John Bartlow Martin

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

Martin was born in Hamilton, Ohio to John and Laura Martin, and as a young child moved to Indianapolis, Indiana. Martin grew up in an unhappy childhood, plagued by the death of his two brothers from scarlet fever. He graduated from high school at age 16 and was expelled in his first year from DePauw University, but later graduated there with a degree in 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 elderly. His work appeared in such publications as Saturday Evening Post, LIFE, Colliers, Atlantic Monthly, and Harper's. He won the highest magazine publishing honor, the Benjamin Franklin Magazine Award, for four consecutive years.^[1] Martin was hired in 1952 as a speechwriter by Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson, and later worked on the John F. Kennedy presidential campaign. He served as American Ambassador to the Dominican Republic from 1962 to 1964. Martin arrived shortly after the assassination of Rafael Trujillo and became very close with their new president Juan Bosch. Martin resigned shortly after the John F. Kennedy assassination, but returned to the Dominican Republic as a special envoy in 1965 during American invasion dispatched by President Johnson. He died in 1987 of throat cancer.

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

External Links

• John Bartlow Martin Papers at the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University

References

1. ^ The Press: The Fact Finder, TIME, 12 May 1958

• JOHN BARTLOW MARTIN, 71, AUTHOR AND ENVOY, DIES
• Martin, John Bartlow (Harper's Magazine)
• John Bartlow Martin: Profile
• [1]
• Our Land, Our Literature: John Martin

Persondata
Name	Martin, John Bartlow
Alternative names
Short description	American author, speechwriter and confidant
Date of birth	3 August 1915
Place of birth	Hamilton, Ohio
Date of death	3 January 1987
Place of death