Norman Mattoon Thomas was an American Presbyterian minister who achieved fame as a socialist, pacifist, and six-time presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America.
29 Facts About Norman Thomas
2.
The summer after he graduated from high school his father accepted a pastorate at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, which allowed Norman Thomas to attend Bucknell University.
3.
Norman Thomas left Bucknell after one year to attend Princeton University, the beneficiary of the largesse of a wealthy uncle by marriage.
4.
Norman Thomas graduated from the seminary and was ordained as a Presbyterian minister in 1911.
5.
Union Theological Seminary had been at that time a center of the Social Gospel movement and liberal politics, and as a minister, Norman Thomas preached against American participation in the First World War.
6.
When church funding of the American Parish's social programs was stopped, Norman Thomas resigned his pastorate.
7.
When SPA leader Morris Hillquit made his campaign for mayor of New York in 1917 on an antiwar platform, Norman Thomas wrote to him expressing his good wishes.
8.
Norman Thomas was the secretary of the pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation even before the war.
9.
Together with Devere Allen, Norman Thomas helped to make The World Tomorrow the leading voice of liberal Christian social activism of its day.
10.
In 1921, Norman Thomas moved to secular journalism when he was employed as associate editor of The Nation magazine.
11.
Norman Thomas frequently spoke on the difference between socialism, the movement he represented, and communism and revolutionary Marxism.
12.
In 1937, Norman Thomas returned from Europe determined to restore order in the Socialist Party.
13.
Norman Thomas was initially as outspoken in opposing the Second World War as he had been with regard to the First World War.
14.
Norman Thomas said that the survival of the British Empire was not vital to the security of the United States, but added that he favored helping Britain to defend herself against aggression.
15.
Norman Thomas later wrote self-critically that he had "overemphasized both the sense in which it was a continuance of World War I and the capacity of nonfascist Europe to resist the Nazis".
16.
Norman Thomas was one of the few public figures to oppose President Roosevelt's incarceration of Japanese Americans following the attack on Pearl Harbor.
17.
Norman Thomas accused the ACLU of "dereliction of duty" when the organization supported the forced mass removal and incarceration.
18.
Norman Thomas campaigned against racial segregation, environmental depletion, and anti-labor laws and practices, and in favor of opening the United States to Jewish victims of Nazi persecution in the 1930s.
19.
Norman Thomas deplored the secular objection to birth control because it originated from "racial and national" group-think.
20.
Norman Thomas was very critical of Zionism and of Israel's policies toward the Arabs in the postwar years and often collaborated with the American Council for Judaism.
21.
At the event Norman Thomas called for a cease-fire in Vietnam and read birthday telegrams from Hubert Humphrey, Earl Warren, and Martin Luther King Jr.
22.
Norman Thomas received a check for $17,500 in donations from supporters.
23.
In 1966, the conservative journalist and writer William F Buckley, Jr chose Thomas to be the third guest on Buckley's new television interview show, Firing Line.
24.
In 1968, Norman Thomas signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.
25.
Also in 1966, Thomas traveled to the Dominican Republic along with future Congressman Allard K Lowenstein to observe that country's general election.
26.
In 1910, Norman Thomas married Frances Violet Stewart, the granddaughter of John Aikman Stewart, financial adviser to Presidents Lincoln and Cleveland, and a trustee of Princeton for many years.
27.
Norman Thomas died at the age of 84 on December 19,1968, at a nursing home in Huntington, New York.
28.
The Norman Thomas High School in Manhattan and the Norman Thomas '05 Library at Princeton University's Forbes College are named after him, as is the assembly hall at the Three Arrows Cooperative Society, where he was a frequent visitor.
29.
Norman Thomas is the grandfather of Newsweek columnist Evan Thomas and the great-grandfather of writer Louisa Thomas.