Beautiful Contribution certificate from the Dewey-Warren Dollar Campaign dated 1948. This historic document was printed by American Bank Note Company and has an ornate border around it with a vignette of an Thomas E. Dewey and Earl Warren. This item has the printed signatures of the Pennsylvania Finance committee Representatives and is over 48 years old. Thomas Edmund Dewey (March 24, 1902 March 16, 1971) was the Governor of New York (1943-1955) and the Republican candidate for the U.S. Presidency in two elections (1944 and 1948), losing both times. He was the first presidential candidate born in the twentieth century. Early life and career Dewey was born and raised in Owosso, Michigan, where his father edited the local newspaper. The future politician graduated from the University of Michigan in 1923 and in 1925 received a law degree from Columbia Law School in New York City. During the 1930s Dewey was a New York City prosecutor, and in 1936 he helped in the conviction of Lucky Luciano and the indictment and imprisonment of Richard Whitney, the former president of the New York Stock Exchange. In 1939 Dewey prosecuted American Nazi leader Fritz Kuhn for embezzlement, thereby crippling Kuhn's organization. Mobster Dutch Schultz was reportedly killed because he was planning to assassinate Dewey, which his compatriots felt would draw too much unwanted law enforcement attention to their operations. He was elected District Attorney of New York County (Manhattan) in 1937. Governorship of New York In 1938, at the age of 36, Dewey first ran unsuccessfully for Governor of New York on his record as a criminal prosecutor. His relatively strong showing against incumbent Governor Herbert Lehman, FDR's successor, meant that Dewey's career was not greatly damaged by this defeat. He was successful in his second attempt at the office in 1942 and was reelected in 1946 in a landslide, followed by reelection in 1950. He was regarded as an honest and efficient governor. He cut taxes, doubled state aid to education, increased salaries for state employees, and reduced the state's debt by over $100 million. Additionally, he put through the first state law in the country which prohibited racial discrimination in employment. As governor, Dewey also signed legislation that created the State University of New York. Presidential candidacies Dewey started running for the 1940 Republican nomination in 1939 but he would lose it to Wendell Willkie, who went on to be defeated in the general election. At that time Dewey was considered an isolationist, like Wilkie's other rivals, Senators Robert Taft and Arthur Vandenberg. Dewey's position evolved during the 1940s and he was generally considered an internationalist and classed with the moderates in later years. Election of 1944 Dewey sought and won the Republican nomination in 1944 but was defeated in the 1944 presidential election by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the popular wartime leader. Dewey, who believed that the New Deal was excessive, had campaigned vigorously against Roosevelt and did manage to get more votes than any Republican candidate since Herbert Hoover in 1928. Election of 1948 The Chicago Daily Tribune, like most of the press, believed Dewey would comfortably win the election, as shown by this post-election headline, which Harry Truman happily displays in this photo.He is probably best known as the Republican candidate in the 1948 presidential election in which, due to miscalculations by pollsters and the press, he was projected as the winner. The Chicago Daily Tribune had even gone so far as to print "DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN" as its post-election headline, though the election was actually won by Harry S. Truman, the incumbent. In this election, Dewey was the first presidential candidate to have his own polling unit. The unit, like all major U.S. pollsters, showed that Dewey would win in a landslide. Indeed, given Truman's sinking popularity, Dewey had seemed unstoppable. Republicans figured that all they had to do was to avoid destroying a certain election victory, and as such, Dewey did not take any risks. He spoke in platitudes, trying to transcend politics. Speech after speech was filled with empty statements of the obvious, such as the famous quote: "Your future is bright, very bright indeed, brighter than a bald man's dome". An editorial in the Louisville Courier-Journal summed it up: No presidential candidate in the future will be so inept that four of his major speeches can be boiled down to these historic four sentences: Agriculture is important. Our rivers are full of fish. You cannot have freedom without liberty. Our future lies ahead. [1] It was believed that Dewey's poor showing in 1944 was partly due to being too aggressive, a fault which his campaign aimed to avoid this time. Dewey was not as conservative as the Republican Congress, which also proved problematic for him. Truman tied Dewey to the "do-nothing" Congress. However, unlike Robert Taft, a powerful Senator from Ohio and rival for the nomination in 1948, Dewey was no longer an isolationist. He supported the Marshall Plan, aid to Greece, recognition of Israel, and the Berlin airlift.
Earl Warren (March 19, 1891 July 9, 1974) was a California district attorney of Alameda County, the 30th Governor of California, and the 14th Chief Justice of the United States (from 1953 to 1969). As Chief Justice, his term of office was marked by numerous rulings affecting, among other things, the legal status of racial segregation, civil rights, separation of church and state and police arrest procedure in the United States. Education and early career Earl Warren was born in Los Angeles, California, to Matt Warren, a Norwegian immigrant, and Christine "Chrystal" Hernlund, a Swedish immigrant. Matt Warren was a longtime employee of the Southern Pacific Railroad. Earl grew up in Bakersfield, California, and attended the University of California, Berkeley, both as an undergraduate (B.A. 1912) and as a law student at Boalt Hall earning his Bachelor of Law in 1914. While at Berkeley, Warren joined the Sigma Phi Society, a fraternal organization with which he maintained lifelong ties. Warren was admitted to the California bar in 1914. Warren then worked for five years for private law firms in the San Francisco Bay Area. He began working for San Francisco County in 1920 and in 1925 was appointed as District Attorney of Alameda County when the incumbent resigned. He was re-elected to three four-year terms. As a tough-on-crime District Attorney and reformer who professionalized the DAs office, Warren had a reputation for high-handedness; however, none of his convictions were ever overturned on appeal. Political career Warren became a well-known figure in California and was appointed to the Regents of the University of California while district attorney. In 1939, he became Attorney General of the State of California. He was elected Governor of California, in 1942, as a Republican. California law at the time allowed individuals to run in any primary election they chose. In 1946, Warren managed the singular feat of winning the Republican, Democratic, and Progressive primary elections and thus ran unopposed in the 1946 general election. He was elected to a third term (as a Republican) in 1950. Warren's state service was marked by his support for the internment of Japanese and Americans of Japanese descent during World War II. However, it was also marked by laying the infrastructure to support a two-decade boom that lasted from the end of World War II until the mid-1960s. In particular, Warren and University of California President Clark Kerr presided over construction of a renowned public university system that provided inexpensive, high quality education to two generations of Californians. Warren ran for Vice President of the United States in 1948 on a ticket with Thomas Dewey. They lost narrowly to Harry Truman and Alben Barkley. Supreme Court In 1953, Warren was appointed Chief Justice of the United States by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who commented that "he represents the kind of political, economic, and social thinking that I believe we need on the Supreme Court. . . . [H]e has a national name for integrity, uprightness, and courage that, again, I believe we need on the Court."[1] To the surprise of many, Warren was a much more liberal justice than had been anticipated. As a result, President Eisenhower later remarked that nominating Warren for the Chief Justice seat "was the biggest damned fool mistake I've ever made in my life." Warren was able to craft a long series of landmark decisions including Brown v. Board of Education, 347 US 483 (1954), which overthrew the segregation of public schools; the "one man, one vote" cases of 19621964, which dramatically altered the relative power of rural regions in many states; Hernandez v. Texas, which gave Mexican-Americans the right to serve on juries; and Miranda v. Arizona, 384 US 436 (1966), which required that certain rights of a person being interrogated while in police custody be clearly explained, including the right to an attorney (often called the "Miranda warning"). At the direct request of President Lyndon Johnson, and against his better judgment, Warren headed what became known as the Warren Commission to investigate the circumstances of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The Commission eventually concluded that the assassination was the act of a single individual, Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone. The Commission's findings have long been controversial. (Earl Warren was a character in the Oliver Stone film, JFK, portrayed by New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison.) Warren retired from the Supreme Court in 1969. He was affectionately known by many as the "Superchief," although he became a lightning rod for controversy among conservatives: signs declaring "Impeach Earl Warren" could be seen across the South throughout the 1960s. Warren has a high school named after him in Downey, California: Warren High School. It should be noted that this high school, founded in 1956, was originally called "Earl Warren High School." Warren had attended the dedication of the school and given a speech. In the later 1960s, the Downey Unified School District's Board of Education officially changed the name of the school to simply "Warren High School" in an effort to discredit the Chief Justice for his liberalism and also to distance the Los Angeles suburb, which was then nearly all-white and very heavily Republican, from the Chief Justice who put an end to school segregation. Earl Warren Middle School in Solana Beach, California is also named after him. In 1977, Fourth College, one of the six undergraduate colleges at the University of California, San Diego, was renamed Earl Warren College in his honor. Warren was married to a young widow born in Sweden named Nina Palmquist Meyers. He died in Washington, DC. The Earl Warren Bill of Rights Project is named in his honor. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously in 1981.
Earl Warren (March 19, 1891 July 9, 1974) was a California district attorney of Alameda County, the 30th Governor of California, and the 14th Chief Justice of the United States (from 1953 to 1969). As Chief Justice, his term of office was marked by numerous rulings affecting, among other things, the legal status of racial segregation, civil rights, separation of church and state and police arrest procedure in the United States. Education and early career Earl Warren was born in Los Angeles, California, to Matt Warren, a Norwegian immigrant, and Christine "Chrystal" Hernlund, a Swedish immigrant. Matt Warren was a longtime employee of the Southern Pacific Railroad. Earl grew up in Bakersfield, California, and attended the University of California, Berkeley, both as an undergraduate (B.A. 1912) and as a law student at Boalt Hall earning his Bachelor of Law in 1914. While at Berkeley, Warren joined the Sigma Phi Society, a fraternal organization with which he maintained lifelong ties. Warren was admitted to the California bar in 1914. Warren then worked for five years for private law firms in the San Francisco Bay Area. He began working for San Francisco County in 1920 and in 1925 was appointed as District Attorney of Alameda County when the incumbent resigned. He was re-elected to three four-year terms. As a tough-on-crime District Attorney and reformer who professionalized the DAs office, Warren had a reputation for high-handedness; however, none of his convictions were ever overturned on appeal. Political career Warren became a well-known figure in California and was appointed to the Regents of the University of California while district attorney. In 1939, he became Attorney General of the State of California. He was elected Governor of California, in 1942, as a Republican. California law at the time allowed individuals to run in any primary election they chose. In 1946, Warren managed the singular feat of winning the Republican, Democratic, and Progressive primary elections and thus ran unopposed in the 1946 general election. He was elected to a third term (as a Republican) in 1950. Warren's state service was marked by his support for the internment of Japanese and Americans of Japanese descent during World War II. However, it was also marked by laying the infrastructure to support a two-decade boom that lasted from the end of World War II until the mid-1960s. In particular, Warren and University of California President Clark Kerr presided over construction of a renowned public university system that provided inexpensive, high quality education to two generations of Californians. Warren ran for Vice President of the United States in 1948 on a ticket with Thomas Dewey. They lost narrowly to Harry Truman and Alben Barkley. Supreme Court In 1953, Warren was appointed Chief Justice of the United States by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who commented that "he represents the kind of political, economic, and social thinking that I believe we need on the Supreme Court. . . . [H]e has a national name for integrity, uprightness, and courage that, again, I believe we need on the Court."[1] To the surprise of many, Warren was a much more liberal justice than had been anticipated. As a result, President Eisenhower later remarked that nominating Warren for the Chief Justice seat "was the biggest damned fool mistake I've ever made in my life." Warren was able to craft a long series of landmark decisions including Brown v. Board of Education, 347 US 483 (1954), which overthrew the segregation of public schools; the "one man, one vote" cases of 19621964, which dramatically altered the relative power of rural regions in many states; Hernandez v. Texas, which gave Mexican-Americans the right to serve on juries; and Miranda v. Arizona, 384 US 436 (1966), which required that certain rights of a person being interrogated while in police custody be clearly explained, including the right to an attorney (often called the "Miranda warning"). At the direct request of President Lyndon Johnson, and against his better judgment, Warren headed what became known as the Warren Commission to investigate the circumstances of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The Commission eventually concluded that the assassination was the act of a single individual, Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone. The Commission's findings have long been controversial. (Earl Warren was a character in the Oliver Stone film, JFK, portrayed by New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison.) Warren retired from the Supreme Court in 1969. He was affectionately known by many as the "Superchief," although he became a lightning rod for controversy among conservatives: signs declaring "Impeach Earl Warren" could be seen across the South throughout the 1960s. Warren has a high school named after him in Downey, California: Warren High School. It should be noted that this high school, founded in 1956, was originally called "Earl Warren High School." Warren had attended the dedication of the school and given a speech. In the later 1960s, the Downey Unified School District's Board of Education officially changed the name of the school to simply "Warren High School" in an effort to discredit the Chief Justice for his liberalism and also to distance the Los Angeles suburb, which was then nearly all-white and very heavily Republican, from the Chief Justice who put an end to school segregation. Earl Warren Middle School in Solana Beach, California is also named after him. In 1977, Fourth College, one of the six undergraduate colleges at the University of California, San Diego, was renamed Earl Warren College in his honor. Warren was married to a young widow born in Sweden named Nina Palmquist Meyers. He died in Washington, DC. The Earl Warren Bill of Rights Project is named in his honor. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously in 1981.
