John Lindsay
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- This article refers to an American politician, for the 14th century bishop of Glasgow see John de Lindesay
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| John Vliet Lindsay | |
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| In office 1959–1965 |
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| Preceded by | Frederic René Coudert, Jr. |
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| Succeeded by | Theodore Kupferman |
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| Born | November 24, 1921 New York, NY |
| Died | December 19, 2000 (aged 79) Hilton Head, South Carolina |
| Political party | Republican |
| Spouse | Mary |
| Profession | Attorney |
| Religion | Protestant |
John Vliet Lindsay (November 24, 1921 – December 19, 2000) was an American politician who served as a Congressman from 1959 to 1965 and mayor of New York City from 1966 to 1973.
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[edit] Early life
John Lindsay was born in New York City on West End Avenue to George Nelson Lindsay and Florence Eleanor Vliet. Contrary to popular assumptions, John Lindsay was neither a blue-blood nor very wealthy by birth, although he did grow up in an upper middle class family of English extraction. Lindsay's paternal grandfather immigrated to the United States in the 1880s from the Isle of Wight, and his mother was from an upper-middle class family that had been in New York since the 1660s. John's father was a successful lawyer and investment banker, and was able to send his son to the prestigious Buckley School, St. Paul's School, and Yale, where he was inducted into the famous secret society, Scroll and Key. Lindsay received his bachelor's degree from Yale in 1944 and his law degree from Yale in 1948.
After service in World War II, Lindsay practiced law for a few years before gravitating towards politics.
Elected to Congress as a Republican from the "Silk Stocking" district in 1958, Lindsay established a liberal voting record, known for his strong support of civil rights legislation. In 1965 Lindsay successfully ran for mayor as a Republican in a three-way race (although he became a Democrat in 1971), defeating the Democratic candidate Abe Beame, then City Comptroller, as well as National Review founder William F. Buckley, Jr., who ran on the Conservative line. In 1968, after the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, Lindsay turned down an offer from Governor Nelson Rockefeller to take over Kennedy's seat[1].
[edit] Mayoralty
Lindsay inherited a city with serious fiscal and economic problems. The old manufacturing jobs that supported generations of uneducated immigrants were disappearing, millions of middle class residents were fleeing to the suburbs, and public sector workers had won the right to unionize.
[edit] Activism and unrest
Public sector union activism would turn out to be the bane of Lindsay's administration. On his first day as mayor, the Transport Workers Union of America (TWU) led by Mike Quill shut down the city with a complete halt of subway and bus service. It has been argued that the transit workers truly were underpaid, but the strike more than anything was an effort by an old-guard Irish leadership to reinforce its power over a union which by 1966 had more black and Hispanic members than ethnic Irish. The leader of the TWU had predicted a nine-day strike at most, but Lindsay's refusal to negotiate delayed a settlement and turned the strike into a twelve-day torment -- a grievous wound to the city. Quill's mocking press conferences gave the city the impression that Lindsay was not tough enough to deal with the city's real sources of power.
The settlement of the strike, combined with increased welfare costs and general economic decline, forced Lindsay to push through the State Legislature in 1966 an income tax hike and higher water taxes for New York City residents, plus a new commuter tax for people who only worked in the city. By 1970, New Yorkers would be paying $384 per person in taxes, the highest in the nation. In contrast, the average Chicago resident paid $244 per person. (source, Can Cities Survive? The Fiscal Plight of American Cities, Pettengill and Uppal, p. 76.)
The transit strike was the first of many labor struggles. In 1968 the largely Jewish teachers' union (the United Federation of Teachers – UFT) went on strike over the firings of several Jewish teachers in a school in the neighborhood of Ocean Hill-Brownsville. Demanding the reinstatement of the dismissed teachers, the four-month battle became a symbol of the chaos of New York City and the city's inability to deliver what suburbanites could take for granted, that is, a functioning school system.
That same year, 1968, also saw a week-long sanitation strike. Lindsay was widely blamed for the disaster for not making a counteroffer to the union's pre-strike proposal. Quality of life in New York reached a nadir during this strike, as ten-foot tall mountains of garbage grew on New York City sidewalks.
The summer of 1970 ushered in another devastating strike, as over 8,000 workers belonging to AFSCME District Council 37 walked off their jobs for two days. The strikers included workers on the city's drawbridges and sewer plants. Drawbridges over the Harlem river were locked in the up position, barring transit by automobile, and hundreds of thousands of gallons of raw sewage flowed into area waterways.
This was also the year of the Hard Hat Riot on Wall Street and Broadway on May 8th, in which Hippie youth protestors clashed with construction workers from the World Trade Center construction site. The anti-war protesters had set up along the statue of George Washington on Wall Street and were reportedly waving Viet Cong flags and defiling American flags in protesting the Kent State shootings. The "Hard Hats" proceeded to storm the statue's base in anger and set up American flags, then pursued the fleeing protestors. The resulting chaos then spilled out to the Pace University campus and City Hall. This was understandably one of the slowest days on the New York Stock Exchange in months, as the construction workers were unexpectedly joined by white collar office workers from the exchange. Lindsay had ordered that all flags on City buildings be lowered to half mast in recognition of the Kent State shootings, a measure to which the construction workers were overwhelmingly opposed. They threatened to overwhelm City Hall unless the flag was raised to full height, which it was. Lindsay also took the blame for the lack of action by the NYPD, which made little attempt to stop the construction workers from rioting. Reportedly, as the American flag was raised to full over City Hall, the construction workers demanded that the fifteen officers remove their riot helmets in respect. Seven did.
[edit] Counterculture issues
[edit] Students
Aside from labor problems, New York City also became a major home to the counterculture. Thousands of hippies set up in Greenwich Village. In hope of finding someone to control the hippies, the Lindsay administration put Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin on the City's payroll at $100 a week.
1968 also saw the student occupations of administration buildings at Columbia University over the university's displacement of local residents in constructing a gym in Morningside Park. Columbia was closed down for several weeks; no one was killed, and Lindsay was not to blame, but one policeman, Frank Gucciardi, was paralyzed for life when a student jumped on him from a second story window.
[edit] African-Americans
Protestors would march on city hall with signs saying "no money, no peace". Sonny Carson in 1967 sent a letter to Lindsay saying it "would be a 'cool summer' if Lindsay kept funneling money to the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)." Though New York was no interracial utopia during Lindsay's term, the city managed to avoid a major race riot that had plagued several other major American cities. Lindsay was credited for this, and his walks in different neighborhoods helped residents to keep calm.
[edit] Role in Stonewall Inn riot
In 1969 Lindsay was behind an effort to raid the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar. Many historians suspect that this was done because Lindsay had lost the Republican Party primary and was trying to sure up support from conservative voters. The riot that erupted as a result of the police raid is credited with being a a major milestone in the American gay rights movement.
[edit] Political machinations
Lindsay's position in the Republican Party grew increasingly tenuous over time. He had nominated Spiro Agnew (then seen as something of a moderate) for Vice-President in 1968 at the GOP Convention, but was out of sympathy with Nixon's policies and the post-Goldwater GOP generally. In 1969, a backlash against Lindsay's policies caused him to lose the Republican mayoral primary to State Senator John J. Marchi, who was enthusiastically supported by William F. Buckley, Jr.. In the Democratic primary, the most conservative candidate, City Controller Mario Procaccino, defeated several more liberal candidates with only a plurality of the votes. "The more the Mario," he quipped.
Despite not having the Republican nomination, Lindsay was still on the ballot as the candidate of the Liberal Party. Running as the only liberal candidate in a heavily liberal city, Lindsay formed a coalition of minorities, Jews and public sector unions to eke out a win by a plurality. He admitted that "mistakes were made" and called being mayor of New York "the second toughest job in America". Lindsay re-entered City Hall, however, in a politically weakened position, neither aligned with Democrats or Republicans, nor having support from the majority of the electorate. In 1971 Lindsay became a Democrat and shortly thereafter began a brief and quite unsuccessful bid for the Democratic Presidential nomination. A hardy band of disgruntled protesters, mainly from Queens, followed Lindsay around his aborted campaign itinerary to jeer and heckle him.
The bargains Lindsay made with the unions later contributed to the fiscal crisis of Abe Beame's administration. To secure their political support, Lindsay offered unions large raises — the transit workers managed an 18 percent salary increase, an extra week of vacation, and fully paid pensions; District Council 37 got a raise and retirement after 20 years; the teachers received increases of 22 to 37 percent.
[edit] Middle class problems
Crime soared in NYC during Lindsay's term, as it did in other cities. From 1961 to 1965 NYC had 7.6 homicides per 100,000 people; from 1971 to 1975 it had 21.7 homicides per 100,000. (source Encyclopedia of New York City, 297). Many white New Yorkers associated crime exclusively with blacks and Puerto Ricans. Jonathan Reider, in his well known study of the white backlash in Canarsie, Brooklyn, had this to say: "Canarsians spoke about crime with more unanimity than they achieved on any other subject, and they spoke often and forcefully... one police officer explained that he earned his living by getting mugged. On his roving beat he had been mugged hundreds of time in five years. 'I only been mugged by a white guy one time'" (Canarsie, 67).
Lindsay was seen as being far from sympathetic to the needs of working- class white ethnics. Republican State Senator John Calandra said in 1968:
- "The North Bronx area has suddenly and without any prior notice had its garbage collection reduced from 3 weekly pickups to 2... why the decline in service by City Hall, which had a record $6 billion approved for it by our rubber stamp, so called City Council? Rumor has it that men and equipment have been diverted to the South Bronx. The North Bronx pays most of the taxes yet the South Bronx, which pays hardly any at all, gets all the services and facilities from our City Departments and Mayor. If more money is needed for our Sanitation Dept., then I suggest that our fun-loving Mayor find it in the same way he found $7 million for the Youth Corps after that disgraceful, illegal, and wanton riot at City Hall." (Cannato, 391)
[edit] Murder at the Harlem Mosque
On Friday, April 14, 1972, Patrolman Philip Cardillo and Vito Navarra responded to a "10-13" call at 102 East 116th Street, which was a Nation of Islam mosque where Malcolm X used to preach. Upon arriving inside, they were ambushed by 15 to 20 black Muslims, one of whom, according to the ballistics report, shot Cardillo at point blank range. As more police arrived at the scene, the black Muslims forced most of the police outside and locked the door, leaving a dying Cardillo and officers Victor Padilla and Ivan Negron locked from within.
Police eventually managed to break down the door and witness a black Muslim named Louis 17X Dupree standing over Cardillo with a gun in hand. Before Dupree could be taken into custody, however, Louis Farrakhan and Charles Rangel arrived at the scene, threatening the police brass with a riot if Dupree was not released. Just as the police forensics unit was about to seal off the crime scene, they were ordered out of the mosque by the police brass. Outside a mob had overrun the street and overturned a police cruiser. The residents of Harlem shouted, "I hope you die you pigs. I hope you drop dead." (Cannato 485-486)
One of the officials who deliberately hampered the ballistics investigation was Benjamin Ward who later became police commissioner under Mayor Ed Koch. Ward had ordered all white police officers away from the scene, aquiescing to the demands of Farrakhan and Rangel. (Cannato 487)
At the hospital where Cardillo lay dying, Lindsay and his commissioner Patrick V. Murphy met up with police officials. When a member of the NYPD brass termed the event a riot, Lindsay exclaimed, "Riot? What do you mean a riot? There can't be a riot...How can you say such a thing?" When the deputy commissioner of the NYPD wanted to send out a press release explaining the department's view of what happened, he was overruled by Ward, who convinced Lindsay of the need to keep Harlem from rioting again. Farrakhan and Rangel demanded an apology from the mayor. Farrakhan said that Cardillo and Navarra had "charged into our temple like criminals and they were treated like criminals." Not once did Farrakhan utter a word of sympathy for the dying Philip Cardillo. Linday and Murphy apologized to Farrakhan, dropped the charges of all Muslims arrested that night, and removed every white police officer from Harlem, leaving an all black force in the area.
At Philip Cardillo's funeral neither Lindsay nor Murphy were in attendance. While Cardillo was being buried, Lindsay was off skiing in Provo, Utah. Five years later, Dupree was found not guilty of the murder of Cardillo by a jury. (Cannato 490)
[edit] Assessment and later life
Lindsay left office in 1973 an unpopular mayor, choosing not to seek re-election. His critics have argued that mistakes he made played a large part in causing the City's fiscal problems in the 1970s; Lindsay had allowed one in seven New Yorkers to work for the city, with almost as high a proportion receiving welfare; he was perceived as too sympathetic to the unions; and he had borrowed for operating expenses. In his critical biography The Ungovernable City, Vincent J. Cannato bluntly says Lindsay was the wrong man for the job of mayor. Lindsay was more concerned with solving the enormous social problems of NYC's poor instead of delivering basic services. Nevertheless, Lindsay's concern for racial minorities and the poor in New York helped guide the nation's largest city through the years of the "long hot summers" between 1965 and 1969 and averted massive, violent unrest, a not insignificant accomplishment.
Years after Lindsay was out of office, his budget aide Peter Goldmark would admit that his administration's basic problem was this: "We all failed to come to grips with what a neighborhood is. We never realized that crime is something that happens to, and in, a community." Assistant Nancy Seifer said "There was a whole world out there that nobody in City Hall knew anything about... If you didn't live on Central Park West you were some kind of lesser being." (Cannato, 391).
Lindsay retired to practice law. His 1980 campaign for the Senate was not successful, as he lost the Democratic primary to Elizabeth Holtzman.
After the folding of several law firms for which he had worked, including Webster & Sheffield, Lindsay in the 1990s was left in failing health and without health insurance. The decision of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to hire him as a part-time legal counsel, at a rate of $10,000 per year plus health insurance, aroused little controversy - but there are no city landmarks dedicated to his memory.
He died of complications from pneumonia and Parkinson's disease, in Hilton Head, South Carolina at the age of 79.
His daughter Anne Lindsay found inspiration in his political career and actively participated in the campaign of Howard Dean for President, and later supported Senator John Kerry in his presidential run.
The only substantive biography of Lindsay to this point is Vincent J. Cannato's The Ungovernable City. Nevertheless, an in-depth discussion of Lindsay's fiscal policies is contained in Mayors and Money by Ester R. Fuchs. Two pro-labor treatments of New York City public sector unions are In Transit and Working-Class New York by Joshua Freeman. Lindsay's 1967 autobiography is titled Journey Into Politics.
[edit] External links
| Preceded by Frederic Coudert, Jr. |
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York's 17th congressional district 1959–1965 |
Succeeded by Theodore Kupferman |
| Preceded by Robert F. Wagner, Jr. |
Mayor of New York 1966-1973 |
Succeeded by Abraham Beame |
| Mayors of New York City (since 1834) |  |
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Categories: NPOV disputes | Articles lacking sources from March 2007 | All articles lacking sources | 1921 births | 2000 deaths | St. Paul's School (New Hampshire) alumni | Yale University alumni | Yale University Law School alumni | Mayors of New York City | Members of the United States House of Representatives from New York | People with Parkinson's disease
