John Bartlow Martin

Martin on March 2, 1962

John Bartlow Martin (August 4, 1915 – January 3, 1987) was an American diplomat, author of 15 books, ambassador, and speechwriter and confidant to many Democratic politicians including Adlai Stevenson, John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Hubert Humphrey.

Early life

Martin was born on August 4, 1915, in Hamilton, Ohio, to John, a carpenter and contractor, and Laura Bartlow Martin, and as a young child moved to Indianapolis. Martin grew up in an unhappy childhood, plagued by the death of his two brothers. He graduated from high school at age 16 and was expelled in his first year from DePauw University, but he later graduated there with a degree in journalism.

Journalism

With the impact of his dark childhood and onset of the Great Depression, Martin's early journalism career focused on deep concern for the underprivileged and forgotten, such as criminals, the impoverished, the working class, and the mentally ill. His work appeared in such publications as Saturday Evening Post, LIFE, Colliers, Atlantic Monthly, and Harper's. He won the highest magazine writing honor, the Benjamin Franklin Magazine Award, for four consecutive years. A true crime article Martin wrote, "Smashing the Bookie Gang Marauders" was made into the successful 1949 movie Scene of the Crime. It was the only movie based on his work.

Political career

Martin was hired in 1952 as a speechwriter by Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson, and later worked on the Kennedy presidential campaign. Martin was sent by Kennedy on a fact-finding mission to the Dominican Republic after the assassination of the dictator Rafael Trujillo in May 1961, and delivered his report in September. In gratitude for his analysis, he became the U.S. Ambassador to the Dominican Republic, serving from March 9, 1962, to September 25, 1963. As Ambassador, Martin was a critic of the new president, Juan Bosch. According to the historian Stephen G. Rabe, Martin "fancied himself a Roman consul whose word should be law in the Dominican Republic." Martin resigned shortly after the Kennedy assassination, on the day in which Bosch was toppled in a coup d'etat, but returned to the Dominican Republic as a special envoy in 1965 during the invasion dispatched by Johnson.

Death and legacy

He died on January 3, 1987, in Highland Park, Illinois, of throat cancer.

In 2008, The Library of America selected his story "Butcher's Dozen" for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American True Crime.

Selected bibliography

• Adlai Stevenson of Illinois (828 pages), Doubleday & Co., Garden City, NY, 1976.
• Adlai Stevenson and the World (946 pages), Doubleday & Co., Garden City, NY, 1977.
• Break Down the Walls (310 pages), Ballantine Books, New York, NY, 1954 ; an account of the 1952 riots in the State Prison of Southern Michigan at Jackson

Further reading

• Boomhower, Ray E. John Bartlow Martin: A Voice for the Underdog (Indiana University Press, 2015) xviii, 386 pp.
• Boomhower, Ray E. "Fighting the Good Fight: John Bartlow Martin and Hubert Humphrey's 1968 Presidential Campaign." Indiana Magazine of History (2020) 116#1 pp 1–29.

External links

• John Bartlow Martin, 71, Author and Envoy, Dies (New York Times)
• Martin, John Bartlow (Harper's Magazine)
• John Bartlow Martin: Profile
• Our Land, Our Literature: John Martin
• John Bartlow Martin Papers at the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University