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Charles J. Hendley
Charles J. Hendley (1881-1962) was a teacher, education reformer, union activist, and president of the New York City Teachers Union (TU) from 1935 to 1945 (just after a minority split off to form the New York City Teachers Guild). Background Charles James Hendley was born on June 4, 1881, in North Carolina. His father was Alvis Francis Hendley, section foreman on the Southern Railway. In 1905, he graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Later, he earned an MA from Columbia University. Career Teacher Initially, Hendley taught in North Carolina. In 1915, he moved north. In 1919, Hendley helped organize a local of the American Federation of Teachers in Paterson, New Jersey. In 1920, he taught labor classes for Pennsylvania's State Federation of Labor in Bethlehem, Reading, and Lancaster. In New York, he taught labor classes for Local 3 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union and for a local union of telegraphers. From 1921 to 1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Teachers Union
The New York City Teachers Union or "TU" (1916–1964) was the first New York labor union for teachers, formed as "AFT Local 5" of the American Federation of Teachers, which found itself hounded throughout its history due largely to co-membership of many of its members in the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). History 1910s In 1916, the New York City Teachers Union formed. That same year, it received a charter to join the American Federation of Teachers as "AFT Local 5" (often cited simply as "Local 5"). Its principal co-founders were Henry Linville (a Harvard-educated, Socialist, pacifist biology teacher) and Abraham Lefkowitz (a New York University-educated academic). From 1916 to 1935, Linville served as president and Lefkowitz as vice president and legislative expert. Their top agenda for the TU were: 1) recognition for teachers as professionals, 2) better salaries for teachers, 3) respect for teachers by administrators, and 4) academic freedom (including protection f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bella Dodd
Bella Dodd (née Visono; 1904 – 29 April 1969 ) was a teacher, lawyer, and labor union activist, member of the Communist Party of America (CPUSA) and New York City Teachers Union (TU) in the 1930s and 1940s ("one of Communism's most strident voices"), and vocal anti-communist after her expulsion from the Party in 1949. Background Bella Dodd was born Maria Assunta Isabella Visono in 1904 in Picerno, Basilicata region, Province of Potenza, Kingdom of Italy, the youngest of ten children. When her family came to the United States, they were very poor, and stopped going to Church. She attended public schools in the New York City area including Evander Childs High School. In 1921, after winning a state scholarship, she attended Hunter College, a public university. She worked summers and received an A.B. in 1925, developing an interest in social issues and drifting into agnosticism. In her senior year, she became president of the student council. She received an MA from Columbia Uni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tamiment Library
The Tamiment Library is a research library at New York University that documents radical and left history, with strengths in the histories of communism, socialism, anarchism, the New Left, the Civil Rights Movement, and utopian experiments. The Robert F. Wagner Archives, which is also housed in Bobst Library at NYU, documents American labor history. Together the two units form an important center for scholarly research on labor and the left. The Tamiment Library has a non-circulating collection of about 50,000 books, focusing on politics, political theory, labor, and radical literature and art movements. There are approximately 15,000 non-current periodical titles, including proceedings of labor union conventions, underground newspapers, internal bulletins of radical organizations, and scholarly journals. In addition, the library has a collection of about one million pamphlets and ephemera, including broadsides, leaflets, manifestos, reports, and other documents. The Tamime ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Howard Fast
Howard Melvin Fast (November 11, 1914 – March 12, 2003) was an American novelist and television writer. Fast also wrote under the pen names E.V. Cunningham and Walter Ericson. Biography Early life Fast was born in New York City. His mother, Ida (née Miller), was a British Jewish immigrant, and his father, Barney Fast, was a Ukrainian Jewish immigrant who shortened his name from Fastovsky upon arrival in America. When his mother died in 1923 and his father became unemployed, Howard's youngest brother, Julius, went to live with relatives, while he and his older brother, Jerome, sold newspapers. Howard credited his early voracious reading to a part-time job in the New York Public Library. Fast began writing at an early age. While hitchhiking and riding railroads around the country to find odd jobs, he wrote his first novel, ''Two Valleys'', published in 1933 when he was 18. His first popular work was ''Citizen Tom Paine'', a fictional account of the life of Thomas Paine. Always ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
International Fur & Leather Workers Union
The International Fur and Leather Workers Union (IFLWU), was a labor union that represented workers in the fur and leather trades. History The IFLWU was founded in 1913 and affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL). Radical union organizers, including Communists, played a role in the union from its early years. They took control using violence in the 1920s, and it became one of the major bases in the labor movement. Irving Howe says that the Communists used: :shock troops, a sort of paramilitary vanguard handy with knives, belts, pikes. The most active radical and long-time Communist Ben Gold, was president from 1935 until he was forced out by moderates in the 1940s. In 1937, the IFLWU left the AFL and joined the new Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), led by John L. Lewis. In 1948, former CIO general counsel Lee Pressman joined Joseph Forer, a Washington-based attorney, in representing Irving Potash, vice president of the Fur and Leather Workers U ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Whittaker Chambers
Whittaker Chambers (born Jay Vivian Chambers; April 1, 1901 – July 9, 1961) was an American writer-editor, who, after early years as a Communist Party member (1925) and Soviet spy (1932–1938), defected from the Soviet underground (1938), worked for ''Time'' magazine (1939–1948), and then testified about the Ware Group in what became the Hiss case for perjury (1949–1950), often referred to as the trial of the century, all described in his 1952 memoir ''Witness''. Afterwards, he worked as a senior editor at ''National Review'' (1957–1959). US President Ronald Reagan awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously in 1984. Background Chambers was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and spent his infancy in Brooklyn. His family moved to Lynbrook, Long Island, New York State, in 1904, where he grew up and attended school. His parents were Jay Chambers and Laha Whittaker. He described his childhood as troubled because of his parents' separation and their ne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ware Group
The Ware Group was a covert organization of Communist Party USA operatives within the United States government in the 1930s, run first by Harold Ware (1889–1935) and then by Whittaker Chambers (1901–1961) after Ware's accidental death on August 13, 1935. History Background Harold Ware founded this group under the auspices of J. Peters by Summer 1933. Ware was a Communist Party (CP) official working for the federal government in Washington, D.C. The first known meeting of the Ware Group occurred in late 1933 with eight members: John Abt, Henry Collins, Alger Hiss, Victor Perlo, Lee Pressman, Nathaniel Weyl, and Nathan Witt. Initially, Peters instructed that members make "exceptional money sacrifices" to the Party, study Marxist theory and Party doctrine, observe "strictest secrecy," and to obtain "any government documents" available to them. (Known members later claimed that it was merely a Marxist study group.) Known active years By 1934, the group had grown to some ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nathan Witt
Nathan Witt (February 11, 1903 – February 16, 1982), born Nathan Wittowsky, was an American lawyer who is best known as being the Secretary of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) from 1937 to 1940. He resigned from the NLRB after his communist political beliefs were exposed and he was accused of manipulating the Board's policies to favor his own political leanings. He was also investigated several times in the late 1940s and 1950s for being a spy for the Soviet Union in the 1930s. No evidence of espionage was ever found. Background Nathan R. Witt was born February 11, 1903, into a Jewish family on the Lower East Side of New York City.''Strategy and Tactics of World Communism ... '', p. 796.Jowitt and Jowitt, p. 46. His father changed the family name to Witt shortly after his birth.Irons, p. 125. His college education was interrupted several times by the need to earn a living: he drove a taxi cab. In 1927, he graduated from New York University (NYU). It was at NYU's Was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lee Pressman
Lee Pressman (July 1, 1906 – November 20, 1969) was a labor attorney and earlier a US government functionary, publicly alleged in 1948 to have been a spy for Soviet intelligence during the mid-1930s (as a member of the Ware Group), following his recent departure from Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) as a result of its purge of Communist Party members and fellow travelers. From 1936 to 1948, he represented the CIO and member unions in landmark collective bargaining deals with major corporations including General Motors and U.S. Steel. According to journalist Murray Kempton, anti-communists referred to him as "Comrade Big." Marion Dickerman and Ruth Taylor (eds.), ''Who's Who In Labor: The Authorized Biographies of the Men and Women Who Lead Labor in the United States and Canada and of Those Who Deal with Labor.'' New York: The Dryden Press, 1946; pg.286. Background Pressman was born Leon Pressman on July 1, 1906, on the Lower East Side of in New York City, f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harold Cammer
Harold I. Cammer (June 18, 1909 – October 21, 1995) was an American lawyer who co-founded the National Lawyers Guild. He was known for his participation in labor law, civil rights, peace and justice issues, and freedom of speech cases; in particular, defending those accused of communist leanings. Background Cammer was born in June 1909 in the borough of Manhattan in New York City to Harry and Anne (Boriskin) Cammer, Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire. He attended New York City public schools and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1929 from City College. He attended Harvard Law School on a full scholarship, receiving a Juris Doctor degree (cum laude) in 1932. Career New Deal Cammer began practicing law with the firm of Boudin & Wittenberg from 1932 to 1933, and Zalkin & Cohen from 1933 to 1936. In 1936, he joined his long-time friend Lee Pressman in the firm of Liebman, Robbins, Pressman & Leider, and stayed with the firm until 1941. After his friend, Nathan Witt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Senate Internal Security Subcommittee
The United States Senate's Special Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws, 1951–77, known more commonly as the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee (SISS) and sometimes the McCarran Committee, was authorized by S. 366, approved December 21, 1950, to study and investigate (1) the administration, operation, and enforcement of the Internal Security Act of 1950 (, also known as the McCarran Act) and other laws relating to espionage, sabotage, and the protection of the internal security of the United States and (2) the extent, nature, and effects of subversive activities in the United States "including, but not limited to, espionage, sabotage, and infiltration of persons who are or may be under the domination of the foreign government or organization controlling the world Communist movement or any movement seeking to overthrow the Government of the United States by force and violence". The resolution also authorized ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sidney Hook
Sidney Hook (December 20, 1902 – July 12, 1989) was an American philosopher of pragmatism known for his contributions to the philosophy of history, the philosophy of education, political theory, and ethics. After embracing communism in his youth, Hook was later known for his criticisms of totalitarianism, both fascism and Marxism–Leninism. A social democrat, Hook sometimes cooperated with conservatives, particularly in opposing Marxism–Leninism. After World War II, he argued that members of such groups as the Communist Party USA and Leninists like democratic centralists could ethically be barred from holding the offices of public trust because they called for the violent overthrow of democratic governments. Background Sidney Hook was born on December 20, 1902, in Brooklyn, New York City, to Jennie and Isaac Hook, Austrian Jewish immigrants. He became a supporter of the Socialist Party of America during the Debs era when he was in high school. In 1923, he earned a BA at ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
