John Pastore: Tailor's Son, First Italian American Senator, Mr. Rogers

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John Pastore was born in 1907 in the Federal Hill neighborhood of Providence, Rhode Island, the second of five children of Michele and Erminia Pastore, who had arrived from Potenza, Italy, in 1899. His father's death when John was nine sent him to work delivering suits, running errands for a law office and operating a foot press in a jewelry factory. He graduated with honors from Classical High School in 1925, earned a law degree through a Northeastern University night program held at the YMCA, and opened a practice in his family's basement in 1932, at the depth of the Great Depression. With few paying clients, he turned to Democratic politics, winning a Rhode Island House seat in 1934 and later serving as an assistant attorney general.

He was elected lieutenant governor in 1944 and became governor when J. Howard McGrath resigned on October 6, 1945, to become U.S. Solicitor General. His 1946 win made him the first Italian American elected governor anywhere in the country, and he enacted primary election laws, a sales tax, a corporate income tax and a $20 million bonus for World War II veterans. When McGrath left the Senate in 1949 to become Attorney General, Pastore won the 1950 special election and became the first Italian American elected to the U.S. Senate, where he served 26 years. He helped pass the civil rights acts of 1957, 1960, 1964 and 1968 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, gave the keynote at the 1964 Democratic National Convention, and as chairman of the Subcommittee on Communications treated the airwaves as a public trust.

• In May 1969 President Nixon proposed cutting public broadcasting funds from $20 million to $10 million, and Fred Rogers' six minute testimony gave Pastore goosebumps and saved the money.
• The following year the appropriation for public broadcasting rose to $22 million.
• Weeks before the Rogers hearing, the Smothers Brothers mocked him with a satirical award, and the network refused to air that episode.
• He complained publicly about a French actress wearing a low cut evening gown on the Merv Griffin talk show.
• In 1970 he beat Catholic priest and future TV host John McLaughlin 68 to 32 percent; he retired in 1976 and died in 2000 at 93.