45 Facts About Jacob Javits

Jacob Koppel Javits was an American lawyer and politician from New York.

Jacob Javits graduated from the New York University School of Law and established a law practice in New York City.

Jacob Javits was elected to the US House of Representatives in 1946 and served in that body until 1954.

Jacob Javits voted for the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution but came to question Johnson's handling of the War in Vietnam.

Jacob Javits sponsored the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, which regulated defined-benefit private pensions.

In 1980, Jacob Javits lost the Republican Senate primary to Al D'Amato, who campaigned to Jacob Javits's right.

Jacob Javits died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in West Palm Beach, Florida, in 1986.

Jacob Javits was born to Jewish parents, Ida and Morris Jacob Javits.

Jacob Javits grew up in a teeming Lower East Side tenement, and when not in school, he helped his mother sell dry goods from a pushcart in the street and learned parliamentary procedure at University Settlement Society of New York.

Jacob Javits graduated in 1920 from George Washington High School, where he was president of his class.

Jacob Javits worked part-time at various jobs while he attended night school at Columbia University, then in 1923 he enrolled in the New York University Law School from which he earned his LLB in 1926.

Jacob Javits was admitted to the bar in June 1927 and joined his brother Benjamin Javits, who was nearly ten years older, as partner to form the Javits and Javits law firm.

The Jacob Javits brothers specialized in bankruptcy and minority stockholder suits and became quite successful.

In 1933, Jacob Javits married Marjorie Joan Ringling, daughter related to Alfred Thedore "Alf" Ringling, one of the Ringling brothers of the Ringling Brothers Circus fame.

Jacob Javits attained the rank of lieutenant colonel before he was discharged in 1946, and he was a recipient of the Legion of Merit and Army Commendation Ribbon.

Jacob Javits was a member of the freshman class, along with John F Kennedy of Massachusetts and Richard Nixon of California.

Jacob Javits served from 1947 to 1954, when he resigned his seat to take office as Attorney General of New York.

Always a staunch supporter of Israel, Jacob Javits served on the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs during all four of his terms and supported congressional funding for the Marshall Plan and all components of the Truman Doctrine.

In 1954, Javits ran for Attorney General of New York against a well-known and well-funded opponent, Franklin D Roosevelt Jr.

Jacob Javits's vote-getting abilities carried the day, and he was the only Republican to win a statewide office that year.

In 1956, Javits ran for US Senator from New York to succeed the retiring incumbent Democrat Herbert H Lehman.

Jacob Javits went on to defeat Wagner by nearly half a million votes.

Jacob Javits's wife had no interest in living in Washington, DC, which she considered a boring backwater and so for over two decades Javits commuted between New York and Washington nearly every week to visit his "other" family and conduct local political business.

Jacob Javits voted in favor of the Civil Rights Acts of 1957,1960,1964, and 1968, as well as the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the confirmation of Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court of the United States.

Jacob Javits initially backed Johnson during the early years of America's involvement in the Vietnam War and supported, for example, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964 but later turned against it.

Also in 1964, Jacob Javits joined David Rockefeller to launch the non-profit International Executive Service Corps, which was established to help bring about prosperity and stability in developing nations through the growth of private enterprise.

In 1966, along with two other Republican senators and five Republican representatives, Jacob Javits signed a telegram sent to Georgia Governor Carl Sanders regarding the Georgia legislature's refusal to seat the recently elected Julian Bond in their state House of Representatives.

In 1971, Jacob Javits appointed Paulette Desell as the Senate's first female page.

Increasingly concerned about the erosion of congressional authority in foreign affairs, Jacob Javits sponsored the War Powers Resolution in 1973, which limited to 60 days a president's ability to send American armed forces into combat without congressional approval.

Jacob Javits's position was unpopular among his constituency, and his re-election in Watergate-tainted 1974 elections over Ramsey Clark was by fewer than 400,000 votes, a third of his 1968 margin of victory.

Jacob Javits served until 1981; his 1979 diagnosis with ALS led to a 1980 primary challenge by the comparatively lesser-known Long Island Republican county official Al D'Amato, who received 323,468 primary votes to Jacob Javits's 257,433.

Jacob Javits died of ALS in West Palm Beach, Florida, at age 81 on March 7,1986.

Jacob Javits was predeceased by his brother, who died in 1973.

Jacob Javits's nephew, Eric M Javits, was a diplomat who served as the US Representative to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and the Conference on Disarmament.

Jacob Javits is interred at Linden Hill Jewish Cemetery in Queens, New York.

Jacob Javits used his office to advance ideas that furthered the policies even of Democratic presidents.

Jacob Javits intended his idea to complement President John F Kennedy's Alliance for Progress.

One scoring method found Jacob Javits to be the most liberal Republican to serve in either chamber of Congress between 1937 and 2002.

From 1973 to 1978, GovTrack ranked Jacob Javits as being to the left of noted Democrats like Hubert Humphrey, George McGovern, Edmund Muskie and Gaylord Nelson.

Jacob Javits saw himself as being a descendant of the traditional Republicanism of Alexander Hamilton, Henry Clay, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, all of whom supported a strong federal government.

Jacob Javits sponsored the first African-American Senate page in 1965 and the first female page in 1971.

Jacob Javits's liberalism was such that he tended to receive support from traditionally-Democratic voters, with many Republicans defecting to support the Conservative Party of New York.

Jacob Javits played a major role in legislation protecting pensioners, as well as in the passage of the War Powers Act; he led the effort to get the Jacob Javits-Wagner-O'Day Act passed.

Jacob Javits reached the position of Ranking Minority Member on the Committee on Foreign Relations while he accrured greater seniority than any New York Senator before or since.

New York City's sprawling Jacob Javits Center was named in his honor in 1986, as is a playground at the southwestern edge of Fort Tryon Park.