Emanuel Celler

• Born: May 6, 1888
• Birthplace: Brooklyn, New York
• Died: January 15, 1981
• Place of death: Brooklyn, New York

Politician, social reformer, and lawyer

A lawyer by training, Celler served fifty years in the U.S. House of Representatives, representing New York’s tenth congressional district. During his tenure, he advocated civil rights and immigration reform and chaired the powerful Judiciary Committee for twenty-two years.

Early Life

A grandson of German Jewish immigrants, Emanuel Celler (ee-MAN-yew-ehl SEHL-ur) grew up in Brooklyn, New York, where he attended local public schools. His father turned the family home into a whiskey distillery that produced the Celler brand, Echo Spring. Despite enlisting the assistance of the entire family (even young Celler affixed labels to the bottles), the business fell on hard times and eventually ceased production. After high school, Celler entered New York’s Columbia College, beginning a period that would ultimately change his life. While Celler was in college, his father and mother died, leaving the family’s newest enterprise, wine selling, to the young student. In spite of the rigors and time constraints imposed by the classroom and the family business, Celler managed to graduate from Columbia College before moving on to Columbia Law School, from which he graduated in 1912. After college, Celler won appointment as a draft board appeal agent when the United States entered World War I. At this time, he developed particular interest in assisting his immigrant neighbors, who found the United States less than hospitable to “outsiders.” In 1922, a pivotal year for Celler, he, at the urging of a friend, procured the Democratic Party’s nomination for the tenth congressional district’s seat. Although happy with the nomination, Celler faced extraordinarily long odds, because his district generally chose Republicans. An aggressive door-to-door campaign closed the gap, and his message of opposition to Prohibition and support for the League of Nations propelled him to a narrow victory. This launched a fifty-year career in Washington that continued until 1973.

Life’s Work

Throughout the 1920’s the Republican Party controlled the White House, and immigration reform was one of the critical issues on Capitol Hill. After a large influx of southern and Eastern Europeans to America in the late nineteenth century, many of whom were Roman Catholic and Jewish, there emerged a clamor for immigration restrictions to check the growing foreign national population. For years, the immigration “reform” movement gathered momentum, reaching a critical stage in the 1920’s. With the votes in place, Congress passed the National Origins Act of 1924 and a series of subsidiary bills that created an immigration quota system, limiting the number of “new immigrants” that the United States was willing to accept each year. Remembering his roots and the multiethnic Brooklyn community from which he sprang, Celler engaged in a dedicated, albeit quixotic, battle to block the regressive legislation. Despite repeated failure, Celler never gave up the fight to liberalize the nation’s archaic immigration laws. His determination finally paid off with the passage of the Immigration Act of 1965, which destroyed the quota system during the presidency of Lyndon Johnson.

Another issue Celler found of particular interest was civil rights. As chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Celler was positioned to make a difference on the issue since his committee received all civil rights bills sent to Congress. Starting in the 1950’s, Celler’s push for civil rights advances started to bear fruit. In 1957, he helped draft and then push through Congress the first civil rights bill since the Reconstruction era. He did the same in 1960, before the big success in 1964 when the civil rights bill enacted that year ended legally enforced racial segregation in the South.

Throughout his career, Celler championed liberal reforms. From the New Deal to the Fair Deal to the Great Society, the New Yorker played a crucial role in some of the most important legislative advances in Washington. Only his opposition to feminism and the Equal Rights Amendment that it produced placed him at odds with the liberal establishment.

Significance

Celler’s contribution to American politics in the twentieth century spans an array of issues, from championing immigration reform and civil rights to helping bring about four constitutional amendments during his fifty years on Capitol Hill. The Twenty-third Amendment, which gave the District of Columbia electoral college representation; the Twenty-fourth Amendment, which prohibited the poll tax: the Twenty-fifth Amendment, which defined presidential succession, and the Twenty-sixth Amendment, which granted eighteen-year-olds the right to vote all found the New York congressman to be an active spokesman in their favor. He also fought to toughen America’s antitrust legislation, seeking to put professional athletics under its rules, especially after his beloved Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team relocated to Los Angeles.

Bibliography

Celler, Emanuel. “The Seniority Rule in Congress.” The Western Political Quarterly 14, no. 1 (March, 1961): 160-167. Celler offers a stirring defense of the principle of seniority, which at the time this article was written had made the New Yorker one of the most powerful men in the House of Representatives.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. You Never Leave Brooklyn: The Autobiography of Emanuel Celler. New York: John Day, 1953. Written before he left office, the work covers Celler’s rise to national prominence. It offers invaluable personal insight into the factors and the personality traits that made Celler a successful politician.

Finley, Keith M. Delaying the Dream: Southern Senators and the Fight Against Civil Rights, 1938-1965. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2008. Explores the decades-long legislative battle for civil rights advances in the twentieth century. Provides critical insight into the Senate struggle over the issue that greatly informed Celler’s strategy in the House.

Radosh, Ronald, and Allis Radosh. A Safe Haven: Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel. New York: Harper Perennial, 2010. This work explores American involvement in the creation of a Jewish state. Celler found the issue especially important and helped shape U.S. policy toward the fledgling nation.