Cornelius P. Cotter

Cornelius (Neil) Philip Cotter (March 18, 1924 – July 12, 1999) was an American professor of political science. His research focused on civil rights and American political parties.

Early life and education Cotter was born in New York City to family involved in local politics. (His parents were reform Democrats; Cotter would later join the Republican Party.) He did not finish high school, but worked on the docks during World War II. After an injury, he spent a year in the hospital before enlisting in the Navy in 1943. Cotter served in the Marshall Islands, assigned to managing records of military trials. While he attended school, he supported himself and his family as the business manager of a New Jersey summer theater company. He completed further studies at the London School of Economics as a Sheldon Traveling Fellow in 1951-1952. The committee was established in 1959 by Meade Alcorn, then the Republican National Chairman. President Dwight D. Eisenhower and other party leaders were concerned that the GOP would be defeated at the polls in 1958 unless they could articulate their policy positions. The committee, which consisted of 44 Republicans from various backgrounds, was chaired by Charles H. Percy, president of Bell and Howell.

President Eisenhower appointed Cotter to the staff of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission in 1960. He worked with the commission on research and hearings, particularly in the South, until 1963. He continued to work with the Civil Rights Commission after moving to Wisconsin, serving on the state advisory committee. They raised 8 children and step-children.

He died in 1999 after sustaining injuries in a car crash. Party Organizations in American Politics (Praeger, 1984), co-authored with James L. Gibson, John F. Bibby, and Robert J. Huckshorn "The Black student in the Wisconsin State universities system" (1971), United States Commission on Civil Rights, Wisconsin State Committee Practical Politics in the United States (Allyn and Bacon, 1969), co-authored with Herbert E. Alexander Jet Tanker Crash: Urban Response to Military Disaster (University Press of Kansas, 1968) Politics Without Power: The National Party Committees (first published by Atherton Press, 1964), co-authored with Bernard C. Hennessy "Civil Rights '63" (1963), primary author "Freedom to the Free" (1963), primary author "50 States Report" (1961), primary author Issues of the Sixties (Wadsworth, 1961), co-authored with Leonard Freedman Government and Private Enterprise (1960) Powers of the President During Crises (Da Capo Press, 1960), co-authored with John Malcolm Smith