John W. McCormack

John W. McCormack (1966)

John W. McCormack (standing right) speaks to the Department of Defense in 1966

John William McCormack (born December 21, 1891 in Boston , Massachusetts , † November 22, 1980 in Dedham , Massachusetts) was an American politician . He held the office of Speaker of the House of Representatives from 1962 to 1971 and was a member of the Democratic Party . He had been a member of the Congress since 1928.

Life

McCormack was born in Boston to a bricklayer. His grandparents immigrated to the United States from Ireland. Since his father died early, he had to earn a living for the family at the age of 14 with unskilled labor, including as a newspaper carrier and errand boy. After he found a job with a lawyer, the latter encouraged him to train as a lawyer in evening schools. He was admitted to the Massachusetts Bar in 1913. After opening a law firm in Boston, he attended the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention in 1917. He was also active in the First World War.

McCormack was a member of the Democratic Party, for which he sat in the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1920 to 1922 . From 1923 he was represented in the State Senate , to which he belonged until 1926. Since 1925 he was leader of the Democrats there. In 1929 McCormack entered the United States House of Representatives for Massachusetts . He was born on September 16, 1940 Majority leader of the Democrats and remained so until two legislative periods 1947-1949 and 1953-1955, to 1961. died in the year Sam Rayburn , who until now the office of the speaker of the House ( Speaker ) and McCormack succeeded him in early 1962. After the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, if the new President Lyndon B. Johnson were incapacitated, he would have been the first person to assume the presidency. During this time McCormack was under the special protection of the Secret Service until Hubert H. Humphrey was sworn in as Vice President on January 20, 1965 . This position had previously been vacant.

After attempts to overthrow him from his position as speaker in the late 1960s ended unsuccessfully, he was embroiled in a scandal in 1969 when two close associates were convicted. In May 1970 he announced that he would retire from politics at the end of the legislative period in January 1971. He lived near Boston until his death, where he died of pneumonia in 1980 at the age of 88 .

literature

• Internationales Biographisches Archiv 11/1981 of March 2, 1981, at www.munzinger.de
• Garrison Nelson: John William McCormack. A Political Biography , New York: Bloomsbury Academic 2017, ISBN 978-1-62892-516-6 .

Web links

Commons : John William McCormack  - Collection of Pictures, Videos and Audio Files

• John W. McCormack in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)
• John W. McCormack in the database of Find a Grave (English)