John Lindsay
John Vliet Lindsay (/vliːt/; November 24, 1921 – December 19, 2000) was an American politician and lawyer. During his political career, Lindsay was a U.S. congressman, mayor of New York City, and candidate for U.S. president. He was also a regular guest host of Good Morning America. Lindsay served as a member of the United States House of Representatives from January 1959 to December 1965 and as mayor of New York City from January 1966 to December 1973.
This article is about the American politician. For other people of this name, see John Lindsay (disambiguation).
John Lindsay
November 24, 1921
New York City, U.S.
December 19, 2000 (aged 79)
Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, U.S.
Democratic (after 1971)
Republican (until 1971)
Yale University (BA, LLB)
United States
1943–1946
He switched from the Republican to the Democratic Party in 1971, and launched a brief and unsuccessful bid for the 1972 Democratic presidential nomination as well as the 1980 Democratic nomination for Senator from New York.
Early life[edit]
Lindsay was born in New York City on West End Avenue to George Nelson Lindsay and the former Florence Eleanor Vliet.[1] He grew up in an upper-middle-class family of English and Dutch descent.[2] Lindsay's paternal grandfather migrated to the United States in the 1880s from the Isle of Wight,[1] and his mother was from an upper-middle-class family that had been in New York since the 1660s.[2] His mother was a descendant of Dirck Jans van der Vliet (1612–1689) who settled in the then Dutch settlement of New Netherlands around 1659–1660 as son Henderick was born in what is now Livingston, New York.[3] Lindsay's father was a successful lawyer and investment banker.[1] Lindsay attended the Buckley School, St. Paul's School, and Yale,[1] where he was admitted to the class of 1944 and joined Scroll and Key.[4]
Military service and legal career[edit]
With the outbreak of World War II, Lindsay completed his studies early and in 1943 joined the United States Navy as a gunnery officer. He obtained the rank of lieutenant, earning five battle stars through action in the invasion of Sicily and a series of landings in the Pacific theater.[5][6] After the war, he spent a few months as a ski bum[2] and a couple of months training as a bank clerk[2] before returning to New Haven, where he received his law degree from Yale Law School in 1948, ahead of schedule.[2] In 1949, he began his legal career at the law firm of Webster, Sheffield, Fleischmann, Hitchcock & Chrystie.[7]
Legacy[edit]
Mario Cuomo, Carl McCall, and Carter F. Bales were among the many people who started their careers in public service in the Lindsay administration.[63] Rev. Al Sharpton has said that he still remembers Lindsay having walked the streets of Bedford-Stuyvesant and Harlem when these neighborhoods were doing poorly economically.[63]
Lindsay also fought to transform the New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board from an internal police-run department, into a public-minded agency with a citizen majority board.[64]