"Bread of the Poor"

The Marcantonio Papers Collection (link), located in the main branch of the New York Public Library, houses 86 boxes of production from the hyperactive congressman's political life.

In the categories by which the contents are divided, we hear the echoes of bygone battles: telegraph merger, Progressive Party, Vinson strike bill, Anti-Fascism/NLRB, Works Progress Administration (WPA).

Box 2 contains, “constituency problems, aid requests.” Box 42 holds “office appointments and messages.” Box 43 contains “Card files of names relating to routing constituents' requests." Boxes 6 through 35 offer, “Congressional Correspondence and Papers: Relating to routine constituency matters, congressional committees, sponsorship of various bills, and constituents' correspondence and papers.”

First Avenue, Italian Harlem.

In these constituency correspondence boxes – a goodly portion of the collection – can be heard, or read, the voice of the people Marcantonio represented.

The letters evidence the level of service he rendered them and the deep trust with which they shared their misfortunes. Utterly vulnerable, they approached Marcantonio, not for policy or advocacy, but for mercy. 

There are hundreds of letters and responses alike in the boxes which bring into full relief the radical congressman's personal touch to representation. 

A Constituent.

Here are culled a few of the plentiful kind that earned Marcantonio the sobriquet, “Bread of the Poor.”

“We are a family of 6 and my husband is a WPA worker earning $13.20 a week,” wrote Mary D'Ambrosio of 309 E. 106^th St. “We would appreciate your help on Christmas. Please don't forget us we will be waiting.”

Ms. D'Ambrosio's epistle conveys to Marc both the importance and the inadequacy of the WPA program to a working family. 

Marcantonio regularly distributed to his constituents' gift baskets with toys and food for the Holidays. Rose Tudesco of 1974 Second Avenue was so aware of this fact she doesn't even specify the basket.

Little Italy street scene.

"Dear Vito Marcantonio, I am a poor woman. I have 3 children. I used to work and now I have no job. My husband is sick and he is in the hospital. I get no help from no place. I have no money to buy any food, toys or clothes. Try to make it a happy Christmas for my children and me. Thank you. Respectfully yours.”

In this next letter, Alexander Fraskella manages to roll his illness, his need both for a Christmas basket and a new job, into a tightly woven two-sentence message.

“Hon. Vito Marcantonio, Dear Sir, I wish you remember me with a basket for Christmas as I have been home sick this week expect to go back to work next Wednesday Dec. 1 as labor on WPA.

P.S. I received a letter from WPA that they have no vacancy for the watchman's position.”

In response to a request for help, a constituent would usually receive a letter such as this one:

Italian family doing piecework at home.

“Dec. 5, 1940

My Dear Mr. [Joseph] Coniglio (of 231 E. 106^th), I am in receipt of your letter and wish to inform you that I shall be at the Marcantonio Club, 1679 Madison Avenue, this Sunday, December 8^th, and will be glad to see you there at 2:00 p.m in regard to the matter you wrote me about. Sincerely yours, Vito Marcantonio.”

Or such as this: 

Dear Mr. Gonzalez,

I have been told that I can be of service to you with reference to your application for citizenship. I suggest that you go to the Marcantonio Club, 247 East 116^th Street, next Wednesday, October 2^nd, between 1:00 and 2:00 p.m. Mr. Pizzo will be there at that time and he will talk to you about the application. Sincerely Yours.”

In “They Couldn't Purge Vito” Sidney Shallet of the “Saturday Evening Post” wrote of Marcantonio:

“He is willing to live in their slums, rub elbows with the best and the worse of them, work himself to the end of a frazzle for them. He spends his dough on them, takes up their battles against the landlords, sends his lawyer to get them out of jail. On occasion East Harlem lore has it, he has carried scuttles of coal personally to heatless tenements. Anyone who wants to see him, to clasp his hand or bend his ear, can do so. That, in short, is why Vito is their boy, and why Vito, who, incidentally, sits at the head of one of the tightest, most thoroughgoing, brass-knuckled political machines in the country, keeps getting reelected.”

The constituent letters found in the Marcantonio papers tell us who “they” were in Marc's work.

Vito Marcantonio Forum member Lulu LoLo is researching the letters for a book and play, and has rendered them live as well.

The writing is thick in disappeared urban argot, and textured with rich hand-scripts the likes of which have passed from usage.

Dusty, crumbling texts, they open windows on a forgotten world.

"The Goodfather, (A Novel): The Rising Fall of the Marvelous Marcantonio," can be found here: MARC LIVES!