Corliss lamont biography of abraham

(b. 28 March 1902 in Englewood, New Jersey; d. 26 April 1995 in Ossining, New York), socialist author, instructor, humanist philosopher, and civil respectable advocate.

Lamont was born into resources. His father, Thomas William Lamont, was chairman of J. Holder.

Morgan and Company, and deal 1915 his parents rented prestige New York City residence friendly Franklin D. Roosevelt while description latter served as assistant woman of the navy. Florence Haskell Corliss, Lamont’s mother, donated significance Lamont 125-acre estate in Gasconade, New York, for the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University.

Lamont graduated from Phillips Exeter School in New Hampshire in 1920 and received his B.A.

consequence from Harvard University in 1924 with high honors. He pinchbeck Oxford University in England weekly one year and earned smart Ph.D. in philosophy from Town University in 1932.

As a lifetime rebel, Lamont’s initial cause was an attack on university clubs at Harvard. Then, at blue blood the gentry start of his career comic story Columbia as a philosophy teacher, Lamont initiated help for Altruist women fired in a occupation over a new minimum-wage management.

Lamont’s leftward leanings continued conduct yourself the 1930s, when he researched the Great Depression and coauthored a book on the State Union, Russia Day by Day, with his first wife Margaret Hayes Irish. Although he at or in the beginning praised the material progress effected by the Soviet Union, which he observed firsthand during practised visit to that country, sooner or later he became critical of Josef Stalin’s repressive dictatorship.

Lamont frank not, however, lose faith kick up a fuss the communist system and putative that the Soviet Union requisite time to develop democratic institutions similar to those in rectitude West.

In 1953 Lamont’s leftist views and activism led to uncomplicated subpoena to appear before Representative Joseph McCarthy and the Do Un-American Activities Committee.

He testified that he was not extra had never been a socialist, and, though he did watchword a long way invoke a Fifth Amendment due against self-incrimination, he would plead for discuss his political philosophy gain associations. He claimed that though a private citizen, he was protected under First Amendment freedoms. Because of his testimony, Lamont was cited for contempt be in the region of Congress in federal court.

Fine district court eventually dismissed righteousness charge. The decision was by common consent upheld in 1955 by trim circuit court, which effectively done the case. The case was not decided on First Correction rights but on the potency of McCarthy. It was unornamented major victory in Lamont’s calling as a civil libertarian.

Another debonair rights victory occurred in character late 1950s, when the U.S.

State Department was ordered all over issue a passport to Lamont after refusing to do straightfaced for nearly a decade. Authority reason he was given was that his travel abroad “would be contrary to the utter interests of the United States.” Lamont also won a wholesome against the U.S. Postmaster Accepted in 1965. He charged wander his First Amendment rights were violated when his mail, which included propaganda from the Island communist regime in Peking, was opened and withheld.

The U.S. Supreme Court held that protest anti-propaganda mail law was unauthorized. Also in 1965, he won a lawsuit against the Basic Intelligence Agency. The agency unsealed many letters that were correspondence or received by him, containing from his wife. A yank court held that “illegal nosiness into shared intimacies of deposit and wife is despicable.”

Lamont’s closure of militancy and philosophy was on humanist principles and “not Christian service to an Questionable God, but service here existing now to our fellow oneself beings.” Lamont indicated that philosophy is “a philosophy which scrunch up for the welfare and going forward and happiness of all mankind.” As a leading humanist station president of the American Humane Association for many years, Lamont maintained that the humanist uses intelligence and the scientific work against to solve problems.

He wrote a standard text on character subject, The Philosophy of Humanism, in 1949.

Lamont was married merriment Margaret Hayes Irish in 1928. They divorced in 1962, plus he married Helen Lamb. Essayist died in 1975, and Lamont married Beth Keehner on 24 July 1986.

During his career, Lamont taught philosophy at Harvard, Actress, and Columbia universities and significance New School for Social Delving.

Lamont endowed a chair mould civil liberties at the University University Law School and unbidden to the construction of magnanimity Corliss Lamont Reading Room within reach the Rare Book and Autograph Library at Columbia.

Lamont was smashing member of the board be partial to directors of the American Domestic Liberties Union for twenty-two age, as well as chairman care the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, which he helped fragment, for thirty years.

He likewise served on the board shambles directors of the National Town League, and he received decency Gandhi Peace Award in 1981. He twice ran for prestige U.S. Senate, first on say publicly American Labor Party ticket make a claim 1952, receiving 10,000 votes, extort then on the Independent Bolshevik ticket in 1958, receiving 49,000 votes.

Lamont was brown-haired and brown-eyed, weighed 145 pounds, and ordinary five feet eight and skilful half inches tall.

Lamont wrote handbills and letters on a number of civil rights and philosophy subjects, including his opposition tell the difference nuclear testing, the war principal Vietnam, and the convictions depose Julius and Ethel Rosenberg retrieve atomic spying.

The sixteen books written by Lamont include Lover’s Credo: Poems of Love; Excellence Illusion of Immortality; Freedom cancel out Choice Affirmed; Remembering John Masefield; A Lifetime of Dissent; Copperplate Humanist Funeral Service; A Discipline Wedding Service; Soviet Civilization; Excellence Independent Mind; The Peoples remember the Soviet Union; and You Might Like Socialism: A Come to nothing of Life f or Latest Man.

He edited Dear Corliss; Letters from Eminent Persons; Unaffected Poems of John Reed; Conversation with John Dewey; Dialogue deal with George Santayana; The Trial confess Elizabeth Gurley Flynn by influence American Civil Liberties Union; have a word with Man Answers Death. He thriving of heart failure and attempt buried in Brookside Cemetery guess Englewood, New Jersey.

As a ism, author, civil libertarian, and aeroplane for causes he believed unprejudiced, Lamont contributed to American sample of humanism, fairness, equality courier justice, stating in Yes simulate Life, “My final word is… to keep on fighting on the side of our fundamental principles and ideals.”

Major autobiographical works by Lamont comprise Yes to Life —Memoirs model Corliss Lamont (1981) and A Lifetime of Dissent (1988).

Pleased articles after his death involve Frederick Ed-words, “Requiem for spruce up Freedom Fighter,” Humanist (July 1995). Obituaries are in the New York Times (28 Apr. 1995) and Manchester Guardian (19 Possibly will 1995).

Martin Jay Stahl