Who Was John Lindsay?

In Congress

John Lindsay served four terms in the United States Congress, starting in 1959. In the House of Representatives, Lindsay represented New York’s 17th Congressional District, which included Manhattan’s Upper East Side, midtown Manhattan’s business and theater centers, and parts of Greenwich Village. His political stances in the House would prefigure the character of his later agenda as mayor of New York City.

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Politically, John Lindsay was part of the liberal wing of the Republican Party, which supported expansive use of government to address social problems, including supporting civil rights for African Americans. They saw themselves in the tradition of the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Dwight David Eisenhower, an alternative to a Democratic Party that was constrained by its conservative Southern wing.

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Lindsay built a record in the House of going against the grain of the growing conservative element in his own party. He refused to endorse the GOP’s conservative presidential nominee, Barry Goldwater, in the 1964 election. He voted with Democrats more often than not, and sometimes even pressed some of the powerful Southern segregationist Democrats to be more progressive.

John Lindsay made his mark as an active player in passing the civil rights legislation of the mid 1960s, which addressed issues such as desegregation of schools, public spaces, and the workplace. He was also a firm advocate for public housing bills.

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Lindsay was an early opponent of the Vietnam War. Eight months after voting for the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in August 1964, which gave President Johnson authority to send troops to Vietnam, Representative Lindsay became one of only three members of Congress to protest the war in Southeast Asia. As opposition the war blossomed on the home front during the mid 1960s, Lindsay as mayor of New York would continue to be an outspoken opponent of the war.