Breaking Through: Where's Marc in the Media?

Vito Marcantonio continues to reassume his place in the American historical narrative as media outlets take a new interest in radical congressman's work and image.

“Politico,” a nationally distributed online product, recently wrote Marcantonio into a “this day in history” piece.

That day was Dec. 31, 1946. The headline read: “House Panel Upholds Rep. Vito Marcantonio's right to take his seat.”

The article, written by Andrew Glass, introduces Marcantonio to an unaware political readership and focuses on the House Campaign Expenditure Investigating Committee's decision “not to challenge his right to take his seat in the new Congress.”

Opponents were out to deny Marcantonio's hard-fought victory in a year when Republicans had swept the nation, but failed to unseat the American left's national spokesman. The Election Day beating death of a Republican ward-heeler in Marcantonio's district gave them the brush they needed to tar him.

Thereafter, his seat was less secured, his reputation tarnished by purported links to mobsters.

Marcantonio held on for one more election before defeat in 1950.

“Politico” highlighted the intensifying Cold War between the U.S., as a reason for his defeat, but avoids mention of his collaboration with communists.

Marc Drops Buy to Lend Red Friend a Hand.

The “Random Radical,” series at Yahoo's “Flickr” was less demure, running a photo of Marcantonio arriving to testify for Communist Party official Eugene Dennis on June 25, 1947.

The uncredited piece discusses Marc's engagement with communists, the American Labor Party and Henry Wallace's Progressive Party, as well as his pioneering work on civil rights at the federal level.

“As one of the most left-wing members ever to serve in Congress, he was never popular with his colleagues,” the article reads. “After his vote to oppose U.S. entry into the Korean War, they painted a target on his back.”

A letter written by New York City “power broker” Robert Moses to Marc's wife Miriam Sanders upon his death, expresses the mixture of personal warmth and political coldness that more likely typified Marcantonio's relationship to his colleagues:

“Mary and I were both very fond of Marc and so were our girls.” wrote Moses in a letter dated Aug. 23, 1954. “We all agreed that he was one of the kindest people we had ever met and, while his philosophy was quite beyond us, we shall miss him.”

(The epistle resides with the “Marcantonio Papers” collection housed at the New York Public Library's main branch on 42^nd St.)

In any case, the writer is correct about the target on Marc's back. The piece takes note of the tri-party coalition it took to defeat him in 1950.

The piece closes with mention of Marcantonio's intention to run again for Congress on the Good Neighbor Party line when he was struck down by a heart attack, thereby finishing up the rare, detailed thumbprint sketch of the Congressman's forgotten legacy.

And finally, Rick Snyder at “Down with Tyranny” recently composed a post introducing the blog's readers to Marcantonio, simultaneously weaving his politics into the 2016 presidential campaign and present-day argot into the East Harlemite's story.

“When Bernie was Growing Up Congress had an Amazing Congressman, A Democratic Socialist from Harlem Named Vito Marcantonio,” notes that Marc was a “champion of Puerto Rican independence, of immigrants and of civil rights for blacks long before that became a thing.”

Taking a hack at Marco Rubio, the blog noted that, in spite of handily winning the Republican primary in Puerto Rico, the callow senator from Florida will never be the kind of friend Puerto Rico had in Marcantonio.

“Rubio is anything but a champion of Puerto Ricans. The last member of Congress who really was, was a Democratic Socialist from Harlem named Vito Marcantonio, one of the most fascinating leftists in the history [of that institution],” wrote Snyder.

That Marcantonio, who died over 60 years ago, was the last congressional friend Puerto Rico had is not good news for the island.

“Down with Tyranny” continues: “My grandfather told me about him when I was a little boy and said he was the best politician in America. He was betrayed by the Democrats when they teamed up with the GOP to run a joint candidate. His kind of principled independence made the rest of them look like the crooked self-serves most of them were.”

After a not-inconsiderable review of Marc's career, “Down With Tyranny,” closes with a further comparison of Marcantonio to Sen. Bernie Sanders (D?), closing with a recent “Seattle Times,” endorsement of the Vermont legislator which, Snyder said, “described him in terms reminiscent of Marcantonio.”

These outlets represent both mainstream packages and niche projects reaching different audiences with varying levels of interest.

Foot-Stompin' Marc.

Gerald Meyer, co-chair, Vito Marcantonio Forum (VMF) noted that the piece embeds "Vito Marcantonio: A Synopsis of a Large Life," which was produced by member VMF member David Giglio.

The post, he observed, made considerable use of “I Vote My Conscience: The Speeches, Debates, and Writings of Vito Marcantonio,” edited by Annette T. Rubinstein.

“The Vito Marcantonio Forum is breaking through the wall of silence,” said Meyer in light of the recent coverage on the radical congressman. “Our work is bearing fruit.”

The VMF will do a presentation of author Nelson Denis' “War on All Puerto Ricans,” April 6 at the Mulberry Street Public Library, 10 Jersey Street, New York City, 5 p.m.
 
The event will be moderated by poet Gil Fagiani ("A Blanquito en El Barrio,” “Logos,” “Stone Walls) and feature actor Roberto Ragone performing dramatic readings from the text.

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

Vito Marcantonio and the Art of Spaghetti Making

Virginia Foster Durr was born to southern aristocracy and grew up in Alabama unaware her confederate ways were confederate ways.

Marc.

She attended Wellesley College and that exposure to the larger world awakened her dissenting nature. 

She married an attorney named Clifford Durr.

According to a 1985 “New York Times” review of her autobiography “Outside the Magic Circle,” the pair became “the locally vilified champions in long battles from the New Deal through the arrival of the Freedom Riders.”

The choice to remain outside the magic circle of southern life led to their eventual insolvency and reduction to shabby gentility.

Along her heroic way, Durr made the acquaintance of Vito Marcantonio and, after a rough start, became the kind of friend, to he and his wife Miriam, that came to stay at their place on 116^th Street in East Harlem.

Durr granted interviews to the Oral Histories of the American South Project at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and these possess gem-like anecdotes for Marcantonio fans and scholars alike.

The rough start came at a meeting requested by Durr and allies in the National Committee to Abolish the Poll Tax who were trying, well, to get the poll tax abolished. They said they were backing a bill introduced by Rep. Joseph Clark Baldwin, a Republican from Manhattan's Silk Stocking District, in an effort to get conservative support. They asked Marc to withdraw his.

[From “Outside the Magic Circle”] 

Virginia Durr

“Oh my Lord, Vesuvius erupted! Whew! He sprang up and you never heard such a tirade in your life. 'I withdraw my bill and let that Park Avenue fancy pants...' He just raved on and on. He would not withdraw his bill. His bill was going to be the bill that got through and was going to be the bill that the House backed and, as far as we were concerned, we could just go and drown ourselves. He didn't care whether we supported him or not. Oh, he was mad, just furious.”

She remembered that Marc, who successfully ran in simultaneous primaries of the Republican, Democratic and American Labor parties a few times, prevailed upon the Republican House leadership to go with his measure.

“He even got Baldwin to withdraw his bill,” Durr recalled. “We were forced with the choice of supporting Marcantonio's bill or having no bill. We either had to eat crow or we had to get out of the business.

“We went to see Marcantonio again. He had won, so he was very nice to us this time. Any help that we could give him, he would be very glad to have. He was very pleasant. He had licked us good, too.”

She remembered how Marc legislated with joy. “He was one of the funniest people you've ever known in your life.”

It was typical of Marcantonio, Durr reminisced, to have Rep. Martin Dies, or some other reactionary rival, paged from the floor, mid-anticommunist rant, and come to the phone. Whoever was on the line would ask Dies if he knew where Vito was.

“He was a super politician,” she said. “The people in the House liked Marcantonio. They may have called him a Red, you know, and a Wop and all that, but they liked him.”

Her account of Miriam Marcantonio's life with the congressman's mother after he died is nothing short of harrowing for anyone with a heart, but at the opposite end of the emotional register, one of Durr's most charming stories involves the Italian-American passion for food:

Spaghetti.

“And you'd have him [over for] dinner,” she recounted. “I remember I had spaghetti. I thought since I was having Vito Marcantonio and his wife, who was this tall New England girl, that I would have spaghetti, you know, like somebody having me and having fried chicken.

“Well, he was so funny, because I thought it was pretty good spaghetti. He ate it and he said, 'Now Virginia, that was fairly good spaghetti' – well I had a lot of other things too – 'it was a really good dinner on the whole,' he said, 'but that spaghetti was not as good as it should be.' He said, 'Now come out here and I will tell you how to cook spaghetti.'


“And, you know, he took an hour to tell me how to cook spaghetti: You boil a huge pot of water. It would have to be like a washtub practically, and you don't put a whole lot of spaghetti in it because it can't stick; it has to be all separate, and then you dip it out and then you immediately put butter on it or something to keep it from sticking.  

Durr with Rosa Parks. 

“And then the sauce, instead of being cooked as I had from four o'clock to six o'clock, had to be cooked two days to be real good Italian sauce. And he explained to me in detail exactly, putting the little bit of sugar with it...

“But he was such a human man, you know, and he really wanted me to learn how to make spaghetti since I was going to have spaghetti and he thought it was lousy.”

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