Mayor Wagner Campaigns for George McGovern, 1972

Standing on a sidewalk of New York are (L-R) Professor Richard Wade; Mayor Robert F. Wagner; Mrs. Matilda Krim; Senator George McGovern; and Arthur Krim, the head Of United Artists.

Steven A. Levine

Coordinator for Educational Programs

“George McGovern is a man of tender and responsive conscience . . . of strong loyalties, high principles and fierce convictions. He has shown that he does not flinch or flag in the face of either opposition or of even the most prohibitive odds. “ Mayor Robert F. Wagner, New York State Chairman of the McGovern presidential campaign, at the opening of the Buffalo, NY Democratic Headquarters, 1972.

(Click here to read Mayor Wagner's complete speech.)

Senator George McGovern lost in a landslide to President Richard Nixon in 1972, but this son of a Methodist minister, decorated World War II pilot, and historian should be remembered for his commitment to peace, civil rights, social justice and opposition to the Vietnam War.  He was a hero and a patriot.  (Click here to read his New York Times obituary.)

Happy Birthday Eleanor Roosevelt, October 11, 1884

First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and Mayor Robert F. Wagner, 1956

Steven A. Levine

Coordinator for Educational Programs

In 1963, a year after Eleanor Roosevelt’s death, Mayor Robert F. Wagner memorialized her at the National Roosevelt Day Dinner of the Americans for Democratic Action, the liberal organization she co-founded in the late 1940s. Click here to read Mayor Wagner's speech.

Wagner's relationship with President Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was closer than the ones he had with most New York politicians. His father, Senator Robert F. Wagner was a close confidant of the president, going back to their days in the New York State Legislature and the young Wagner knew the future president and first lady from his childhood. But in his years as mayor, Eleanor Roosevelt became both critic and adviser to him. “She instructed me, she criticized me, both publicly and privately. On more than one occasion, she censured me, to my profit, I might add. . . . She was more than a great lady, more than a great personality, more than a great humanitarian. She was a great phenomenon in a phenomenal age.”

If you want to learn more about Eleanor Roosevelt or use other Roosevelt related materials in your classroom, please contact me or Tara Jean Hickman thickman@lagcc.cuny.edu at the Archives.

Democratic Conventions Past and Present: 1964 and 2012

Steven A. Levine

Coordinator for Educational Programs

Mayor Robert F. Wagner and President Lyndon Baines Johnson

Last night as President Bill Clinton recounted President Eisenhower bringing in the National Guard to desegregate Little Rock High School in 1957, I was struck by the diversity of the delegates attending this year’s Democratic Convention and how much change has taken place in the last 50 years. The picture was quite different at the 1964 Democratic Convention when President Lyndon Johnson and Mayor Robert F. Wagner had a phone conversation about the seating of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. (Click here to listen to the conversation.)

A controversy had broken out about who would be seated at the Convention: the white supremacist “regular” delegates of the Mississippi Democratic Party (MFDP) or the interracial Mississippi Freedom Democrats, who had been elected in parallel elections organized by civil rights activists that summer. Fannie Lou Hamer, an MFDP delegate and sharecropper, gave a riveting and powerful speech before the Credentials Committee of the Convention describing the violence and terror faced by African-Americans who challenged white supremacy in Mississippi. (Click here to listen to speech.)

President Lyndon Johnson had recently signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but he opposed seating the MFDP delegates out of fear that other Southern delegations would walk out of the convention and support his Republican opponent Senator Barry Goldwater. He offered a compromise of two at large delegates to the MFDP and began locking down votes on the credentials committee for it. LBJ looked at the compromise as a political decision to keep the Southern delegations on board, while most of the MFDP delegation saw it as a moral issue which could not be compromised.

Johnson had called Wagner asking him to canvas the two New York delegates on the credentials committee on how they would vote. Wagner indicated that John English was sympathetic to the MFDP but movable, while the other, Joyce Austin an African-American woman who worked for him, was likely to support the MFDP. (Click here to listen to their phone conversation.) Wagner told LBJ he would ask Austin how she would vote, but he turned to Mary Burke Nicholas, an African-American urban planner who also worked for him, to get this information. In a LaGuardia and Wagner Archives oral history, she described what happened.

[H]e didn't know how Joyce was going to vote, and I remember he called me up to his suite and asked me if I could find out. He said he hadn't seen her, and he said, I want you to find out how she is going to vote, but I don't want her to know that I'm the one that's trying to find out. He said, I don't want to influence her vote in any way. If she knows I'm trying to find out, she may think I'm trying to influence her vote. I want her to vote her conscience, but I need to know which way she's going to vote so I can tell Johnson the count for the New York delegation. He said, that's a simple assignment that I'm giving you. I said, thanks a lot, Mr. Mayor. How am I going to do this? . . . So I finally decided to leave a note under her door that night, late that night, and ask her to join me for coffee the next morning on the way to convention hall. She did, she accepted and left a note under my door and said she'd be there . . . Of course, we finally got to the subject, and she said she was going to vote for the seating of Fannie Lou Hamer. We went on talking about other things and all, and I don't think she knows to this day what that was about, but I was able to report to the mayor, who told Lyndon Johnson, who wanted to know just for his head count of how the votes were going to go . . . He always knew how to go around and get the answer without upsetting the person or wanting the person to feel that he was trying to convince them to vote a certain way. If he wanted to convince them to vote a certain way, he would be usually a little more direct about it.

Please feel free to leave comments below if you would like to learn more about the Archives or have any questions about the 1964 Democratic Convention.

Mayor Ed Koch on Gun Control

Steven A. Levine

Coordinator for Educational Programs

I have watched with great sadness and anger the recent epidemic of gun violence in the United States, most notably in Arizona, Colorado, Wisconsin, and today at the Empire State Building. While the motives for these despicable acts of violence have varied, one common denominator has been the prevalence of semi-automatic weapons.

Sadly, this is not a new issue. Twenty-three years ago, Mayor Ed Koch gave a speech calling for federal and city semi-automatic assault weapons bans after five children were murdered in a California schoolyard by a killer with an AK-47. He told his audience that “It’s true that ‘Guns don’t kill people, people do.’ But it’s also true that killers and armed criminals can create large numbers of victims by using a semi-automatic assault rifle.” (Click here to read the speech.) The Archives’ City Council Collection also has a resolution in 1991 calling on the State Legislature “to prohibit the unlicensed possession of semiautomatic assault weapons,” showing that this remained an important issue. (Click here)

The Archives has a wealth of material about issues of gun control and gun violence, including the Bernhard Goetz shootings of 1984. If you would like to learn more about these issues or use documents in your classroom, please feel free to contact me.

Social Security Act Became Law August 14, 1935

Steven A. Levine
Coordinator for Educational Programs

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Postmaster-General James A. Farley,

and Senator Robert F. Wagner, circa 1936.

Seventy seven years ago today, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law.  New York’s Senator Robert F. Wagner was the law’s lead sponsor in the Senate and he had been a fierce advocate of this legislation to protect the elderly, unemployed and children.*  In May of 1935, he gave a speech on WEVD, a mostly Yiddish language radio station, to rally support.  In the midst of the Great Depression and mass unemployment, he set forth a vision of the United States based on economic security for all, particularly the most vulnerable.

The time has come when our government, backed by overwhelming sentiment of the American people, is prepared to raise men from a level below that of machines and place them on a higher level.  It is our objective to lighten the burdens of unemployment, of uncared for childhood, and of neglected old age, thus making life more enjoyable and secure for the vast majority of Americans.  (Senator Wagner’s complete speech can be read here.)

As the presidential candidates today debate the future of the programs begun by the Social Security Act in 1935 and our nation and the world confront a new economic crisis, Senator Wagner’s words and vision are well worth remembering.

*While the law increased security for many Americans, it also excluded many women, African-Americans and other minorities by not initially covering agricultural workers, domestics, teachers, nurses, and social workers.  Southern Democrats in Congress used their political power to prevent the inclusion of most African-Americans.  

Triborough Bridge Opens: July 11, 1936

Stephen Weinstein

Assistant to the Director

July 11 Marks the anniversary of the Triborough Bridge's opening in 1936. Spanning the Harlem River, the Bronx Kill and the Hell Gate, its 3 main bridges connect Manhattan, Queens and the Bronx.  

This is part of a film celebrating the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority's 30th anniversary in 1964. The full video is the property of the MTA Bridges and Tunnels-Special Archives and has been edited by the La Guardia and Wagner Archives

Built largely with money from the federal government, the bridge provided the first rapid access between Queens and the Bronx. Indeed, 1936 was a crowning year in improving New York's infrastructure because in addition to the great bridge, 11 WPA pools opened that summer just in time for one of the hottest summers on record, and two federally-funded public housing projects, the Harlem River Houses in Manhattan and the Williamsburg Houses in Brooklyn, began construction. See our NYCHA Black History Month Celebration of the Harlem River Houses for more information.

"I Am An American Day" 1941 and 1945

Steven A. Levine 
Coordinator for Educational Programs


In celebration of Independence Day, I hope you will take the time to watch the Archives’ YouTube video “I Am An American Day: 1941 and 1945” and consider the meaning of U.S. citizenship today and also what it meant to Americans during World War II. In 1940 Congress created “I Am An American Day” to honor Americans who had reached voting age and immigrants who had become citizens. The event in Central Park in 1945, as World War II came to a close, attracted more than one million people.