In February, 1948, Rollins College and its "Animated Magazine," an annual event drawing in up to 8,000 visitors to Winter Park for a series of lectures by "luminaries of the day," gathered an impressive group of honorees. Among the group that year were John Mott, winner of the Nobel peace prize; U.S. General Jonathan W. Wainwright, who was the highest ranking POW in World War II and who brought with him 10 veterans of the infamous Bataan Death March in the Philippines; Kendrick Guernsey, President of Rotary International; Nuremburg prosecutor (and future Senator and father of sitting Senator Chris Dodd) Thomas J. Dodd; and U.S. Senator Claude Pepper. The February 27, 1948 edition of the local Winter Park social and cultural weekly, Winter Park Topics (Pepper is the sixth person from the left pictured on the bottom of page one of the linked page), marked the event, saying of Senator Pepper, that "in the traditional assuring tone of the politician expressed his belief that all will yet be well with the world."Claude Denson Pepper was something of an idol of mine when I was in grade school in South Florida - dad did a fantastic impression whenever his name was mentioned, which it often was being raised just outside of Miami during the late 1960s through the 1980s. The child of sharecroppers in Alabama, he grew up to eventually make his way to Harvard Law School and then moved to Florida, serving as a state representative, then as a U.S. Senator, and in his later years as the Congressman for Miami. In an era of Southern Conservative Democrats, he was a true liberal FDR New Deal Democrat, a good man and, more frequently than most (and more than most people today understand), a great man. By the time I came to observe him, he was that old man with the characteristic Southern drawl (close your eyes and imagine listening to an Alabama country judge with a mouth always half-full of dinner), oddly representing - with overwhelming support - a growing population of Hispanics and a community of aging Jews. In 1982, the population of Miami Beach was 62% Jewish. When I spent time with my great grandmother - an elderly Jew living in an efficiency apartment a couple of blocks from the ocean, and, accordingly one of Pepper's stereotypical constituents - walking on Lincoln Road in pre-Miami Vice Renaissance Miami Beach, I was visiting not only one of the residents of his district, but also a key beneficiary of the policies for which Pepper tirelessly fought in Washington.
A brilliant, imperfect man, Claude Pepper's passion for individual rights destroyed his Senate career. Having served in the Senate during World War II, when the U.S. had been allied with the Soviets, and having seen the horrors of the Holocaust, Pepper focused on the Soviet liberation of prisoners of war, choosing to believe, or at least hope, that the Soviet Union was interested in freedom and democracy and friendship with the U.S., and in human rights. His apparent softness toward the Soviets was based in no small part on the push by a pro-Soviet group to form a Soviet Jewish republic in the eastern Soviet Union. Despite what conservatives of today would likely charge, he was no weak-kneed liberal pacifist; the main line of attack against Pepper before the U.S. entry into the Great War was that Pepper was an interventionist, advocating for the U.S. to enter the war for years before it was fashionable. It was the conservatives who favored isolation and opposed war against Hitler. In 1940, Senator Pepper drafted the first lend-lease legislation to supply planes to the British to battle the Germans, which legislation was passed the following year. Pepper was so hated by the Nazi sympathizers that Jeffrey Herf in The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda During World War II and the Holocaust describes how those Nazi sympathizers charged that Pepper "emerged as a fighter for the global dominion of world Jewry."
In fact, Claude Pepper did emerge as a lonely advocate (along with the so-called Bergson Group, which, incidentally, included Nancy Pelosi's father, Congressman Thomas D'Alessandro, Jr.) for the U.S. to open up its borders for Jews fleeing the Nazis before we finally entered the War. His support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine also predated the War. The loyalty of those elderly Miami Beach Jews was not the result of political pandering, but was earned and deserved based on a lifelong interest in, and advocacy and action for, their security (social and existential).
But post-War conservatism, fear of the Russians, and McCarthyism prevailed. Pepper lost his Senate seat in 1950, having been dubbed "Red Pepper" for his perceived pro-communist views, with Pepper allegedly convinced that the U.S.S.R. was anti-discrimination. Charges of his socialist inclinations were reinforced by his ahead-of-its-time push for universal health care. Interestingly, Southern historians point to Pepper's defeat, and the similar defeat of Frank Porter Graham in North Carolina, as critical points in setting back New Deal liberalism as an alternative to the Dixiecrats.
Pepper didn't make that mistake again. After returning to Florida to open a law practice in Miami, he went back to Washington in 1962 as the Congressman from Miami and Miami Beach. By then, having been burned before, seeing the Soviets for what they were, and recognizing the reality of serving South Florida, he had become staunchly anti-communist and anti-Castro. The far-right conservatives hadn't warmed to him, however. Pepper ran that 1962 campaign for Congress by linking himself to President Kennedy; his campaign signs read "Support JFK - Pull Lever 1A." But the night before the election, Miami police in a black neighborhood discovered members of the John Birch Society scamming to trick voters by handing out posters reading "Support JFK - Pull Lever 7A." The right wing hasn't improved all that much in their tactics over the last half century. But Pepper chose his district well - he had won Dade County in his 1950 Senate defeat, and had a loyal base there. (On the other hand, there's this account of alleged vote rigging in Dade County to keep Rep. Pepper in office. Make of it what you will.)
Today, despite his consequential career as a Senator, Pepper is most remembered for his time in the House of Representatives, particularly his policy battles with Ronald Reagan. While in the Senate he pushed for national health care and helped establish the National Institutes of Health. In the House, he built on that legacy, establishing himself as the nation's foremost advocate for the elderly, focusing on strengthening Medicare, and working with Alan Greenspan to put Social Security on solid footing - a footing that would remain stable today if the Social Security Trust Fund was being respected (alas, it is not).
Which brings us to the paper that I wrote about Claude Pepper for a social studies class while in grade school, where we were to write about a political leader that we admired. While most others were writing about Presidents, I picked Pepper. I recall spending a weekend at the Broward County Public Library, reading books and looking at old issues of The Miami Herald on microfiche, all to find the information that would now take me a fraction of the time on the Web. I don't have the essay any longer, as far as I know (it may be in my parent's attic), but I still remember what was to me the highlight of that paper, referring to the the legislation prepared by Pepper and Texas Rep. Jake Pickle to preserve social security benefits for remarried widows. It was, I called it then, the "proverbial Pickled Pepper," and continued on with a variation on the popular tongue-twister. Pretty corny, and I am sure I thought I was extremely clever. But apparently I was not alone. This is how Time Magazine's April 2, 1965 edition covered the legislation:
Going back to the 1950 Senate Democratic primary, legend has it that Pepper lost that election (in Florida back then, the Democratic primary was effectively the general election, and it was where the real liberal-conservative battle played out, as well) when his opponent George Smathers gave a speech in which a reporter claimed Smathers said of Pepper:
That particular speech probably never happened - it appears to be a caricature of Smathers' actual words by a reporter disgusted by Smathers' genuine Red-baiting - but my recollection is that it was reported as fact in my research , or perhaps when I was in grade school I didn't understand the meaning of the word apocryphal. So, I believe, the quote made its way into my essay, as well. What Smathers, who voted against basically every piece of civil rights legislation introduced while he was in the Senate, really said about Pepper was, if not as colorful, at least as disturbing: "Florida will never allow herself to become entangled in the spiraling spider web of the Red network. The people of our state will no longer tolerate advocates of treason." Sadly, the rhetoric on the right hasn't changed all that much in sixty years.
Claude Pepper passed away on May 30, 1989. When he died, his body lay in state for two days in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda, an honor reserved for Presidents and a select few extraordinary Americans. Today is the 20th anniversary of his death. Here's the obituary that appeared in the New York Times on May 31, 1989.
But post-War conservatism, fear of the Russians, and McCarthyism prevailed. Pepper lost his Senate seat in 1950, having been dubbed "Red Pepper" for his perceived pro-communist views, with Pepper allegedly convinced that the U.S.S.R. was anti-discrimination. Charges of his socialist inclinations were reinforced by his ahead-of-its-time push for universal health care. Interestingly, Southern historians point to Pepper's defeat, and the similar defeat of Frank Porter Graham in North Carolina, as critical points in setting back New Deal liberalism as an alternative to the Dixiecrats.
Pepper didn't make that mistake again. After returning to Florida to open a law practice in Miami, he went back to Washington in 1962 as the Congressman from Miami and Miami Beach. By then, having been burned before, seeing the Soviets for what they were, and recognizing the reality of serving South Florida, he had become staunchly anti-communist and anti-Castro. The far-right conservatives hadn't warmed to him, however. Pepper ran that 1962 campaign for Congress by linking himself to President Kennedy; his campaign signs read "Support JFK - Pull Lever 1A." But the night before the election, Miami police in a black neighborhood discovered members of the John Birch Society scamming to trick voters by handing out posters reading "Support JFK - Pull Lever 7A." The right wing hasn't improved all that much in their tactics over the last half century. But Pepper chose his district well - he had won Dade County in his 1950 Senate defeat, and had a loyal base there. (On the other hand, there's this account of alleged vote rigging in Dade County to keep Rep. Pepper in office. Make of it what you will.)
Today, despite his consequential career as a Senator, Pepper is most remembered for his time in the House of Representatives, particularly his policy battles with Ronald Reagan. While in the Senate he pushed for national health care and helped establish the National Institutes of Health. In the House, he built on that legacy, establishing himself as the nation's foremost advocate for the elderly, focusing on strengthening Medicare, and working with Alan Greenspan to put Social Security on solid footing - a footing that would remain stable today if the Social Security Trust Fund was being respected (alas, it is not).
Which brings us to the paper that I wrote about Claude Pepper for a social studies class while in grade school, where we were to write about a political leader that we admired. While most others were writing about Presidents, I picked Pepper. I recall spending a weekend at the Broward County Public Library, reading books and looking at old issues of The Miami Herald on microfiche, all to find the information that would now take me a fraction of the time on the Web. I don't have the essay any longer, as far as I know (it may be in my parent's attic), but I still remember what was to me the highlight of that paper, referring to the the legislation prepared by Pepper and Texas Rep. Jake Pickle to preserve social security benefits for remarried widows. It was, I called it then, the "proverbial Pickled Pepper," and continued on with a variation on the popular tongue-twister. Pretty corny, and I am sure I thought I was extremely clever. But apparently I was not alone. This is how Time Magazine's April 2, 1965 edition covered the legislation:
For 14 years in the Senate and two in the House, Florida’s Representative Claude Pepper, 64, wandered Capitol Hill, not precisely friendless but somehow incompleat. Then, this January, Texas Democrat Jake Pickle, 41, took his seat in the House. Before anyone could say rubber baby-buggy bumpers, the two sponsored H.R. 2465, modifying a portion of the social security laws. It will be known to one and all, naturally, as the Pickle-Pepper bill. Purpose? Whereas, would winsome widows winning their way with welfare wealth wed wooers on social security themselves, why wish widows and wooers to lose whatever combined welfare wealth weddings would work?
Going back to the 1950 Senate Democratic primary, legend has it that Pepper lost that election (in Florida back then, the Democratic primary was effectively the general election, and it was where the real liberal-conservative battle played out, as well) when his opponent George Smathers gave a speech in which a reporter claimed Smathers said of Pepper:
Are you aware that Claude Pepper is known all over Washington as a shameless extrovert? Not only that, but this man is reliably reported to practice nepotism with his sister-in-law, and he has a sister who was once a thespian in wicked New York. Worst of all, it is an established fact that Mr. Pepper, before his marriage, habitually practiced celibacy.
That particular speech probably never happened - it appears to be a caricature of Smathers' actual words by a reporter disgusted by Smathers' genuine Red-baiting - but my recollection is that it was reported as fact in my research , or perhaps when I was in grade school I didn't understand the meaning of the word apocryphal. So, I believe, the quote made its way into my essay, as well. What Smathers, who voted against basically every piece of civil rights legislation introduced while he was in the Senate, really said about Pepper was, if not as colorful, at least as disturbing: "Florida will never allow herself to become entangled in the spiraling spider web of the Red network. The people of our state will no longer tolerate advocates of treason." Sadly, the rhetoric on the right hasn't changed all that much in sixty years.
Claude Pepper passed away on May 30, 1989. When he died, his body lay in state for two days in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda, an honor reserved for Presidents and a select few extraordinary Americans. Today is the 20th anniversary of his death. Here's the obituary that appeared in the New York Times on May 31, 1989.
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