The Tamiment Collection is devoted to materials on labor history and radical movements primarily, comprising published works, a large number of pamphlets and ephemeral printed matter, and manuscript holdings.
Resources (18)
Algernon Lee (1873-1954)
Papers, 1896–1954, 8 boxes. Educational director of the Rand School of Social Sciences. Correspondence, speeches, notes, autobiographical fragments, transcriptions of his diary containing his philosophical and social views, and printed matter. Specific Russian-related items not ascertained. Correspondents include European socialists. Unpublished finding aid.
American Friends of Russian Freedom
Papers, 1891–96, 56 items. Organized to protest the Russian Extradition Treaty of 1893. Correspondence, broadsides, pamphlets, flyers, and clippings. Correspondents include members of the group, Julia Ward Howe, Edwin D. Mead, Francis J. Garrison, Lloyd Garrison, Edmund Noble, and Stephen Stepniak.
American Trotskyism, 1928-1970
Title of the Bulletin of the Tamiment Library, issue 47 (April 1971). Basically a directory of groups associated with American Trotskyism and thus an excellent finding aid to materials on this subject scattered throughout the vertical files of the Tamiment Collection.
Baruch Charney Vladeck Papers and Photographs (1906-1958)
14.0 linear feet in 8 records cartons, 10 manuscript boxes, 2 oversize flat boxes, and 4 oversize folders. These papers document the life of Baruch Charney Vladeck, a leading figure of the U.S. Jewish socialist movement of the twentieth century. The papers contain correspondence, the manuscript of a partial autobiography, addresses, debates, biographical material, reports, memos, press releases, personal and family papers, photographs, audio recordings and printed material. Included is material relating to public housing, Jewish charitable and labor organizations such as ORT and the Jewish Labor Committee, the status of Jews in Nazi Germany, political campaigns, Socialist Party affairs, and other political matters. The majority of the collection is correspondence, and correspondents include Freidrich Adler, Sholem Asch, Victor and Meta Berger, Daniel Hoan, Louise Kautsky, Harry Laidler, Algernon Lee, Ramsey McDonald and Lillian Wald. Finding aid available: http://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/tamwag/tam_037/index.html
Bert Cochran (1935-1978)
Papers, 2.25 linear feet (5 boxes). Historical note: Bert Cochran (1916-1984) was a Trotskyist active in the Communist League of America (1934), the Workers Party of the United States (1935-37), in the Appeal Group within the Socialist Party, and in the automobile industry (1930s-40s), first in Cleveland within the Mechanics Educational Society of America, then in Detroit as head of the Socialist Workers Party Auto Fraction and as an activist in the United Automobile Workers of America. He left/was expelled from the SWP in 1954 for his leading role in the “Cochran-Clarke” faction, then helped found the magazine The American Socialist(1954-1959), and subsequently wrote seven books that covered labor and economics, and current domestic and international affairs. The collection contains correspondence, minutes, and reports relating to his labor and political activities, typescripts of speeches on various topics, and an (incomplete) untitled manuscript, a Marxist history of warfare and society. Finding aid available: http://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/tamwag/tam_205/index.html
Frank Lovell (1953 –1999)
Papers, 10.0 linear feet (10 boxes). Historical note: Frank Lovell was born in Illinois in 1913 and attended the University of California at Berkeley. Drawn into the socialist movement after the San Francisco general strike, he joined the Workers Party of the United States in 1935 and became a seaman and organizer for the Sailor's Union of the Pacific. In 1938, Lovell was a founding member of the Socialist Workers Party, and played a leading role in the organization for more than five decades. In the early 1950s, Lovell moved to Detroit where he became an auto worker and ran for Governor of Michigan 3 times from 1954-1964. In the late 1960s, he moved to New York City where Lovell served as the Socialist Workers Party's trade union director until Lovell and wife Sarah were expelled from the SWP in 1981. Lovell died on May 1, 1998. The collection includes: correspondence, the bulk of which pertain to Lovell's 1981 expulsion from the SWP; manuscripts of Lovell's numerous articles, reviews, speeches, class lectures, reports for and on the SWP; and topical files that deal with major labor movement events, controversies, and movements. Finding aid available: http://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/tamwag/tam_204/
George Breitman (1919–1986)
Papers, 36.0 linear feet in 33 manuscript boxes, 4 record cartons, and one folder. Historical note: George Breitman was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1916. After working in the Civilian Conservation Corps, and the Works Progress Administration, he joined the Trotskyist movement and became a founding member of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in 1938. He edited The Militant and served in World War II. In the 1960s, Breitman assumed responsibility for the SWP's Pathfinder Press and edited Writings of Leon Trotsky, 1929-1940, and wrote Malcolm X Speaks (1965). The Papers contain biographical items, correspondence, articles, various materials pertaining to his political activities and to the history of U.S. and international Trotskyism. Finding aid available: http://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/tamwag/tam_169/index.html
Jewish Labor Committee Records, Part I (1934-1947)
55.0 linear feet (55 boxes). The Jewish Labor Committee, an umbrella group of Jewish or Jewish-led trade unions and fraternal organizations, was founded in New York City in 1934. Its primary purposes were to organize anti-Nazi and anti-fascist activity and to provide assistance to European Jews and others persecuted by these movements. During World War II, it maintained close ties with European resistance movements and was able to effect the rescue of hundreds of labor and socialist activists and their families. After the War, it helped to reunite families and resettle survivors. The original donation of JLC records to NYU included more than 800 linear feet of material. This guide describes the first portion of the JLC records; included are general administrative records for the Committee’s earliest years as well as files documenting anti-Nazi activity (including relations with other Jewish organizations), rescue and aid activities, and overseas work in general. Most documentation of the JLC’s domestic anti-discrimination work, which increased in intensity in the post-war years, is included in later series. Finding aid available: http://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/tamwag/wag_025_001/index.html
Jewish Labor Committee Records, Part II (1948-1956)
150.0 linear feet (150 boxes). The Jewish Labor Committee, an umbrella group of Jewish trade unions and fraternal organizations, was founded in 1934 for the purpose of organizing opposition to Fascism, providing assistance to its victims, and fighting all forms of bigotry. After the Second World War the Committee continued its program of relief to Holocaust victims, providing shipments of food, clothing, and medical supplies. It also provided immigration assistance, and offered help with employment and housing for refugees who came to the United States. The JLC's Holocaust-related records, Part II (1948-1956), include minutes, convention proceedings, reports, press releases, correspondence, survivors’ biographical files and a wide range of printed material. Documented in detail are the JLC's efforts to sustain and resettle survivors, contacts with socialist and trade-union leaders in post-war Europe, proposals for liberalizing American immigration policy, lobbying for reparations, and anti-discrimination work. Finding aid available: http://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/tamwag/wag_025_002/
Jewish Labor Committee Records, Part III (1903-2009)
418 Linear Feet (394 record cartons, 2 manuscript boxes, 24 card file boxes, 12 oversize flat boxes, and 1 folder in a shared oversize flat box). The Jewish Labor Committee (JLC) is an umbrella group of Jewish trade unions and fraternal organizations. Founded in 1934, the JLC's initial goals were to organize opposition to Nazism and provide assistance to the victims of Nazi persecution. As the immediate need for relief passed, the JLC turned its energies toward various civil, human, and trade union rights causes. Though largely focused on issues of domestic social and economic justice after the 1950s, the JLC continued to campaign on international matters, particularly the support of the State of Israel and the opposition of discrimination against Soviet Jews. Part III of the JLC Records focus primarily on the JLC's post-war activities, though some materials from its relief and rescue period are also present. The records in Part III, which date mostly from the 1960s to the 1990s, reflect the diversity of the JLC's interests and areas of advocacy and the JLC's role as a liaison between the Jewish community and organized labor. Language: Materials are primarily in English, though a significant amount of material is in Yiddish. To a lesser extent, the collection includes materials in Arabic as well as in French, German, Polish, Russian, Spanish, and other Indo-European languages. Finding aid available: http://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/tamwag/wag_025_003/
John Poulos and Constantine Poulos (1921-1978)
Papers, 12.5 linear feet (20 boxes). Historical note: John Poulos (1911-1980) was a Marxist, Trotskyist, writer and labor organizer from Lynn, Massachusetts. He organized Food Workers Local 701 of the AFL, and was a delegate to the CIO founding convention in 1938. He served on the national committee of the Socialist Workers Party, and later the Workers Party, and wrote extensively for its newspaper, Labor Action. He was involved in the fight against the Greek military dictatorship and set up a collection on Greek radicalism at the Tamiment Library. His brother Constantine ("Connie") Poulos (1916-1986) was a liberal journalist and founder and editor of political monthly: The Hellenic Spectator. Constantine was a journalist for the Overseas News Agency during World War II, and reported on the Greek resistance. After WWII, Constantine Poulos served as a liaison and translator for negotiations between American officials and the Greek resistance, namely, EAM-ELAS. He was expelled from Greece under the charge that he was "pro-communist". Constantine Poulos returned to the U.S. where he wrote for The Nation, was an editor of Holiday, and bought a weekly newspaper in Jamestown, NY, where he was to win a Pulitzer Prize for community journalism. The collection includes correspondence and articles by the Poulos brothers, as well as pamphlets and assorted materials pertaining to their individual political pursuits. Finding aid available: http://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/tamwag/tam_114/
League for Industrial Democracy Records, 1920-present
33 boxes (additions expected). Office files, minutes of board meetings, correspondence, reports, membership lists, etc. Specific Soviet-related holdings not ascertained but believed to hold such material interspersed throughout. Unpublished finding aid.
Max Shachtman (1904-1972)
Papers, 31.5 linear feet (60 boxes). Socialist leader and Leon Trotskii's literary executer. Personal files, manuscripts of his books, notes for his history of the Third International, a Trotskii bibliography, and ca. 1,000 carbon copies of Trotskii letters. Also, books and printed matter. Finding aid available: http://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/tamwag/tam_103/
New Jewish Agenda records (1980-1992)
38 linear ft. (38 boxes). The collection contains national administrative records, including convention, national council and steering council records, including minutes, correspondence, internal bulletins, reports, mailings, membership lists, press releases, some officer’s records ( including those of Rena Bernards and Anna Jaffe); fundraising, task force and chapter records (including extensive files on the Portland, OR chapter), issues of its national periodicals Agenda, Agenda-in-Brief, Internal Discussion Bulletin, Internal Discussion Bulletin on Anti-Semitism, and Gesher (published by the Feminist Task Force), and printed ephemera produced by NJA and other progressive (especially Jewish) organizations.
Rand School of Social Science
Records, 1905–62, 76 boxes. Office files, minutes, reports, correspondence, data on courses and faculty, etc. Believed to contain Russian/Sovietrelated material interspersed throughout.
Reference Center for Marxist Studies pamphlet collection
Ca. 1900-2004 (bulk 1940-1975). ca. 15,000 pamphlets. The Reference Center for Marxist Studies was the library for the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA). Holdings include nearly every pamphlet published by the CPUSA as well as those published by European and Latin American parties. Within the collection's broad scope are such subjects as Communist Party activities in the 1910s and 1920s, the Spanish Civil War, labor, peace, civil rights movements, and the struggle against McCarthyism. The Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) was founded in 1919 by members of the left wing of the Socialist Party USA. The CPUSA played an important role in the labor movement, particularly in the building of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, in struggles for civil rights for African Americans, while its cultural initiatives attracted a number of prominent artists and intellectuals, and its struggles to attain and maintain its legality were an important chapter in the history of U.S. civil liberties.
Russia and Religious Freedom
Collection, 1928, 1 folder. Includes a bibliography of selected publications containing information on freedom of religion in Russia, compiled by the U.S. State Department for Frederick W. Ninde; and selected translations and transcriptions by the State Department on this subject from Russian sources. (Part of Miscellaneous Manuscripts)
Russian Artillery Commission in North America Records, 1915-17
2 boxes. Imperial government arms purchasing group, based in New York, negotiated purchases of artillery supplies, primarily munitions. Collection, mostly in Russian, includes reports and notes of Ordnance Colonel V. Nekrasov. Correspondence with U.S. and Canadian firms discusses manufacturing specifications and procedures, equipment, production estimates, inspection and order arrangements. Unpublished inventory.
