A lawyer and politician, John Vliet Lindsay (born 1921) was a member of the U.S. Congress from 1959 to 1965 and mayor of New York from 1966 to 1973. He was one of the most publicly visible and controversial urban leaders of his time.

John Vliet Lindsay was born November 24, 1921, into a family of five children of George Nelson Lindsay, an investment banker of English descent, and Florence Eleanor Vliet Lindsay. This upper class Episcopalian family sent young John Lindsay to St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire, and then on to Yale for a B.A. degree in 1943. Entering the U.S. Naval Reserve as an ensign officer in May of that year, Lindsay served as a gunnery officer during World War II, earning five battle stars and the rank of senior lieutenant at his discharge in 1946. He received a law degree from Yale in 1948. The following year he was admitted...