edited, or co-edited more than two dozen books and dozens of pamphlets, and wrote thousands of letters to newspapers, magazines, and journals on significant social issues during his lifelong campaign for peace and civil rights.
34.
Corliss Lamont published intimate portraits of John Dewey, John Masefield, and George Santayana.
35.
Prominent among these was the Basic Pamphlets series, privately published by Dr Corliss Lamont and sold directly by him through mail order via a local post office box in New York.