Katherine M. Garry

 Above, 2012; Below, 2015

Katherine M. Garry, December 28, 1940 -

VP candidate for Independent (1984)

Running mate with nominee: Frederick Douglass Kirkpatrick (1933–1986)
Popular vote: 0 (0.00%)
Electoral vote: 0/538

The campaign:

The multi-talented Frederick Douglass Kirkpatrick was a singer/songwriter, minister, civil rights activist who had worked with Martin Luther King Jr., and a recording artist who used music to teach listeners about African American history and culture. He was also fittingly named after Frederick Douglass who incidentally is also one of the third party VPs profiled in this blog.

The 1984 election was Kirkpatrick's third bid for President that I am aware of. He had run in 1976 as part of the National Black Political Assembly and in 1980 under the banner of the Freedom Labor Party. If he had running-mates in those elections I have been unable to identify them.

But in 1984 he did indeed have a VP nominee according to the FEC, Katherine M. Garry. Both of them had been Fellowship of Reconciliation Martin Luther King Jr. Award recipients-- Kirkpatrick in 1979 (the first time this award was bestowed) and Garry in 1982.

During the campaign season Garry had been arrested for disorderly conduct at the Jacob Javits Symposium, SUNY Stony Brook, Oct. 17, 1983. She was handcuffed, manhandled and then briefly thrown in jail while in the process of defending two students who were holding up a sign critical of Reagan's policy in Central America.

There is not a lot of information out there about this ticket in 1984, but it would be safe to conclude the campaign had a grassroots community activist-based progressive platform.

Both nominees were apparently residents of New York at the time, which would have posed a Constitutional problem in the event they won. And if they had somehow survived that legal challenge and assumed office, Garry would have become President upon the untimely death of Kirkpatrick on Aug. 16, 1986.

Election history: none

Other occupations: co-chair of Missing Pages of America Committee, member of Many Races Cultural Foundation, community housing activist

Notes:
Watergate buffs should try to locate Kirkpatrick singing "The Ballad of Frank Wills."

James William Ford

James William Ford, December 22, 1893 (Pratt City, Ala.) – June 21, 1957 (New York, NY)

VP candidate for Communist Party USA (1932, 1936, 1940)

Running mate with nominee (1932): William Z. Foster (1881-1961)
Running mate with nominee (1936, 1940): Earl R. Browder (1891-1973)

Popular vote (1932): 103,307 (0.26%)
Popular vote (1936): 79,315 (0.17%)
Popular vote (1940): 48,557 (0.10%)

Electoral vote (1932, 1936, 1940): 0/531

The campaign (1932):

In an era when thousands of Americans were moving to the Soviet Union, the newly renamed Communist Party USA had their best opportunity to recruit new members.

Pro-Stalinist William Z. Foster was nominated for his third presidential run, with James W. "Jim" Ford as his running mate.

Although Ford is frequently touted as "the first African American to run for a presidential ticket in U.S. history," that is not entirely true although he was the first to be on a ticket where a significant number of votes were recorded from numerous state ballots. But we cannot ignore Frederick Douglass (Equal Rights Party 1872), William Thomas Scott/George Edwin Taylor/William C. Payne (National Negro Liberty Party 1904), and Simon Peter William Drew (Interracial Independent Political Party 1928).

It is true that the CPUSA was one the first political parties to be integrated and denounce segregation, but it was still demographically a very white party.

The 1932 CPUSA platform called for a United States of Soviet America and summarized itself with six points:

1. Unemployment and social insurance at the expense of the state and employers.                                2. Against Hoover's wage-cutting policy.  
3. Emergency relief for the impoverished farmers without restrictions by the government and banks; exemption of impoverished farmers from taxes, and no forced collection of rents or debts.
4. Equal rights for the Negroes and self-determination for the Black Belt.
5. Against capitalist terror; against all forms of suppression of the political rights of the workers.
6. Against imperialist war; for the defense of the Chinese people and of the Soviet Union.
On Sept. 8 Foster suffered a major heart attack on the campaign trail in Illinois which was followed by a mental breakdown. After the election he went to the USSR to recover, not returning to the US until 1934.

1932 would be the high point for the CPUSA at the presidential ballot box with a final national result of 0.26%, landing in a very distant 4th place. They were an option for voters in 39 states, with their best showing being Montana (0.82%) where in Sheridan County they polled 17.74%. 

The campaign (1936):

Earl Browder, a less militant leader of CPUSA than his rival Foster, had stepped into a leadership role after the latter had been sidelined by his failing health. Browder was more willing to work the system and made overtures to the Socialists and other groups to form a united front for pro-labor and anti-fascist activities. Supposedly Browder even offered to be the running mate with Socialist Norman Thomas in 1936.

With votes recorded in 35 states their best showing was in New York (0.64%) and California (0.41%). In some states their popular vote was in single or double digits.

The campaign (1940):

The Nazi-Soviet pact of August, 1939 had seriously undermined the CPUSA's anti-fascist rhetoric and the Party began to lose members, especially artists, writers, and intellectuals who had signed up in the early 1930s. On top of that, presidential nominee Browder had been tried and convicted of passport fraud in 1940, and during the campaign was free while the case was being appealed, which didn't turn out so well for him. He began his 14-month prison sentence in March, 1941.

On the ballot in 23 states, their strongest finish was in California (0.42%).

The CPUSA would not appear on the presidential ballot again until 1968.

Election history:
1930 - US House of Representatives (NY) (Communist Party USA) - defeated
1934 - US House of Representatives (NY) (Communist Party USA) - defeated

Other occupations: blacksmith's helper, machinist's helper, blast furnace laborer, US Signal Corps in France during WWI, mattress factory worker, Post Office worker, author

Buried: cremated

Notes:
First person to run as a third party VP three times.
Attended Fisk University
Joined the Workers (Communist) Party of America in 1926.
In Moscow and Hamburg as an open Communist agent in 1928-1930
In Spain supporting the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, 1937.
Demoted from his executive position in CPUSA in 1944-1945 due to his association with Earl
 Browder, who had been expelled from the Party.
When Ford was young, his grandfather had been burned alive by white mob.
Born James William Foursche "with the accent on the last syllable."

Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass, ca. February 1818 (Cordova, Md.) – February 20, 1895 (Washington, DC)

VP candidate for Equal Rights Party (aka People's Party aka Cosmo-Political Party aka National Radical Reformers) (1872)

Running mate with nominee: Victoria Woodhull (1838-1927)
Popular vote: 0 (0%)            
Electoral vote: 0/352

The campaign:

Our brief thumbnail format cannot really give justice to just how far ahead of their time and how visionary both names on this ticket were. Even after a century and a half these two seem so modern. 

The fact that Woodhull was female and had an African-American running mate stirred up so much controversy that little notice was paid to her age-- she was too young to be President according to the requirements of the Constitution.

Douglass had no role in the campaign. He was nominated without his permission, did not participate in any electioneering for Woodhull, and apparently never made any public statement regarding being a VP candidate. On the contrary, he did some campaigning for Grant and was a presidential elector at large for New York for the Republicans.

The Woodhull/Douglass ticket did not appear on any official ballots but no doubt they did receive a number of write-in votes.

Election history:
1888 - Nomination for US President (Republican) - defeated

Other occupations: slave, preacher, abolitionist, author, newspaper publisher, human rights activist, US Ambassador to Haiti 1889-1891, US Marshal for Washington DC, Recorder of Deeds for Washington DC

Buried: Mount Hope Cemetery (Rochester, NY)

Notes:

Douglass quotes--

"I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence."

"I am a Republican, a black, dyed in the wool Republican, and I never intend to belong to any other party than the party of freedom and progress."

"Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground."

"No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck."

"The great fact underlying the claim for universal suffrage is that every man is himself and belongs to himself, and represents his own individuality, not only in form and features, but in thought and feeling. And the same is true of woman. She is herself, and can be nobody else than herself. Her selfhood is as perfect and as absolute as is the selfhood of man."

"Whatever the future may have in store for us, one thing is certain; this new revolution in human thought will never go backward. When a great truth once gets abroad in the world, no power on earth can imprison it, or prescribe its limits, or suppress it. It is bound to go on till it becomes the thought of the world. Such a truth is woman’s right to equal liberty with man. She was born with it. It was hers before she comprehended it. It is inscribed upon all the powers and faculties of her soul, and no custom, law, or usage can ever destroy it. Now that it has got fairly fixed in the minds of the few, it is bound to become fixed in the minds of the many, and be supported at last by a great cloud of witnesses, which no man can number and no power can withstand."