American Communist History, Vol. 3, No. 2, 2004

Communist History at the Tamiment Library MICHAEL NASH*

The Tamiment Library at New York University is an internationally-known center devoted to the history labor and progressive politics. It traces its origins to the Rand School for Social Science, a pioneering workers education program founded in 1906 in New York City, and located just off Union Square on East 15th Street. The Rand School library was created to support its worker education programs that consisted of broad-based liberal arts courses, instruction in trade union administration, and the history of Socialism. The Rand School was affiliated with the Socialist Party of the state of New York and had a close working relationship with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers and the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. Many of the students were members of these needle trades unions and a large number of them were Socialist Party activists and supporters. These students and their teachers, which included well-known progressives such as Scott Nearing, Charles Beard, and Florence Kelley believed that the mission of labor education was to “make workers articulate and train them to be directors of the class struggle.”1 Serving this constituency, the Rand School library from the very beginning defined its mission relatively broadly and acquired research materials beyond what was necessary to support the programs of the school. The core collecting areas were labor history, trade union administration, and the history of the Left. By the late 1920s, the Rand School was known for having one of the best collections in the United States documenting the history of Socialism. In its early years it was the only library in the country where one could find English language translations of pioneering works by Marxist theoreticians such as Karl Kautsky, P. J. Proudhon, V. I. Lenin, and G. V. Plekhanov. When sectarian conflict began to consume the Left in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, the Rand School was one of the few sites where Social Democrats, Anarchists, and Communists could share a platform and engage in civil discourse. The library’s growing collections reflected this broad, tolerant approach to radicalism. During the 1920s, 30s, and 40s there was a steady acquisition of books, pamphlets, and even some archival materials documenting the history of Socialism, Communism, Anarchism, from all theoretical perspectives with a *Michael Nash is the Director of the Tamiment Library, New York University. New York City, NY. 1 Mailly, Bertha Howell. “The Rand School of Social Sciences,” in Workers Education in the United States, New York: Workers Education Bureau of America, 1921. ISSN 1474-3892 print/ISSN 1474-3906 online/04/020267–19 © 2004 Historians of American Communism DOI: 10.1080/147389042000309790

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particular emphasis on the relationship of the Left to the trade union movement.2 The commitment by the Rand School library to documenting the history of the Left in all its tendencies continued for more than a half century despite periods of financial instability brought about by the Great Depression, World War II, and later the passage of the G.I. Bill of Rights which provided educational opportunities at four year colleges with which the school could not compete. Finally, in 1952 at the height of the McCarthy period the school found itself labeled as a subversive organization and lost its tax exempt status. It was never able to recover from this financial blow and was forced to close down its worker education programs in 1956. After this the library was supported by Camp Tamiment, a Socialist summer camp in the Pennsylvania Pocono Mountains. During the next seven years the Communist collections were de-emphasized as the Social Democrats from the needle trade unions that ran Camp Tamiment moved further to the right as they became increasingly anti-Communist. In 1963 the New York University library system acquired the Tamiment Library and absorbed it as a special collection. Since the Tamiment Library began collecting radical pamphlet literature in the 1920s and acquired so much of this material as it was being generated, it now has one of the finest collections of Communist Party newsletters, broadsides, journals, and leaflets in the United States. For the most part, this literature was created for an immediate political purpose. Relatively large quantities were printed, particularly in the 1930s and 1940s, but this ephemeral material disappeared very quickly. By the late 1960s, at a time when there was increased interest in the history of the Left, many of these pamphlets had become quite rare. Since they were usually printed on cheap paper, a large proportion of the Tamiment collection was brittle and disintegrating. Recognizing its research value, at a time when the Left was becoming increasingly visible, the Microfilm Corporation of America published a microfilm edition to the Tamiment pamphlet collection in 1970 that is now available on 89 reels.3 Tamiment has continued to build its pamphlet collections in the decades since the publication of this microfilm edition. Arranged in vertical files, the collection is now about four times the size that it was in 1970. Today, there are more than 1,000,000 items available for research. Tens of thousands of pamphlets, broadsides, newsletters, and other pieces of ephemera document the Communist’s Party’s ideology, changing political positions, as well as its efforts to communicate with its members, the American public, and the rest of the world. Much of this collection describes the activities of the Comintern 2

For a history of the Tamiment Library see Dorothy Swanson, “The Tamiment Institute/Ben Josephson Library and the Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives at New York University,” The Library Quarterly 59 (April 1989), 48–61. 3 Microfilming Corporation of America, Guide to The Microfilm Edition of Radical Pamphlet Literature: A Collection of the Tamiment Library, 1900- 1970, Glen Rock, N.J: Microfilming Corporation of America, 1970.

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Poster, Sam Darcy campaign for Governor of California, 1934 (courtesy, Tamiment Library, NYU).

with an emphasis on Western Europe, the Soviet Union and China. The library has an excellent if incomplete collection of publications from the Second and Third Internationals, including a run of the publications of the Executive Committee of the Communist International. There are Party journals and newsletters from around the world including: China, Africa, Cuba, Western Europe, Great Britain, Australia, and, of course, the Soviet Union. Tamiment has comprehensive collections of the writings of the major Communist Party leaders: Earl Browder, William Z. Foster, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Gus Hall, V.J. Jerome, Anna Louise Strong, and many others. Also included is a set of Communist Party USA convention proceedings, 1921 – 1972. The library has nearly complete runs of most Communist Party publications including The Daily Worker, Political Affairs, Party Builder, Party Affairs, Party Organizer, The Communist, People’s Daily World, New World Review, and World Marxist Review. Bulletins from various Party organizations including the children’s section, and the Legislative Bulletin of the New York Communist Party form a unique part of the collection. Tamiment also has copies of the National Guardian, Monthly Review, American Labor Party Press, and the journals and union newspapers of most of the Communist led unions in the United States including the Transit Workers Express, (Transport Workers Union of America),

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Fur and Leather Worker, U.E. News, Packinghouse Worker, and Retail Wholesale Employee (UAW, District Council 65), and many more. In the years after the Tamiment Library came to NYU it became one of the only repositories in the United States to seek to systematically acquire archival collections documenting the history of Communism. Dorothy Swanson, who was head librarian until 1993, was particularly active collecting archives of Communist Party-affiliated organizations, popular front groups, and the personal papers of various Party leaders. The library acquired some very rich materials documenting the Red scares, government investigations, and prosecutions. Organizational records include the American Committee for Protection of the Foreign Born, National Council of American Soviet Friendship, Negro Youth Conference, Labor Research Association, American Veterans for Peace, the Jefferson School for Social Science, the International Workers Order, National Committee to Reopen the Rosenberg Case, Medical Committee for Aid to Cuba, and portions of the records of the American Labor Party on microfilm. The Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (1890 –1964) papers are the most visible of the Communist collections at Tamiment. This archive focuses on Flynn’s political activities during the years 1937 – 1964. The papers include biographical materials, files relating to her IWW period (1907 – 1917), documents describing her association with the Workers Defense Fund, the American Fund for Public Service, and the American Civil Liberties Union. The largest portion of the collection documents her role in the Communist Party including her complex relationship with William Z. Foster and the campaign to defend the Communist leaders who were accused of violating the Smith Act. The Flynn Papers contain a good deal of material describing her role in the Women’s International Democratic Federation and as an international spokesperson for the Communist Party USA, particularly in France. Given Elizabeth Gurley Flynn’s connections to the Left in the United States and Western Europe, her papers provide an ideal site to study the relationship between the Communist Party and the various progressive movements with which she was involved including the C.I.O. and American Civil Liberties Union. Other smaller collections of personal papers shed considerable light on the role the Communist Party played in union and progressive movements. These manuscript collections include the papers of: Peter Cacchione, (1897 – 1947, New York City Councilman), Gil Green (1909 – 1997, Party official), William Dunne (1887 – 1953, organizer), Alexander Bittleman (1890 – 1982; founder Jewish Yiddish foreign language federation), Virginia Gardner (1922 – 1990, People’s Daily World and New Masses), Arnold Johnson (1904 - 1989, Miners Union, Party organizer), Edward Falkowski (1917 – 1983, journalist ), George Morris (journalist, Daily Worker), James S. Allen (1906 – 1986, Marxist scholar), Cedric Belfrage (1904 – 1990, National Guardian), Irving Adler (1913 -, New York Teachers’ Union), Max Bedacht (International Workers Order, 1883 – 1972), Carl Marzani (1890- 1994, United Electrical Workers, documentary filmmaker), Annette T. Rubinstein (1910 -, American Labor

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Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, speaking at a workers’ rally during the Paterson strike, 1913 (NP 18–15, Flynn Collection, courtesy Tamiment Library, NYU).

Party), and Hugo Gellert (1892-1985, graphic artist, cartoonist, mural painter). Many of these collections contain photographs and posters that graphically show the ways in which the Party communicated its message at rallies, through demonstrations, organizing campaigns, and picket lines. Tamiment recently purchased the microfilm of the Comintern Archives and the files of the Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA) which are available through IDC Publishers4. The availability of this microfilm, which was produced by the Library of Congress and the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History, has made it possible for historians to do the kind of work that previous generations of scholars could only dream about. Writing about the history of American Communism has always been problematic because of a lack of primary source material in the United States. Most of the Party’s internal records and many collections of related personal papers, most notably 4 John Earl Haynes, ed., Files of the Communist Party of the United States in the Comintern Archives and Files of the Communist Party of the USA, The Netherlands: IDC Publishers, 2000.

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Communist Party Campaign Poster, Presidential election, 1928 (courtesy, Tamiment Library, NYU).

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those of William Z. Foster were taken to Moscow in the 1940s and 1950s for safekeeping when it was believed that government investigations put these materials at risk. This research material is now available on the IDC microfilm. The archive is particularly rich for the 1920s and 1930s. There are extensive correspondence files, reports from organizers, and records documenting the relationship between the CPUSA and the Comintern. Also included are materials that describe the way ordinary working people experienced Communism. Records from street groups and community-based cadres often contain letters describing the reasons why rank-and-file activists joined the Party. Some of the most interesting materials are the extensive files from the ethnic affiliates as well as records that describe the role of the Communist Party in civil rights movements of the 1930s and 1940s including the Scottsboro Boys defense committee. The largest portion of the Comintern Archive are the records created by the Executive Committee of the Third International from 1919 to 1943. These files provide a window into the relationship between the American Communist Party, the Soviet Union, and the international movement that is far more complicated than had been previously believed. The transcripts of meeting minutes, reports, open letters, and internal correspondence confirm our long held understanding that the Soviet Union clearly dominated the Comintern, and that most of its important policy decisions were shaped by the Soviet view of that country’s national interest and the ways it perceived the international Communist movement in the context of Soviet foreign and domestic policy agendas. However, the records also show that national Communist parties, including the American often had considerable influence and were sometimes able to determine their own responses to local political conditions. In the United States this usually left room for substantial local initiative in developing the Party’s relationships with the so-called mass movements– most notably those involved with organizing the unemployed, the C.I.O., and the African American civil rights struggle. This relationship between the world movement and the American Communist Party is most clearly documented in the microfilm edition of the Earl Browder Papers (1891-1973). Browder was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the United States from 1930 until 1946. His papers describe the history of the CPUSA during the period of its greatest influence. They include files documenting the Party’s relationship with the C.I.O., the various Popular Front organizations that it worked with during the 1930s and 1940s, and its efforts to submerge the class struggle to the fight against fascism during World War II. The rapid turn around from “The Yanks are Not Coming” campaign to all out support for the war effort after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 is well described in the Browder Papers. The Tamiment collections are particular rich in the documentation of the Red scare of the 1950s. The struggle to defend civil liberties during the McCarthy period is well described in the files of the National Lawyers Guild

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CPUSA headquarters, Union Square, New York City, 1930, with banners indicating what the Party supported (photography by Charles Rivers, NP 50, Charles Rivers Collection, courtesy Tamiment Library, NYU).

(NLG). The NLG was organized in 1936 as a progressive alternative to the American Bar Association by many of the labor lawyers that worked with the C.I.O in its industrial union organizing campaigns. There was always a strong Communist presence within the NLG. Many of its attorneys, most notably Victor Rabinowitz and Leonard Boudin, who developed the legal strategies that played such a crucial role to the success of the industrial union movement during the early National Labor Relations Board years, became actively involved in the struggle against the McCarthyite repression in the post-World War II period. A large number of the cases argued by the NLG and Rabinowitz and Boudin involved militant union members who were determined to fight the requirement that they sign the non-Communist affidavit mandated by the Taft-Hartley Act. These included maritime workers, automobile workers, teachers, social workers, librarians, and others, who steadfastly defended their Fifth Amendment rights against self incrimination and refused to inform on their former associates even when faced with jail or loss of livelihood. The Rabinowitz, and Boudin and NLG collections contain many of the case files from the important civil liberties trials of the McCarthy period including the Smith Act trials of Communist Party leaders as well as government prosecution of the Hollywood Ten and of Steve Nelson (Abraham Lincoln Brigade). The Victor Rabinowitz personal papers includes a fascinating journal

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Teachers Union picket line, protesting dismissals of New York City teachers, c.1953, TU Collection, Grossman folder 16, courtesy Tamiment Library, NYU).

describing the operations of the Communist Party group that he was affiliated with from the 1930s through the early 1960s. The records of the Communist trials microfilmed by the Fund for the Republic and then deposited at Tamiment document the Alger Hiss, Harry Bridges, Judith Coplon, Eugene Dennis, and Benjamin Gitlow cases. Tamiment also has a collection of Alger Hiss personal papers and some records from the Hiss Defense Committee (although most of that body’s materials are at the Harvard Law School library). The Morris Schappes Papers documents the career of the long-time editor of Jewish Currents, an early victim of the Rapp-Coudert Committee of the New York State legislature that sought to purge Communist Party members and other radicals from the city’s schools and colleges. The papers of Frederic Ewen, a professor of English, who was forced to resign from Brooklyn College in 1952 because he refused to cooperate with a Rapp-Coudert Committee, describes another important chapter in the struggle for academic freedom. The odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, those North American volunteers who during the Spanish Civil War went to Spain to fight against fascism, has been one of the most visible chapters in the on-going struggle to defend the legitimacy of Communist Party membership in the United States. In Decem-

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ber of 2000 the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archive (ALBA) that for many years had been housed at Brandeis University was relocated to Tamiment. The ALBA collection is the most comprehensive archive in the country documenting the experiences of these volunteers, a majority of whom were self -identified as Communists This archive now includes more than 100 reels from the so-called Moscow microfilm that describes the history, administration, and operation of the North American brigades. These records were copied from the official archive of the International Brigades that was taken to Soviet Union for safekeeping at the end of the Spanish Civil War. They include files documenting command and headquarters, personnel, party organizations, judicial commissions, censorship, finance, and prisoners. Personnel records include copies of applications filled out by the volunteers that recorded demographic data, information about political commitments, medical histories, and employment. The core of the Archive, and perhaps its most valuable research component, are the 202 individual collections assembled by the volunteers and their families. For the most part, they depict the Spanish Civil War through the eyes of the rank-and-file volunteer. Some of the letters home vividly describe conditions at the front; others talk about prisoner of war camps, hospitals, and relief efforts aimed at providing aid to orphaned and homeless Spanish children. Many of the most moving letters depict the relationships that developed between the volunteers and the Spanish people who were resisting the fascist takeover of their country. The ALBA collection tells the story of the Lincoln Brigade volunteers, not only during the years between 1936 and 1939, when they were fighting to defend the Spanish Republic, but it also describes their prewar lives, union and political work, and the ideals that led them to Spain, as well as what happened after they returned home. One of the most interesting portions of the archive are the records documenting the volunteers’ ongoing relationship with the Communist Party from the 1920s through the 1980s. There are also a number of small collections of papers of Lincoln Brigade volunteers who had long associations with the Communist Party. These include Archie Brown (an associate of Harry Bridges in the National Maritime Union, and West Coast Party activist), Harry Fisher (correspondent for the TASS News Service in New York), John Gates and Robert Thompson (two long-time Party functionaries), Steve Nelson (Lincoln Brigade Commander and Party organizer), and many others. The Lincoln Brigade Archive clearly shows that many of the volunteers were Communist Party members who were recruited to go to Spain. However, this is only part of the picture. Many of the volunteers also identified themselves as anarchists and social democrats, with a few New Deal liberals in the mix. Contrary to much that has been written in the historical literature, shared danger and anti-fascist commitments led to a solidarity that usually overshadowed sectarianism. There is little evidence in the files of politics influencing military strategy. While many of the volunteers were Communists who believed

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Abraham Lincoln Brigade poster in Spanish (courtesy Tamiment Library, NYU).

that Stalin and the Soviet Union could do no wrong, there is no evidence in the archive that the heavy hand of Stalinism shaped strategic or military decisions, nor is there evidence to support Ronald Radosh’s assertion that Spain was betrayed by a Soviet effort to run the Spanish economy, government, and armed forces5. What emerges from the ALBA collection is a picture of an evolving political situation in which it appears that the refusal of the United States and the Western European nations to support the Spanish Republic reinforced the Communist sympathies of the volunteers. The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archive documents the experiences of the volunteers after the Spanish Civil War, most notably during World War II when many of the veterans were labeled as “premature anti-fascists,” were not at least before 1943 permitted to join combat units in the United States Army, and were usually denied commissions even after successfully completing officer training school programs. The Abraham Lincoln Brigade veterans were among the most visible victims of the anti-Communist hysteria of the later 1940s and 1950s. Many of them lost their jobs and were blacklisted after a highly public investigation by the Subversive Activities Control Board. One of the untold stories of the Spanish Civil War is that of the eighty or so 5 Ronald Radosh, Mary R. Habeck, and Gregory Sevostianov, Spain Betrayed: The Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001.

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African American volunteers. According to the historian Robin Kelley many of these volunteers went to Spain with the idea that they were going to get back at Mussolini for his invasion of Ethiopia6. It appears that these African American volunteers shared a Left, Pan Africanist perspective that was common during inter-war years. A number of them were recruited by the Communist Party during the Scottsboro Affair and were attracted by the Party’s commitment to civil rights. From the records it appears that relationships between black and white volunteers were quite harmonious, many of them shared living facilities and had social relationships that were quite exceptional during the segregated interwar years. During World War II the Lincoln Brigade veterans, who had experienced life in an integrated army, were among the most outspoken of the white soldiers in opposition to segregation. Defending the rights of African American troops often set them apart from the other men in their units and reinforced the tendency of many commanders to discriminate against them in promotions and assignments. The struggle for racial equality is a theme that runs through many of the Communist collections at Tamiment. The library has some very significant materials relating to the Scottsboro Trial that began in 1931 when nine black youths were falsely accused of raping two white women. Tamiment collections describe the roles that the Communist Party and the International Labor Defense played in the six- year legal campaign that led to two landmark Supreme Court decisions. The papers of Clarina Michelson, who as a Party organizer in Harlem mobilized community support for the Scottsboro boys, document this struggle in vivid detail. Recently, Andrew Lee, former Tamiment Librarian, discovered a book of 100 black and white linoleum prints among materials given to library by the family of Joseph North, long-time editor of the New Masses. These prints capture the political, cultural, and emotional battles that surrounded the Scottsboro case7. Like all repositories, Tamiment has always been influenced by the social and political environment in which it functions. During the height of the Cold War the Library’s collecting initiatives clearly reflected a more conservative approach to documenting the history of the Left. From the late 1940s through the early 1960s Tamiment acquired little if any material from Communist sources. Many of the collections brought in reflected an anti-Communist impulse, as it was defined by the Social Democratic and Trotyskite critics of the Party. During these years the Tamiment acquired the records of the American Committee for Cultural Freedom, the American Labor Conference on International Affairs, and American Business Consultants Counter Attack. These archives along with the papers of labor journalist Victor Riesel, sociologistjournalist Daniel Bell– managing editor of the New Leader and author of the 6 Robin D. G. Kelley, “This Ain’t Ethiopia, But it’ll do,” in African Americans in the Spanish Civil War, New York; G. K. Hall, 1991, pp. 5–57. 7 Andrew Lee, ed., Scottsboro Alabama: A Story in Linoleum Cuts, New York: New York University Press, 2002.

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End of Ideology; and the papers of Harold Cruse– author the Crisis of the Negro Intellectual express an anti-Communism that had its roots in the struggles between the Stalinists and the supporters of Leon Trotsky which began in the late 1920s. This conflict between the Communists and the Socialist Workers Party, and the way it played itself out in the years between the late 1920s and the early 1960s is well documented in the papers of Max Shachtman, one of the founders and long-time leader of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), as well as the official records of the Socialist Workers Party (1932-1940, on four reels of microfilm). The SWP collection consists largely of internal bulletins, newsletters, and educational materials that describe its ideology, tactics and relationships with the labor, liberal, and cultural Left particularly those who were centered around the journal Partisan Review which provided an intellectual home for many SWP supporters. In the 1960s a new generation, which was a product of the struggles of the civil rights and anti-war movements, found that the sectarian debates that had consumed the Old Left had become irrelevant to the politics of a time that was defined by the horrors of George Wallace’s Alabama, the Vietnam War, and the threat of nuclear holocaust. Not surprisingly, when these New Left activists began to look for a useable past, they rediscovered the history of the Communist Party and its relationship to the American progressive tradition. Tamiment and its labor, Socialist, and Communist collections became very important to many members of the 1960s generation of scholar activists as they searched for dissertation topics that spoke to this new political world. The relationship between politics, ideology, scholarship, and library collecting is both complex and interrelated. This became particularly clear in the 1970s when the work of scholars like Roger Keeran and Mark Naison, who explored the history of the role that the Communist Party had played in the labor and civil rights movements of the 1930s and 1940s, began to reshape Tamiment’s collecting initiatives8. What role did the Communist Party play in the labor and civil rights movements? Did it provide critical leadership and organizational skills for the C.I.O. and its campaigns to organize the industrial unions during the 1930s and 1940s? To what degree did its loyalty to the Soviet Union hurt the Communist Party’s credibility on the Left and did this ultimately contribute to its demise? These were the questions that the library sought to address as it embarked on new documentation strategies during the 1970s and 1980s. Tamiment’s collections of union archives which were built during these years were in many ways shaped by this historiography as well as by a desire to reclaim the history of ordinary working class people and to document their 8 For an influential book of the older school see, Theodore Draper, The Roots of American Communism, New York: Viking Press, 1957. A different perspective can be found in Roger Keeran, The Communist Party and the Autoworkers Unions, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980, Mark Naison, Communists in Harlem During the Depression, New York: Grove Press, 1983, and Bert Cochran, Labor and Communism: The Conflict that Shaped the Unions, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977.

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trade union activities, lives, politics, and culture. A central component of this collecting initiative involves documenting the role that the Communist Party played in helping to organize many of the C.I.O. unions in the 1930s and its ongoing role in the labor movement. This story is well described in the records of the Transport Workers Union of America, the United Wholesale and Retail Employees of America (later UAW District Council 65), and the United Public Workers of America. The Transport Workers Union was probably the most important Communist union in New York City during the 1930s and 1940s. Many of its most energetic organizers and most of the union’s leadership, including long-time president Mike Quill, were Party members. As historian Joshua Freeman9 has shown, and as TWU records document, this relationship continued despite the fact that there never were a significant number of Party members among the rank-and-file. The records, moreover, indicate that TWU Communists usually resisted efforts to recruit fellow union members for the CP. They knew that with a majority of Irish Catholic members, it would not be prudent to try to use the union to build the Party. Without this mass base, the Communist leadership maintained its position by delivering economically, and having a charismatic leadership that was very skillful in its political and bureaucratic maneuvering. This worked during the 1930s and early 1940s, but after the later 1940s when union leaders had to make a choice between the TWU and the Party they were relatively quick to abandon the CP. After the passage of the Taft –Hartley Act in 1947, Mike Quill and the TWU Communists broke with the Party and signed the required non-Communist affidavits. The history of the District 65 of the United Wholesale and Retail Employees Union (UWREA) was quite different from that of the TWU. Here was a case in which Communist union leaders did not attempt to hide their Party affiliation from the rank-and-file. The UWREA archive at Tamiment traces the history of the union from its origins in 1933 as the Wholesale and Dry Goods Workers Union. In 1937 it merged with the Textile Workers’ United Retail and Wholesale Employees of America. During the late 1930s and early 1940s the union grew very rapidly, led by a cadre of young, idealistic organizers many of whom belonged to the Communist Party. This was a period of uneasy truce between the New York radicals and the conservative union members who were strong in Pennsylvania, New England, and the Western states. The passage of the Taft- Hartley Act split the union. Eight of the large New York locals left when their leaders refused to sign the anti-Communist affidavits. They formed the Distributive Workers of America whose leaders David Livingston and Jack Paley were subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Though they refused to testify and were expelled from the C.I.O., the union continued to flourish independently for thirty-one years. 9 Joshua Freeman, In Trainsit: The Transport Workers Union of America in New York City, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988.

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During this period it was one of the most progressive unions in the country, playing a leading role in the civil rights movement as it developed a close relationship with Martin Luther King, Jr. This union was also actively involved in organizing trade unionists in opposition to the war in Vietnam. Its leaders and members were highly visible in the peace marches during the late 1960s and early 1970s. In 1979 though, still controlled by the leaders who had been expelled from the C.I.O., it merged with the United Automobile Workers of America becoming District Council 65. In 1992 D.C. 65 went into receivership and was disbanded. The D.C. 65 archive shows that throughout its history, at least in New York where the union was centered, D.C. 65’s leadership never felt the need to hide its Communist sympathies even at the height of the McCarthy period. In the early years, when its membership was largely Jewish, the Communist affiliation may have in fact helped the leadership maintain a strong relationship with a highly politicized rank and file. Later the union’s commitment to civil rights helped to forge a special bond with the African American workers who began to join in increasing numbers 1960s. The leadership of D.C. 65 had a strong commitment to union democracy. They often maintained that this was a product of their radical or Communist politics. However, the history of some of the other Communist led unions indicates that this equation was far more complicated than the D.C. 65 leaders would admit. D.C. 65 may have in fact been a very special case. This uniquely open and democratic relationship between union officials and rank-and-file members is clearly reflected in the D.C. 65’s photograph collection. Many of the 50,000 images in the photo archive were taken by members of the union’s camera club that recruited individual workers to take pictures depicting the work place, organizing drives, picket lines, worker communities, and domestic life. These images provide a very different view of working class life than the more traditional photographic archives in union collections that are largely a product of the work of staff photographers with a top down approach that focused on official functions and portraits of the leadership rather than on the workers, their workplaces, and communities. The records of the New York Newspaper Guild provide a somewhat different perspective about the relationship between the Communist Party and the labor movement. The legendary left-wing journalist Heywood Broun played a leading role in organizing the Newspaper Guild in the early 1930s and many of the union’s first generation organizers and officers had close associations with the Communist Party.10 The union’s files contains correspondence with Earl Browder, leaders of left-wing unions including Harry Bridges’ National Maritime Union, Ben Gold’s Fur and Leather Workers, Rose Russell’s Teachers’ Union, and Abraham Flaxer’s United Public Workers. Records also show 10 For the early years of the American Newspaper Guild, when the Party’s influence was strong and its members helped create the organization see Daniel J. Leab, A Union of Individuals: the Formation of the American Newspaper Guild, New York: Columbia University Press, 1970.

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Demonstration for integration in baseball, sponsored by District Council 65, 1946 (courtesy, Tamiment Library).

the various ways the union supported Communist Party or allied organizations such as the National Council of American Soviet Friendship, the International Labor Defense, the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, the American Peace Mobilization, and Henry Wallace’s 1948 presidential campaign. Many of the connections between labor and the Left that are evident in the New York Newspaper Guild, TWU, and D.C. 65 archives are also documented in a number of other smaller manuscript collections. These include the papers of Abraham Flaxer (United Public Workers), Henry Foner (Fur and Leather Workers), Daniel French (Painters Union), Saul Mills (Greater New York C.I.O. Council), Cleveland Robinson (D.C. 65), Joseph Califf (Food, Tobacco, Agricultural, and Allied Workers), Gerald O’Reilly (TWU), Sidney Jonas (Shoe Workers), and Charles Hendley (New York Teachers Union). Taken together, these collections of personal papers describe the challenges

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faced by trade union Communists as they tried to balance their ideologies and political commitments with the ongoing requirements of collective bargaining that put a premium on blunting class conflict and reaching accommodations with employers. In recent years the Tamiment Library has been attempting to document the history of the Asian American left and its special connections to the labor movement. The Karl Akiya Papers provide a fascinating perspective on the history of Communism and trade unionism both in Japan and the United States. Akiya was born in the United States in 1909, the son of Japanese immigrants, but returned to Japan is 1915. In the 1920s, while in college he became active in left-wing politics and eventually joined the Japanese Communist Party. In 1928 he was forced to leave Japan because of his political activities. He returned to the United States where he became involved in the labor movement initially with Harry Bridges’ National Maritime Workers Union and later with the C.I.O. He also worked as an organizer for the Communist Party in the Asian American community. Akiya was active in left-wing politics until his death in 2001. His personal papers tell a fascinating story about the relationship between immigration, labor radicalism, class, and community. His library was also donated to Tamiment, and contains books and pamphlets (many in Japanese) that trace the history of the Japanese Communist Party and the Japanese Left in a way that is quite unique in the United States. The collection also contains a number of films about the history of the Japanese Communist Party. The Tamiment Library has a very strong collection of writings describing the history of the literary and cultural Left. Here the definition adopted by Daniel Aaron more than forty years ago still seems to be appropriate: writers who were Communist Party members and “fellow travelers.” According to Aaron these men and women sympathized with the objectives of the Party, defended its position, wrote for its press, or knowingly affiliated with its many mass associations. Among the most prominent members of the literary Left represented in Tamiment collections are: Michael Gold, Floyd Dell, Alexander Trachtenberg, Claude McKay, Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, Joseph Freeman, V.J. Jerome, Granville Hicks, Genevieve Taggard, A.B. Magill, Sol Funaroff, James T. Farrell, and Howard Fast. The Library also has many of the journals, little magazines, and other publications in which these writers’ works appeared, including the New Masses, The Liberator, New Theatre, Negro Quarterly, Dynamo, Modern Quarterly, and Partisan Review. Through their novels, poems, and short stories the “Writers on the Left” played a central role in introducing modernism to the American cultural scene. Despite the compromises that were forced upon them as a result of their Communist Party affiliations, they attempted to integrate their ideological commitments and cultural lives in a way that advanced their political agendas while producing a critically acclaimed literature that was influential far beyond their immediate political world.11 11

Daniel Aaron, Writers on the Left, New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1961.

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The papers of Jay Leyda (1910-1988) are perhaps the most visible archive in the library that expresses this relationship between art and politics. Leyda was a leading film historian, best known for his work on Soviet cinema and the director Sergei Eisenstein. Leyda worked for Eisenstein as an archivist and photographer during the 1930s, and later became Assistant Curator of Films at the Museum of Modern Art, a position he lost in the early 1940s because of Red-baiting. Later in life he became a professor of cinema studies at New York University and is now recognized as one of the nation’s leading film historians. The papers of Mordecai Bauman (1912 -)– singer, recording artist, music administrator, and a long-time associate of Hanns Eisler and Marc Blitzstein– provide a fascinating study of the cultural Left during the period of its peak influence in the 1930s and 1940s. In the 1970s, Bauman was founding Director of the Bread and Roses Project of Local 1199, National Union of Hospital and Health Care Workers. The Tamiment Library is the home of Paul Buhle’s and Jonathan Bloom’s Oral History of the American Left.12 This project that started in the 1970s and continued for nearly two decades began by interviewing those activists who had come of age at the turn of the twentieth century and could still recall the events of the 1910s and 1920s. The focus of these early interviews was on the effect of the Russian Revolution on the American Left, as well as on the formation of social and cultural institutions by “new immigrant” groups of all Left political shadings, the “evanescence of Socialism and Anarchism, and the troubled early years of American Communism.” Many of the men and women who were interviewed had been affiliated with the Communist Party and its various labor organizations. The role of Communism within the union movement and other progressive organizations was a major theme. A large group of interviews focused on the Party’s rank–and-file, or those in mid-level positions many of whom were active in their trade unions. Given the project’s New York base, much attention was paid to the needle trades, but many interviews describe the politics of the electrical workers, automobile workers, maritime workers, teachers, social workers, and many others. Events described on these tapes span the period from the First World War, through the CIO drives of the 1930s, the Popular Front of World War II, and finally the decimation of the labor-left during the McCarthy period. A significant portion of the collection focuses on the academic purges and the Hollywood blacklist of the 1950s. The role of the Party in progressive ethnic organizations (Jewish, Finnish, Spanish, and Ukranian) was a major theme of the Oral History of the American Left. Many of the interviews describe the relationship between working class communities, unions, and culture that were often defined by the politics of anarchism, socialism, and communism. A good deal of attention was paid to African American radicals, Labor Zionists, Trotskyites, fraternal organizations, and student groups. While portions of the Oral History of the American Left are 12 Jonathan Bloom and Paul Buhle, Guide to the Oral History of the American Left, New York: New York University Libraries, 1984.

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restricted, most of the interviews are open for research. There is an unpublished guide available. The Tamiment Library is open to the public Monday – Friday, 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. and Saturday, 10 A.M. to 5 P.M. Its collections are accessible through BOBCAT (New York University’s on-line public access catalog). Tamiment’s web address is www.nyu/edu/library/research/Bobst/Tamiment. A growing number of the Library’s archival finding aids are available on-line. The Tamiment Library in conjunction with NYU’s Department of History sponsors a monthly seminar in labor and social history. Occasional book talks provide venues for discussion recently published works. The History of Communism, labor, and the Left are some of the major themes of the Tamiment Seminar. For information about the library, its collections, or programs please call 212-998-2630.