"A Road to Peace and Freedom": the International Workers Order and The
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“ A ROAD TO PEACE AND FREEDOM ” Robert M. Zecker “ A ROAD TO PEACE AND FREEDOM ” The International Workers Order and the Struggle for Economic Justice and Civil Rights, 1930–1954 TEMPLE UNIVERSITY PRESS Philadelphia • Rome • Tokyo TEMPLE UNIVERSITY PRESS Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19122 www.temple.edu/tempress Copyright © 2018 by Temple University—Of The Commonwealth System of Higher Education All rights reserved Published 2018 All reasonable attempts were made to locate the copyright holders for the materials published in this book. If you believe you may be one of them, please contact Temple University Press, and the publisher will include appropriate acknowledgment in subsequent editions of the book. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Zecker, Robert, 1962- author. Title: A road to peace and freedom : the International Workers Order and the struggle for economic justice and civil rights, 1930-1954 / Robert M. Zecker. Description: Philadelphia : Temple University Press, 2018. | Includes index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017035619| ISBN 9781439915158 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781439915165 (paper : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: International Workers Order. | International labor activities—History—20th century. | Labor unions—United States—History—20th century. | Working class—Societies, etc.—History—20th century. | Working class—United States—Societies, etc.—History—20th century. | Labor movement—United States—History—20th century. | Civil rights and socialism—United States—History—20th century. Classification: LCC HD6475.A2 I867 2018 | DDC 331.88/6097309041—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017035619 The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992 Printed in the United States of America 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 This book is dedicated to the former members of the International Workers Order, men and women who were confident that interracial working-class solidarity was indeed the “road to peace and freedom.” May our current generation take inspiration from them in these “interesting” times. Contents Acknowledgments ix Abbreviations xiii Introduction 1 1 “A Practical Demonstration in Democracy”: The IWO 19 2 A “Plan for Plenty”: The IWO Tames Capitalism 55 3 “We Dare Entertain Thoughts Not to the Liking of Present-Day Bigots”: Race, Civil Rights, and the IWO 97 4 “A Mandolin Orchestra . Could Attract a Lot of Attention”: Interracial Fun 136 5 Foreign Policy and the IWO 166 6 “A Fraternal Order Sentenced to Death!” Government Suppression 213 Conclusion 261 Notes 265 Index 349 Acknowledgments uring the four years or so that I’ve followed the International Workers Order (IWO) through various archives and newspaper files, I have ben- Defited from the gracious assistance of many kind librarians, colleagues, and scholars. Research grants and conference funding from my home insti- tution, Saint Francis Xavier University, enabled me to travel to chase the paper trail of the IWO. At. St. FX, my colleagues in the Department of His- tory have offered guidance and support as I bounced ideas and drafts of this project off their (mostly willing) ears. Our department administrative as- sistants, Margo Boyd and Joanne Bouchard, have been invaluable in helping me move this project along. Sheldon MacDonald, digital archivist at the Saint Francis Xavier University library, graciously provided digitized images for this book’s illustrations. My thinking on race, social movements, and the American working class has benefited from the graduate training I received at the University of Penn- sylvania’s Program in American Civilization. Although those graduate sem- inars are fading into the mists of time, I still gratefully acknowledge the scholars there who pushed my thinking on race and immigration, especially Ewa Morawska, Thomas J. Sugrue, Murray Murphey, and the late Michael B. Katz. It was in Dr. Katz’s Urban Studies pro-seminar, particularly, that ques- tions of the salience of race to white ethnic Americans’ acculturation to the United States first began to gel for me. I am grateful to the intellectual rigor of my UPenn colleagues, particularly Russell A. Kazal and Rachel Batch. Russ and Rachel, as well as other colleagues, have helped me over the years to think rigorously about race, immigration, and much, much more. x Acknowledgments The old joke has it that academia is the place where the battles are so fierce because the stakes are so low. But for whatever reason, I’ve been lucky to have found many truly generous people and avoided (mostly) academic steel-cage matches. Many thanks are due to David Roediger for his insights on race, the American left, and immigrant America. His commentary on an early draft of this manuscript helped me to sharpen and refine my argu- ments; his encouragement and friendship over the years has proved invalu- able. Likewise, the comments and critiques offered by numerous colleagues on various stages of this project have pointed me toward sources, offered astute critiques, and in general strengthened my understanding of the American left and its civil-rights activism. In this respect, special thanks are extended to Rebecca Hill, Rachel Buff, John Enyeart, Barry Goldberg, Jennifer Young, Daniel Chard, Anthony DeStefanis, and Ian Rocksborough-Smith. I am grateful, too, to the very kind e-mail correspondence I received from MaryLouise Patterson, who clarified some questions I had regarding the activism and career of her mother, Louise Thompson Patterson, particu- larly with regard to her role as vice president of the IWO, and her work in founding the Harlem Suitcase Theatre. The assistance I received at many archives not only made this project possible, but made it a joyous odyssey, too. The archivists at Cornell Univer- sity’s Kheel Center for Labor Management Documentation and Archives, especially Patrizia Sione and Melissa Holland, have my gratitude and admi- ration. The staff at New York University’s Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives are expert custodians of one of the preeminent col- lections of material on working-class and radical America. Wayne State Uni- versity’s Walter P. Reuther Library contained a wealth of material on the IWO, and Erik Nordberg, Kristen Chinery, and the rest of the Reuther staff provided invaluable assistance to me. The archival collections at New York Public Library, particularly the Vito Marcantonio Papers, provided much useful material regarding the IWO, and the library’s periodicals included foreign-language newspapers that allowed me to retrace coverage of the IWO and other left-wing organizations. I am grateful, too, to the library’s Andrea Felder and Tal Nadan for help with providing a digitized illustration from the Marcantonio Papers. The staff at Columbia University’s Butler -Li brary, the Wisconsin State Historical Society, and the University of Minne- sota’s Immigration History Research Center are consummate professionals and assisted me in my research trips to these institutions. Emory University’s Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library is the reposi- tory of the papers of Louise Thompson Patterson, and I am most grateful for the expertise and courtesy of the staff there in helping me. Special thanks are extended to Courtney Chartier and Kathleen Shoemaker at Emory. Likewise, I am grateful to the expert assistance of the staff at the Library of Con- gress’ manuscript division, especially Jeff Flannery. I also take this oppor- Acknowledgments xi tunity to apologize to any other researchers at the Library of Congress who may have been distracted by Jeff and me debating the relative merits of the Philadelphia Phillies and New York Mets. The comments of fellow panelists, chairs, and audience members at sev- eral conferences where I presented portions of this research helped me hone and refine my arguments, and pointed me toward both primary and second- ary sources. The Working Class Studies Association conferences at Stony Brook, NY, and Washington, DC (2016, 2015); Organization of American Historians and Popular Culture Association conferences (2016); the North American Labor History Conference at Wayne State University (2015); and the American Studies Association and Canadian History Association con- ferences (2014) provided me opportunities to test some of my findings in collegial and intellectually rigorous settings. I was fortunate, too, to present papers on early findings regarding the IWO and American Slav Congress at Oxford University’s Mansfield College, where I attended a conference in critical issues of whiteness in July 2014, and at the University of Turku in Finland in October 2013 at a conference, “Travelling Whiteness.” Scholars and colleagues who have offered particularly astute commen- tary at these conferences and beyond have my continuing gratitude and friendship. Samantha Schulz, Paula De Angelis, Simone Puff, Jarmila Rajas, Carolyn Podruchny, Todd Michney, Joe Varga, Tim Sheard, John Beck, Jack Metzgar, and Michael Zweig are especially acknowledged in this regard. Many thanks to my editor at Temple University Press, Aaron Javsicas, for his thoughtful guidance of this project, as well as his patience when dead- lines were (narrowly) missed. The expertise and professionalism of the Tem- ple University Press team made this project a pleasurable one. Special thanks go out to Ann-Marie Anderson, Jamie Armstrong, Karen Baker, Gary Kramer, Nikki Miller, and Kate Nichols