NEW YORK (AP) – Republican Donald Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday followed a long string of political events at the storied New York City arena.
The gardens have hosted both Democratic and Republican national conventions since the 1800s, and in 1939 they hosted back-to-back pro-Nazi and Communist rallies in the run-up to World War II, drawing thousands of people. participated. In 1962, Marilyn Monroe took the stage to sing “Happy Birthday” to President John F. Kennedy, adding to the legend surrounding what the New York Knicks announcer called “the most famous arena in the world.” I did.
Here are some highlights of the political history of Madison Square Garden, which has long occupied four buildings.
Grover Cleveland makes a comeback
Grover Cleveland is the only U.S. president to serve two non-consecutive terms. Mr. Trump hopes to be second.
After the 1892 Democratic National Convention was held in Chicago and nominated Mr. Cleveland (who was then out of office after serving from 1885 to 1889), he met at Madison Square Garden in his hometown of New York. He accepted the nomination in his second speech.
The Evening World reported, “A band stationed on one of the balconies played popular music, and the audience was joined by the refrains of “Tala La Boom De I” and “Four Years After Grover.” participated.”
Mr. Cleveland promised to lower tariffs, but Mr. Trump said imposing huge tariffs on foreign goods would boost the U.S. economy. Cleveland then defeated Republican Benjamin Harrison to become the 24th and 22nd president.
103 votes setting a record
The Democratic Party, which met for the second time at Madison Square Garden in 1924, was deeply divided over immigration, Prohibition, and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan. The race was deadlocked between California’s William Gibbs McAdoo and New York Governor Alfred E. Smith, who was opposed by the Klan because he was a Roman Catholic.
Despite repeated voting from June 24th to July 9th, he was unable to win the nomination. The Associated Press reported on July 2 that McAdoo “reached the coveted goal of 500 votes, thanks to the hard work, persuasion and subterfuge of floor managers who declared the job was not done yet.” Ta.
It wasn’t enough. After both McAdoo and Smith dropped out, a compromise candidate, former West Virginia Congressman John W. Davis, was nominated on the 103rd ballot. He later lost to Republican Calvin Coolidge.
Hoover and Roosevelt speeches
The first two gardens were located near Madison Square (where Broadway and Fifth Avenue meet at 23rd Street), while the third garden was located northwest of the district at Eighth Avenue and West 50th Street . It opened in 1925 and hosted the campaigns of Herbert Hoover and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Facing Democratic President Roosevelt, who was promoting a “New Deal for the American People,” incumbent Republican President Hoover, in a speech on October 21, 1932, opposed “proposals that would change the whole foundation of our national life.” Then he said.
Roosevelt defeated Hoover and spoke at the Garden again during the 1936 and 1940 campaigns.
In a fiery speech on October 31, 1936, he denounced “the sworn enemies of peace: business and financial monopolies, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, and war profits.” President Roosevelt said, “Never in the history of our country have the powers that be been so united behind a candidate as they are today.” “They are united in hating me, and I welcome their hatred.”
Nazis and Communists come together
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On February 20, 1939, more than 20,000 people attended a garden rally organized by the pro-Nazi German American Bund, which displayed a swastika next to a giant portrait of George Washington.
James Wheeler Hill, the group’s national secretary, claimed that if the first US president were alive, he “would be friends with Adolf Hitler.” Bund Party leader Fritz Kuhn, wearing a Nazi armband, declared a “socially just, white, Gentile-controlled America” and a “Gentile-controlled America, free from Jewish Moscow-led domination.” called for a labor union.
Isadore Greenbaum, 26, a Jewish demonstrator, rushed to the stage. The Associated Press reported what happened next.
“Immediately a dozen Stormtroopers descended on him, knocking him down and beating him with his head in his arms, his dark hair flowing. A squad of police pushed the Stormtroopers aside and shot him from the platform floor. I picked him up and ran to the exit holding him high above my head. Most of his clothes were torn from his body. He was then arrested for disorderly conduct.”
The 1930s were also the period when the Communist Party reached its peak in popularity in the United States. Police estimate that between 16,000 and 17,000 people attended a communist rally at the park a week after the Bund rally. CPUSA General Secretary Earl Browder said the accusation that American communists took orders from Moscow amounted to a “smear attack” spread by supporters of the “Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Alliance of Anti-Communist Warmakers.” The Associated Press reported.
presidential birthday celebration
On May 19, 1962, at a Democratic Party fundraiser and birthday celebration for John F. Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe serenaded the president in a skintight dress.
It was the hottest May Day in New York City history, with temperatures reaching 99 degrees (37 degrees Celsius). The Associated Press reported, “After a sultry rendition of Marilyn Monroe’s ‘Happy Birthday,’ there was still a wave of heat in the Garden when the president said, ‘I can retire from politics now.'” .
Monroe and Kennedy both died within a year and a half, her from a drug overdose and he from an assassin’s bullet.
George Wallace’s New York campaign
The current Garden opened in 1968 about a mile south of its predecessor Garden, which is home to the NBA’s Knicks and NHL’s Rangers and hosts musical performances, award battles, and other spectacles.
Former and future Alabama Governor George Wallace, speaking during the 1968 presidential campaign as a candidate for the American Independence Party, called the kind of populist nationalism that defined President Trump’s “Make America Great” “American Stand up for the cause,” he urged. Again” movement.
Wallace’s campaign was less overtly racist than Alabama, but it promoted law and order. When demonstrators disrupted the Garden rally, Wallace asked why Democratic and Republican leaders were “bowing down to these anarchists.”
“There are no riots in Alabama. They riot there and the first person to pick up a brick gets shot in the brain and that’s it,” Wallace said.
Republican Richard Nixon then defeated Democrats Hubert Humphrey and Wallace to become president.
Democratic and Republican party convention venues
The garden was also the site of the 1976, 1980, and 1992 Democratic National Conventions and the 2004 Republican National Convention.
Jimmy Carter cited the Vietnam War and Watergate in accepting the nomination. “Our country has lived through difficult times,” Carter said. “This is a time of healing. We want to have faith again. We want to be proud again. We just want to know the truth again.”
Carter returned in 1980 and faced a challenge from Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy, who lacked the necessary delegates. An Associated Press reporter wrote that Kennedy’s “futile fight to overturn the odds was symbolized by the convention center, where Kennedy’s small series of rooms were replaced by five large cars decorated in Carter’s campaign green.” It contrasted with the white trailer from which the president’s men were running the event.”
Carter won the nomination but lost to Republican Ronald Reagan.
When Democrats met again in 1992, Bill Clinton accepted the nomination in a 52-minute speech that “tested the attention of much of the partisan audience,” said Associated Press political reporter David Espo. Ta. Mr. Clinton pledged to “run for leaner government, not meaner.” A government that expands opportunity, not bureaucracy. ”
The Republican Party held its only Madison Square Garden convention in 2004, when New York was still reeling from the World Trade Center attacks.
President George W. Bush said, “We will build a safer world and a more hopeful America. Nothing will stop us.”
More than 1,800 people were arrested in suburban cities for demonstrating against the Iraq war and for other causes.
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Researcher Rhonda Schaffner contributed to this report.
