Norman Thomas | |
|---|---|
 Thomas in 1937 | |
| National Chairman of the Socialist Party of America | |
| In office July 16, 1936 – June 1, 1942 | |
| Preceded by | Leo Krzycki |
| Succeeded by | Maynard C. Krueger |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Norman Mattoon Thomas (1884-11-20)November 20, 1884 Marion, Ohio, U.S. |
| Died | December 19, 1968(1968-12-19) (aged 84) Huntington, New York, U.S. |
| Political party | Socialist |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 5 |
| Relatives | Evan Thomas (grandson) Louisa Thomas (great-granddaughter) |
| Alma mater | |
Norman Mattoon Thomas (November 20, 1884 – December 19, 1968) was an AmericanPresbyterianminister, political activist, andperennial candidate for president. He achieved fame as asocialist andpacifist, and was theSocialist Party of America's candidate for president in six consecutive elections between1928 and1948.
Thomas was the oldest of six children, born November 20, 1884, inMarion, Ohio, to Emma Williams (née Mattoon) and Weddington Evans Thomas, a Presbyterian minister. Thomas had an uneventful Midwestern childhood and adolescence, helping to put himself through Marion High School as a paper carrier forWarren G. Harding'sMarion Daily Star.[1] Like other paper carriers, he reported directly toFlorence Kling Harding. "No pennies ever escaped her," said Thomas. The summer after he graduated from high school his father accepted a pastorate atLewisburg, Pennsylvania, which allowed Norman to attendBucknell University. He left Bucknell after one year to attendPrinceton University, the beneficiary of the largesse of a wealthy uncle by marriage.[2] Thomas graduated magna cum laude fromPrinceton University in 1905.[3]
After somesettlement house work and a trip around the world, Thomas decided to follow in his father's footsteps and enrolled inUnion Theological Seminary. He graduated from the seminary and was ordained as a Presbyterian minister in 1911.[4] After assisting theRev. Henry Van Dyke at the fashionableBrick Presbyterian Church onManhattan'sFifth Avenue, Thomas was appointed pastor of the East Harlem Presbyterian Church, ministering to Italian-American Protestants.[5] Union Theological Seminary had been at that time a center of theSocial Gospel movement and liberal politics, and as a minister, Thomas preached against American participation in the First World War. Thispacifist stance led to his being shunned by many of his fellow alumni from Princeton, and opposed by some of the leadership of the Presbyterian Church in New York. When church funding of the American Parish's social programs was stopped, Thomas resigned his pastorate.[6] Despite his resignation, Thomas did not formally leave the ministry until 1931, after his mother's death.[6]
It was Thomas's position as aconscientious objector that drew him to theSocialist Party of America (SPA), a staunchlyantimilitarist organization. When SPA leaderMorris Hillquit made his campaign formayor of New York in 1917 on an antiwar platform, Thomas wrote to him expressing his good wishes. To his surprise, Hillquit wrote back, encouraging the young minister to work for his campaign, which Thomas energetically did.[7] Soon thereafter he himself joined the Socialist Party.[8] Thomas was aChristian socialist.[9]
Thomas was the secretary (then an unpaid position) of the pacifistFellowship of Reconciliation even before the war. When the organization started a magazine calledThe World Tomorrow in January 1918, Thomas was employed as its paid editor. Together withDevere Allen, Thomas helped to makeThe World Tomorrow the leading voice of liberal Christian social activism of its day.[9] In 1921, Thomas moved to secular journalism when he was employed as associate editor ofThe Nation magazine. In 1922 he became co-director of theLeague for Industrial Democracy. Later, he was one of the founders of theNational Civil Liberties Bureau, the precursor of theAmerican Civil Liberties Union.[citation needed]
Thomas ran for office five times in quick succession on the Socialist ticket—forgovernor of New York in1924, for mayor of New York in1925, forNew York State Senate in 1926, foralderman in 1927, and for mayor of New York again in 1929. In1934, he ran for the US Senate in New York and polled almost 200,000 votes, then the second-best result for a Socialist candidate in New York state elections; onlyCharles P. Steinmetz polled more votes, almost 300,000 in1922 when he ran forState Engineer.[9]
Thomas's political activity also included attempts at the US presidency. FollowingEugene Debs's death in 1926, there was a leadership vacuum in the Socialist Party. Neither of the party's two top political leaders,Victor L. Berger and Hillquit, was eligible to run for president because of their foreign birth. The third main figure,Daniel Hoan, was occupied as mayor ofMilwaukee, Wisconsin.[9] Down to approximately 8,000 dues-paying members, the Socialist Party's options were limited, and the little-known minister from New York with oratorial skills and a pedigree in the movement became the choice of the 1928 National Convention of the Socialist Party.
The 1928 campaign was the first of Thomas's six consecutive campaigns as the presidential nominee of the Socialist Party. As an articulate and engaging spokesman fordemocratic socialism, Thomas had considerably greater influence than the typicalperennial candidate, but never achieved Debs's level of popularity, topping out at 2.23% of the vote in therealignment election of 1932. Although most upper- and middle-class Americans found socialism unsavory, the well-educated Thomas—who often wore three-piece suits and looked and talked like a president—gained grudging admiration.[citation needed]
Thomas frequently spoke on the difference between socialism, the movement he represented, andcommunism and revolutionaryMarxism. His early admiration for theRussian Revolution had turned into energeticanti-Stalinism. (Some revolutionaries thought him no better;Leon Trotsky criticized Thomas on more than one occasion.)[10]
He wrote several books, among them his passionate defense of World War Iconscientious objectors,Is Conscience a Crime?, and his statement of the 1960ssocial democratic consensus,Socialism Re-examined.
Thomas favored work to establish a broad Farmer–Labor Party upon the model of the CanadianCooperative Commonwealth Federation,[11] but remained supportive of the Militants and their vision of an "all-inclusive party", which welcomed members of dissident communist organizations (includingLovestoneites andTrotskyists) and worked together with theCommunist Party USA in jointPopular Front activities. The party descended into a maelstrom of factionalism in the interval, with the New York Old Guard leaving to establish themselves as theSocial Democratic Federation of America, taking with them control of party property, such as theYiddish-languageThe Jewish Daily Forward, the English-languageNew Leader, theRand School of Social Science, and the party's summer camp in Pennsylvania.
In April 1938, Thomas was the center of national controversy when he came toJersey City, New Jersey to defend labor organizers' free speech and challenge the political machine of MayorFrank Hague. Hague was a close ally of Franklin Roosevelt and controlled federal patronage in the state. Though denied a permit for political reasons, Thomas came anyway to speak at an outdoor rally. The police arrested him as soon as he got out of his car. As the officers prepared to expel him from the city, Thomas quipped, "So this is Jersey justice". People across the political spectrum, including the 1932 and 1936 Republican presidential nominees,Herbert Hoover andAlfred M. Landon, criticized Hague for his suppression of free speech and Roosevelt for his silence about the incident. Thomas and Landon became good friends as a result of the incident..[12]
Thomas was initially as outspoken in opposingthe Second World War as he had been with regard to the First World War. Upon returning from a European tour in 1937, he formed the Keep America Out of War Congress, and spoke against war, thereby sharing a platform with the non-interventionistAmerica First Committee.[13] In the 1940 presidential campaign he said RepublicanWendell Willkie was the candidate of "the Wall Street war machine" and that he "would take us to war about as fast and about on the same terms as Mr. Roosevelt".[14]
In testimony to Congress in January 1941 he opposed the proposedLend Lease program of sending military supplies to Great Britain, calling it "a bill to authorize undeclared war in the name of peace, and dictatorship in the name of defending democracy". He 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]
Afterthe Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, a bitter split took place in the Socialist Party regarding support for the war; Thomas reluctantly supported it, though he thought it could have been honorably avoided. His brother and many others continued their pacifist opposition to all wars.[16] 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 theNazis".[17]
Thomas was one of the few public figures to opposePresident Roosevelt'sincarceration of Japanese Americans following the attack on Pearl Harbor. He accused the ACLU of "dereliction of duty" when the organization supported the forced mass removal and incarceration.[18][19] Thomas also campaigned againstracial 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.
Thomas was an early proponent of birth control. The birth-control advocateMargaret Sanger recruited him to write "Some Objections to Birth Control Considered" inReligious and Ethical Aspects of Birth Control, edited and published by Sanger in 1926. Thomas accused the Catholic Church of hypocritical opinions on sex, such as requiring priests to be celibate and maintaining that laypeople should have sex only to reproduce. "This doctrine of unrestricted procreation is strangely inconsistent on the lips of men who practice celibacy and preach continence."[20]
Thomas also deplored the secular objection to birth control because it originated from "racial and national" group-think. "The white race, we are told, our own nation—whatever that nation may be—is endangered by practicing birth control. Birth control is something like disarmament—a good thing if effected by international agreement, but otherwise dangerous to us in both a military and economic sense. If we are not to be overwhelmed by the 'rising tide of color' we must breed against the world. If our nation is to survive, it must have more cannon and more babies as prospective food for the cannon."[21]
After 1945, Thomas sought to make theanti-Stalinist left the leader of social reform, in collaboration with labor leaders likeWalter Reuther. In 1961, he released an album,The Minority Party in America: Featuring an Interview with Norman Thomas, onFolkways Records, which focused on the role of the third party.[22]
Thomas actively campaigned forLyndon B. Johnson in the 1964 presidential election. He was critical of Johnson's foreign policy, but praised his work on civil rights and poverty. Thomas called Johnson's opponentBarry Goldwater a "personable man with good stands on domestic issues" but also described him as "the greatest evil" due to his views on foreign policy.[23][24]
Thomas's 80th birthday in 1964 was marked by a well-publicized gala at theHotel Astor in Manhattan. At the event Thomas called for a cease-fire in Vietnam and read birthday telegrams fromHubert Humphrey,Earl Warren, andMartin Luther King Jr. He also received a check for $17,500 (equivalent to $177,400 in 2024) in donations from supporters. "It won't last long," he said of the check, "because every organization I'm connected with is going bankrupt."[25]
In 1966, the conservative journalist and writerWilliam F. Buckley, Jr chose Thomas to be the third guest on Buckley's new television interview show,Firing Line. In 1968, Thomas signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against theVietnam War.[26]
Also in 1966, Thomas traveled to theDominican Republic along with future CongressmanAllard K. Lowenstein to observe that country'sgeneral election. The two were leaders of the "Committee on free elections in the Dominican Republic", an organization based in the U.S. that monitored the election, in whichJuan Bosch of theDominican Revolutionary Party, affiliated with theSocialist International, was beaten closely but decisively by the conservative ex-presidentJoaquín Balaguer. Balaguer continued to govern the country on and off for the next 30 years.[27] In the autumn of that year, Thomas received the secondEugene V. Debs Award for his work in promoting world peace.[28]
In 1910,[29] Thomas married Frances Violet Stewart (1881–1947),[30][31] the granddaughter ofJohn Aikman Stewart, financial adviser to PresidentsLincoln andCleveland, and a trustee of Princeton for many years.[32] Together, they had three daughters and two sons:[30]
Thomas died at the age of 84 on December 19, 1968, at a nursing home inHuntington, New York.[40] Pursuant to his wishes, he was cremated and his ashes were scattered onLong Island.
TheNorman Thomas High School (formerly known as Central Commercial High School) inManhattan and the Norman Thomas '05 Library atPrinceton University'sForbes College are named after him, as is the assembly hall at theThree Arrows Cooperative Society, where he was a frequent visitor. He is also the grandfather ofNewsweek columnistEvan Thomas and the great-grandfather of writerLouisa Thomas.[41]
The drawing-room socialist, Thomas, is [...] only a bourgeois with a socialist 'ideal'. [...] His personal life, interests, ties, moral criteria exist outside the party. With hostile astonishment he looks down upon the Bolshevik to whom the party is a weapon for the revolutionary reconstruction of society, including also its morality." [...] "This righteous man expelled the American 'Trotskyists' from his party precisely as the GPU shot down their co-thinkers in the U.S.S.R. and in Spain.
| Party political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Socialist nominee for President of the United States 1928,1932,1936,1940,1944,1948 | Succeeded by |
