Thomas E. Latimer (1879-1937) was an American lawyer who served as the Mayor of the Minnesota Peasant Labor Party in Minneapolis, Minnesota from 1935 to 1937. His term of office coincided with the period of urban unrest. Prior to that, Latimer worked as a lawyer on the freedom of dispute that ultimately resulted in a Supreme Court decision in Near v. Minnesota. Latimer has nothing to do with the former mayor of St. Paul, George Latimer.
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Latimer was born in 1879 on a farm in Hilliard, Ohio. He attended Ohio State University and played football there until his father's death brought him back to the family farm. He taught school for a while and eventually joined the Klondike Gold Rush at the age of 20 before moving to work in the silver mines and lead in Idaho and a gold mine in Mexico.
Latimer returned to Ohio in 1905 and married a woman from Hilliard named May Helser. The couple split up three months later and quickly divorced after May gave birth to a son in 1906. Latimer lost contact with his ex-wife but heard that a son had been born and died shortly after. That's not true, though Latimer apparently would not have known otherwise for almost 30 years. As reported by Time magazine in 1935, Latimer's son, Ira - was a Chicago radio news commentator who suspected Thomas was his father and raised as Ira Jenkins by his mother and her second husband. - Read Latimer's election as mayor of Minneapolis and become convinced of his paternity after learning that Thomas was born in Hilliard. As a quick note Time is recorded, when confronted with his son Ira, Thomas Latimer "demands proof, gets it" and thus among "the main guest at his inauguration... is his son, his daughter." -in-law, [and] two-year-old granddaughter. "
After breaking up with May Helser, Latimer continued his education. He holds a bachelor's and master's degree and serves as a school superintendent in Juneau, Alaska. Latimer eventually left Alaska and returned to the United States in 1912 (the same year Alaska was given territorial status) where he would begin his legal career.
Maps Thomas E. Latimer
Legal career and Near v. Minnesota .
Latimer studied law at the University of Minnesota. It was there that he met his second wife, Elsie Henry. They graduate law school, take joint exams, and then open a Latimer & amp; Latimer. They do not seem to have children. Elsie will die five years before Thomas in 1932.
In 1920 Latimer was "a famous Minneapolis lawyer." It is arguably his most important work to come in press freedom over the years of the press culminating in a critical Supreme Court decision in Near v. Minnesota . The case stems from an attempt by Hennepin County Attorney at the time Floyd B. Olson (then Minnesota Governor and head of the Minnesota Peasants Labor Party) to place an order against the Minneapolis newspaper, The Saturday Press. Published by Jay M. Near and Howard A. Guilford and known for anti-Semitism, anti-Communism and a tendency to attack allegedly corrupt local officials such as the mayor George E. Leach and police chief Frank W. Brunskill, Saturday Press was a mature target for the new Minnesota General Disturbance Act of 1925. Also known as "Minnesota Gag Law," the law provides permanent orders against those who publish, sell, distribute or own "dangerous goods" , newspaper scandals and defamation. "A temporary order is given against The Saturday Press and forced to stop publication pending further legal proceedings.
While Latimer is hardly part of the The Saturday Press , he sympathizes with their goals and - like Near v. Minnesota chronic writers Fred Friendly will then put it - "a kind of self-appointed Legal Aid Institute." Under Latimer's suggestion, publishers Near and Guilford object to reprisal orders. While still obeying the order because they stopped issuing, they argued that the temporary order was unconstitutional and "did not state enough facts to be the cause of action" on the part of the court.
In a hearing of a demurrer on December 1, 1927, Latimer argued that the Law of General Disorder was "a pretext chosen by the 1925 Legislature to stay away from constitutional legislation and state pollution..." He pointed out that "There are only two other countries in the world today with laws similar to those in Italy and Russia... "The last comment is an ironic reference to a recent editorial in the influential Minneapolis Tribune, who railed against the lack of freedom of the press at Benito Mussolini in Italy who have not supported the Law of General Disorder.
Judge Mathias Baldwin rejected the demurrer two weeks after the trial. However, he certified the case to the Minnesota Supreme Court, handing it to the agency to decide on the issue of constitutionality of the law. As Friendly will then be noted, "With demurring, Latimer has opened the door for appeals, and with case certification, Judge Baldwin has made litigation live..." The case came before the Minnesota Supreme Court on April 28, 1928, at the time Latimer argued that the General Disturbance Law violates the Minnesota constitution and "void, void and invalidate, as opposed to the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States." The Minnesota court rejected this argument and affirmed the constitutionality of the law. But a stronger force will soon take over against Minnesota's General Law of Distractions (including the American Civil Liberties Union and Chicago Tribune publishers) and bring the case to the US Supreme Court. This marks the first time that press freedom involving previous restrictions has reached the high court. The Supreme Court, in what is widely praised as a critical victory for press freedom, ultimately ruled that the Law of Public Disorder is unconstitutional. Although Latimer does not debate the case in the Court, it is the preliminary statement he puts forward at the beginning of the case that creates the ground upon which successful constitutional challenges will proceed.
Minnesota Minnesota Farmer's Party, mayor, and subsequent life
In the mid-1930s, Latimer was a veteran veteran of the Minnesota Farmers' Labor Party (making it somewhat ironic that he was doing a legal battle with party leader Floyd B. Olson in the case of Near v. Minnesota ) and succeeded in nominating Minneapolis mayor in 1935. Although more liberal than its Republican predecessor, AG Bainbridge, Latimer partially passed the antilabor policy of the city police and also adopted a more rigorous approach to welfare spending. These actions alienate labor groups and some traditional liberals. Communist Minneapolis on the Popular Front - an insignificant component of the Peasant-Labor movement - also found themselves in opposition to Latimer after he joined the Defense Committee of Leon Trotsky - Soviet politicians in exile and opponents of Stalin and the Comintern.
During the first months of Latimer at the office, Minneapolis was struck by labor unrest. Workers at the Ornamental Flatiron Iron Office The city broke down in July 1935, and when the company refused to arbitrate and take scab workers, the situation quickly turned violent. To the surprise of some, given that he was a member of the Labor-Peasant Party, Latimer granted a request by the company for police protection. There was soon complaint that the police were dealing with striking workers, and after police fired on the crowd and killed two observers, Latimer withdrew police protection and closed the factory. His political future has been threatened by police action, and Latimer "does not dare to offend further labor," as Floyd B. Olson biographer George Mayer writes.
The second strike started soon after in Strutwear Knitting Mills. This time Latimer refused the owner's request for police protection and spoke against the refusal of Strutwear officials to negotiate. Latimer sought to restart negotiations, but the reluctance of corporate officials to compromise (combined with the united front prepared by workers in the city) made it impossible. Finally strutwear strikes were completed for the workers, such as disputes in Flour City Ornamental Iron Works. This was a key victory for the Minneapolis labor movement at the time, although Latimer played a somewhat contradictory role that may have to sacrifice its labor support.
Latimer seeks re-election, but more left-wing elements of the party associated with the Popular Front have mastered the Farmers Alliance of Hennepin County. Dissatisfied with the Latimer administration, the group sought to deny the support it needed to secure a re-nomination as a Farmer-May candidate for the mayor. Popular Front supporters favor Kenneth Haycraft for nominations, while other elements of the party favor Latimer. As a result, two separate nomination conventions are held which both claim legitimacy. In an argument before the Committee of Labor-Workers Union Unions in which the convention will be recognized, Latimer supporters "seek to discredit the Haycraft convention by citing the presence of delegates who have signed a petition to place the Communist candidate at Minnesota's ballot in 1936." This tactic will prove to be unsuccessful because the State Committee supports the Haycraft convention and Latimer has finally lost its primary. Haycraft was unanimously defeated by Republican candidate (former mayor George E. Leach) in the general election.
After failing in his re-election, Latimer left office in July 1937. At the time he lived with his third wife, Mildred Unger, whom he married two years after Elsie Henry's death in 1932 (they met when Latimer worked as a Unger lawyer in his divorce with her previous husband). Four months after leaving the office, at the age of 58, Latimer died suddenly of sleep illness. According to the news of his death, "So, cheating is a disease that he attended a Minnesota football game-Notre Dame a week ago at the Memorial stadium."
Latimer family Bible
Nearly 70 years after his death, the name Latimer once again briefly in the Minneapolis press. In 2004, a woman from Arkansas had an ornate and leather-bound Bible originally owned by Latimer (her husband had found the Bible ten years earlier in a pile of discarded books in the San Diego alley). The woman, Teri Norton-Feaser, spent some time trying to track down a relative who wanted the Bible, saying that she had "called every Latimer in a Minneapolis phonebook and e-mailed everyone I could" but could not find anyone directly related. to Thomas. Former Mayor St. Paul, George Latimer, is one of the Latimers contacted. He has researched his genealogy and is convinced that "[Thomas Latimer] and I are not from the same line, but I think we can be the 15th cousin."
After the Minneapolis Star Tribune published the story of the Latimer Family Bible, two women contacted the newspaper to claim: Dorothy Unger Hesli, 85, aged 15 when his mother Mildred Unger married Thomas, and Eloise White Saslaw, 83, is a distant relative - perhaps Latimer's great nephew. Since he really knew Latimer and loved him enough, Hesli was finally given the Bible. Hesli notes that he thinks he can remember the Bible from his teenage years living with his sister, mother, and Latimer in Minneapolis, but he does not know how it ends up in a pile of old books in California.
See also
- List of mayors of Minneapolis
- Floyd B. Olson
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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