Later Life
After his defeat in mayoral and congressional elections, Marcantonio continued to practice law. It was his law practice, maintained while in Congress, that gave him the money to substantially self-finance his political campaigns. At first he practiced in Washington, D.C. but he soon returned to New York City, where he died from a heart attack after coming up the subway stairs, on Broadway by City Hall Park, August 9, 1954.
Marcantonio's collection of speeches, I Vote my Conscience edited by Annette Rubenstein had an effect on a generation of younger radicals. His defense of workers rights, his mastery of parliamentary procedure, his ability to relate to the workers in his district while also engaging in worldwide issues, made him a hero to a certain section of the left.
Read more about this topic: Vito Marcantonio
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“The great passion in a man’s life may not be for women or men or wealth or toys or fame, or even for his children, but for his masculinity, and at any point in his life he may be tempted to throw over the things for which he regularly lays down his life for the sake of that masculinity. He may keep this passion secret from women, and he may even deny it to himself, but the other boys know it about themselves and the wiser ones know it about the rest of us as well.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)
“The sailor is frankness, the landsman is finesse. Life is not a game with the sailor, demanding the long head—no intricate game of chess where few moves are made in straight-forwardness and ends are attained by indirection, an oblique, tedious, barren game hardly worth that poor candle burnt out in playing it.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)