Dale Zysman

Jack Hardy (sometimes Richard Enmale), born Dale Zysman (November 18, 1901 - July 2, 1993?), was a 20th-Century Communist author labor leader as "Jack Hardy" and a teacher and board member of the New York City Teachers Union under his birth name "Dale Zysman": investigation by the New York Board of Education (now the New York City Department of Education) led to public awareness that the two names belonged to one person and subsequent expulsion from the school system in 1941.

Career

High school coach

In November 1927, Zysman is pictured as a football coach of the "New Utrecht Gridders" of Brooklyn. In September 1928, he is listed as one of three football coaches in Brooklyn. "Zysman steps into the shoes of Hyman Saul, who withdrew after being at the helm for two years. Zysman was Saul's assistant in 1927." Zysman's football team lost in October 1928 but was thought ready to win in November. Yet shortly thereafter, the local ''Brooklyn Daily Eagle'' reported:

Although this is his first year at the helm as mentor, Dale Zysman is said to have already tired of the job. He has been meeting with mediocre success due to the fact that he was left with only a handful of veteran players. Zysman succeeded Hyman Saul, who resigned and withdrew from the school system last year.

By the end of the month, the newspaper was reporting that Zysman was one of four coaches expected to be fired for their team's poor season performance. However, Zysman weathered his first year, as he receives mention in the same position in 1930 for spring training. By September 1930 as the new football season started up, the local newspaper was reporting:

Coach Dale Zysman and Assistant Coaches Raskin and Levin have a powerful working force this season made up of 16 regulars and scrubs from 1929. In addition the newcomers are the most likely looking batch Coach Zysman has had to work with since he took over the team two years ago... Coach Zysman will be able t o master his plays earlier than in previous seasons and he hopes to get the jump on the rival schools and get off on the right foot at the outset.

Closet communist

In the 1920s, "Jack Hardy" was a member of a class taught by Scott Nearing that sought a law of social revolution (though, according to Whittaker Chambers, "an infiltration of Communists... really ran the class, steered the discussions," and tried to "make the law of social revolution a Marxian law.") Members included Sam Krieger, Eve Dorf, and her husband Ben Davidson, as well as Alfred J. Brooks, Myra Page, Benjamin Mandel, and Rachel Ragozin.

In 1937, Hardy was one of eleven Communist Party members who was also a member of the board of the New York City Teachers Union and in December of that year became chairman of the board. (The Teachers Union and the Teachers Guild of New York reformed in 1960 as the United Federation of Teachers.) According to Harvey Klehr, "The American Federation of Teachers' Local 5 in New York, the union's largest affiliate, was ommunistParty stronghold. Its vice president, Dale Zysman, was a Communist who used the pen name of Jack Hardy." Klehr also mentions that Bella Dodd was a close associate. In Dodd's memoir, she states: "We had one man in the eachersUnion who was so talented in manipulation that he was regarded as the Stalin of the Union -- Dale Zysman, also known as Jack Hardy. He had been to Moscow."

Dismissal

In 1938, Zysman remained vice president of the Teachers Union.

In 1939, he was listed as a party official using the name "Jack Hardy, identified as a New York schoolteacher" when providing visa for a false passport obtained for Fred E. Beal (fugitive from justice and a leader of the 1929 Gastonia strike)." who was to travel on to disllustionment in the Soviet Union.

In 1940, U.S. Representative Martin Dies, Jr. (Democrat - Texas, 2nd district) had already marked him out as a subversive: "Dale Zysman, teacher in the public schools of New York, has written books for the Party under the name of 'Jack Hardy'."

In February 1941, he championed the plight of other teachers before he, too, got call to testify. By March 1941, Zysman was implicated again:

A conference of Communists attended by history teachers from both Brooklyn College and City College to lay out a broad program of publication of pamphlets and brochures giving the Communist interpretation of history was described to the Rapp-Coudert legislative committee today at a public hearing. The committee's star witness so far, William M. Canning, City College instructor who resigned from the Communist Party last year, also added 17 more names of alleged City College Communists to the 34 he cited yesterday, and described how - the Communists sought, usually with success, to dominate meetings of the College Teachers' Unions. The meeting of the Communist historians, Canning said, was held in the office"of Alex Trachtenberg, president of International Publishers. 'The purpose,' he said under questioning by committee counsel Paul Windels, 'was to discuss a program for proving the validity of the thesis the Communists were then using that Communism was Americanism of the 20th Century.' Canning did not give the date of the meeting, but it apparently was before the signing of the Hitler-Stalin pact in 1939. Those present, he said, included Dale Zysman, vice-president of Local 5 of the Teachers Union, teachers Henry L. Klein and Emil Morais of Brooklyn College, Philip and Jack Foner of the CUNY history faculty, and two well-known Communists who were not teachers, Anna Rochester and Henry Aptheker, as well as Canning himself.

Another paper reported that "Dale Zysman," vice president of the Teachers Union, asserted that he knew of a 'dozen or so' high school teachers who have been subpoenaed by the committee and the latter group confirmed that a number of such Instructors had already testified as to conditions in their schools."

Later that March, the ''New York Sun'' reported that Zysman was not only the communist "Jack Hardy" but also "Richard Enmale," a name devised "by taking the first two letters from the names, Engels

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