41 Facts About Vito Marcantonio

Vito Anthony Marcantonio was an American lawyer and politician who served East Harlem for seven terms in the United States House of Representatives.

Vito Marcantonio represented the neighborhood of East Harlem in New York City, which was home to many ethnic Italians, Jews, African-Americans, and Puerto Ricans.

Vito Marcantonio advocated fiercely for the rights of African-Americans, Italian-American immigrants, and Puerto Rican immigrants in Harlem, as well as for unions and workers in general.

Vito Marcantonio was the son of an American-born father and Italian-born mother, both with origins in Picerno, in the Basilicata region of Southern Italy.

Vito Marcantonio was born on December 10,1902, in the impoverished Italian Harlem ghetto of East Harlem, New York City.

Vito Marcantonio attended New York City public schools, becoming the only member of his class from East Harlem to graduate from De Witt Clinton High School in Hell's Kitchen, and eventually received his LL.

Together, LaGuardia and Marcantonio campaigned for US Senator Robert M La Follette for President.

Vito Marcantonio became secretary of the Tenants League, which fought high rents and evictions.

Vito Marcantonio clerked at the law firm of Swinburne Hale, Walter Nelles, and Isaac Shorr, known for its representation of politically radical individuals and organizations.

From 1926 to 1932, Vito Marcantonio ran La Guardia's campaigns every two years.

Vito Marcantonio was first elected to the United States House of Representatives from New York in 1934 as a Republican.

Vito Marcantonio received a warm write-up in the New Masses in the November 1936 issue.

Vito Marcantonio served in the House from 1935 until 1937 but was defeated in 1936 for re-election.

Vito Marcantonio's district was centered in his native East Harlem, New York City, which had many residents and immigrants of Italian and Puerto Rican origin.

In 1939, Vito Marcantonio criticized the 1936 prosecution and conviction of Puerto Rican Nationalist Party president Pedro Albizu Campos on charges of sedition and other crimes against the United States.

In either 1937 or 1938, Vito Marcantonio became a member of the American Labor Party.

Vito Marcantonio was elected to the House again from New York in 1938, and served this time for six terms, from 1939 to 1951, being reelected in the elections of 1940,1942,1944,1946, and 1948.

Vito Marcantonio was so popular in that district that he cross-filed in the cross-filing primaries between Democratic and Republican primaries, and won the nominations of both parties.

Vito Marcantonio gained the endorsement of the ALP, in an example of electoral fusion.

On election day in 1946, a Republican election captain named Joseph Scottoriggio, who was supporting Vito Marcantonio's opponent, was severely beaten and died days later.

On November 25,1947, the day after the House voted for indictment of the Hollywood Ten for contempt of Congress, Representative Walter Judd attacked Vito Marcantonio by likening the ALP to the China Democratic League in China at that time.

In 1948, Marcantonio was an avid supporter of former Vice President Henry A Wallace, who ran for President on the Progressive Party ticket.

In 1949, Vito Marcantonio ran for Mayor of New York City on the ALP ticket but was defeated.

Vito Marcantonio was able to win reelection in 1948 due to the Democrats and Republicans splitting the vote.

Vito Marcantonio was defeated by Donovan in the 1950 election.

Vito Marcantonio, who was arguably one of the most left-wing members of Congress, said that party loyalty was less important than voting with his conscience.

Vito Marcantonio was sympathetic to the Socialist and Communist parties, and to labor unions.

Vito Marcantonio was investigated by the FBI in the 1940s and 1950s because of his extensive affiliation with members of the Communist Party and known Communist front groups.

In 1940, Vito Marcantonio helped form the American Peace Mobilization, a group whose aim was to keep the US from participating in World War II.

Vito Marcantonio appeared in a newsreel in 1940 denouncing "the imperialist war", a line taken by Joseph Stalin and his supporters in the Soviet Union until Operation Barbarossa.

In 1942, Vito Marcantonio worked to expand the US military commitment to a second front in Europe against the Nazi German expansion, which became Operation Torch.

Vito Marcantonio was a vice president of the International Workers Order, a fraternal benefit society unofficially affiliated with the Communist Party.

In 1947, when the US Congress passed legislation to provide financial aid to fight communism in Turkey and Greece, such as during the Greek Civil War, Vito Marcantonio was the only congressman to not applaud the action, symbolizing his disagreement with the Truman Doctrine.

In 1950, Vito Marcantonio opposed American involvement in the Korean War.

Vito Marcantonio argued that North Korea had been the victim of an unprovoked attack by South Korea.

Vito Marcantonio cited articles by I F Stone, a radical journalist.

In 1941, Vito Marcantonio represented Dale Zysman, a high school coach and board member of the New York City Teachers Union known as Jack Hardy, a communist writer for International Publishers, in a New York Board of Education hearing.

Vito Marcantonio asked for a ten-day stay because the Board had failed to present "an itemized bill of particulars", which stay the Board denied.

Vito Marcantonio resigned as state chairman of the ALP soon after the 1953 election, citing an "inherent division" that prevented it from acting as an independent political force.

At the time of his death in 1954, Vito Marcantonio was running for Congress as the candidate of a newly formed third party, the Good Neighbor Party.

Vito Marcantonio died on August 9,1954, from a heart attack after coming up the subway stairs on Broadway by City Hall Park in Lower Manhattan.