John Lindsay

 

John Lindsay was elected to Congress in 1958, representing Manhattan’s Upper East Side for four terms. Lindsay was a native New Yorker, born on West End Avenue to an upper-middle-class family of English and Dutch ancestry. Lindsay attended prep school at St. Paul’s and Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Upon completing his college studies in 1943, Lindsay joined the navy as a gunnery officer during World War II. Obtaining the rank of lieutenant, John Lindsay earned five battle stars through action in Sicily and several landings in the Pacific. After the war, he worked as a bank clerk before entering Yale Law School and receiving his law degree in 1948, ahead of schedule.

After marrying Mary Anne Harrison, a distant relative of US presidents, in 1949, John Lindsay was admitted to the bar. In 1952, he became president of the New York Young Republican Club and was active in New York City politics. In 1958, with the backing of prominent Republicans, Lindsay was nominated and then elected to Congress, representing the “Silk Stocking District” of upper Manhattan. In Congress, John Lindsay established a liberal voting record that put him at odds with the Republican Party. He was a staunch supporter of federal aid to education, Medicare, and the federal department of Urban Affairs. Lindsay earned a reputation as a maverick, opposing federal interception of communist literature and obscene material. He justified his votes by asserting that communism and pornography were the two major industries of the “Silk Stocking District.” A strong supporter of civil rights, John Lindsay was the leader of a group of liberal Republicans in Congress who voted for LBJ’s Civil Rights Act of 1964.

In 1965, John Lindsay was elected mayor of New York City on the Republican ticket, defeating Democrat Abraham Beame, the city comptroller. One newspaper columnist described Lindsay as “fresh, where everyone else is tired.” Lindsay inherited a city with serious fiscal woes, in the face of declining manufacturing jobs and a dwindling middle class. In addition, municipal workers—including teachers, firemen, police, sanitation, subway conductors, and bus drivers—demanded higher pay and increased benefits. During the twelve-day transit workers strike, Mayor Lindsay jailed TWU leader Mike Quill, who referred to the youthful mayor as “Mr. Lindsley.” Mr. Quill said, “The judge can drop dead in his black robes because I would sooner rot in jail than call off the subway and bus strike.” Soon, Mayor Lindsay was besieged with a series of municipal strikes—including transit, sanitation, and teacher strikes—forcing the mayor to walk four miles from his apartment to city hall each day. Trying to make light of things, John Lindsay remarked, “I still think it’s fun city,” from which the sarcastic term “Fun City” was derived.

In 1968, the United Federation of Teachers, under Albert Shanker, initiated a strike that lasted until the middle of October, opposing the decentralization of the New York City school system into thirty-three separate school boards. That same year, there was also a nine-day sanitation strike and a three-day Broadway strike. The quality of city life reached a low point as mounds of garbage caught fire, strong winds blew refuse through the streets, and the rat population of Manhattan exploded. With the schools shut down, the police involved in a slowdown, the firefighters threatening job actions, the city accumulating uncollected garbage, and racial tensions beginning to explode, the city teetered on the brink of anarchy. Somehow the unlucky mayor weathered the urban storm, settling the strikes with sizable increases in labor contracts for New York’s municipal workers.

After the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, John Lindsay was one of the few white politicians (besides Robert Kennedy) who could walk into black neighborhoods and talk to the disenfranchised and gain their trust. As a result of his early opposition to the Vietnam War, John Lindsay was called the “red mayor” and “a traitor.” After criticism for alleged neglect of the outer boroughs, the Lindsay administration became more pragmatic and efficient in delivering vital services to the entire city. In addition, the Lindsay administration brought 225,000 more jobs to the city, put 6,000 more cops on the street, and hired hundreds of new teachers and paraprofessionals for the classroom. And unlike cities like Detroit, Los Angeles, and Newark, New York City did not experience devastating urban riots and widespread looting. Mayor Lindsay was also credited with rejuvenating the city’s parks, as well as the arts and culture, particularly Broadway, transforming New York into an international tourist attraction. Under John Lindsay, New York City became more prosperous, more just, and more diverse. Indeed, despite the social unrest of that era, New York really was Fun City!