Robert Latz Narrator

Carl Ross and Linda Schloff Interviewers

November 2, 1988 ,

CR: This is an interview with Robert Latz in Minneapolis on November 2nd, 1988. The interviewers are Carl Ross and Linda Schloff. [Unclear] around here, why don't you chose the starting point you feel most useful and comfortable with. Minnesota BL: I'm not sure how much I remember it just basically age wise,in I do recall that in, I think the '20s when my family lived on the Range, I was not born on the Range, but everybody else in our family was born, I'm the youngest of 7, and the rest of the family were all, the siblings were all born on the Range, and I recall my father ran I think for the City Council in Hibbing in the early '20s on the Socialist Party ticket. That's the earliest political recollection that I have in terms of his involvement, he and his brothers were in the dry cleaning business atSociety that time in Hibbing and Virginia, it was the Latz Brothers Dry Cleaning, so they wereProject small business people and they had dry cleaning routes throughout the Range, Radicalismin Hibbing, Virginia, Bawabek and all through the Iron Range and that was either in the late teens or the early '20s, I'm not quite sure because at some point around the time of the first World War I think the business, one brother died of influenza during the flu epidemic in 1917 and my father moved Historywith the family to International Falls and went into the Army Navy surplus business and the other brother movedHistorical to Grand Rapids and opened up a dry goods store and sometime afterCentury that the family moved down here to Minneapolis. I was born in 1930 and I'm not quite sure when theOral family moved, but they had been here for a while and my father went to work in the dry cleaning as a spotter in the dry cleaning shop and...

LS: Whose shop?

BL: I forget the name of the shop,Minnesota whether it was one of those, it may have been that which ultimatelyTwentieth evolved into Gross Brothers, Chronics Dry Cleaners because the Gross family came from the same place in Lithuania that our family did, to just go back a step, my father and a whole group of people from the Vilna area in Lithuania had homesteaded out in North Dakota, as a matter of fact and I forget in which county, but there was a whole enclave of Jewish people who came relatively closely together from the old country and went out and homesteaded in the, in North Dakota in what is now the oil country, because for some odd reason my father kept one half, when he sold the homestead, kept one half of the mineral rights to the land and they were drilling oil all around it and we got like about $7 a piece for a couple of years on an oil lease but nobody ever struck oil out there, but they finally I think in the Dust Bowl times they gave up the effort to live in the prairie and moved back here to to the Twin Cities. My mother on the other hand with her younger brother,

1 homesteaded near the Montana border in South Dakota, although my parents came from the same town in the old country.

LS: So then they homesteaded and then they went to the Range, I'm not quite...

BL: They homesteaded earlier...

LS: Yes.

BL: They homesteaded around the turn of the century, I forget when my father came over here, but they homesteaded in North Dakota, my mother homesteaded in South Dakota near the Montana border and the parents, my parents were married and they moved to the Range, the whole family, our family ended up on the Range and the Grosses who later formed this laundry and dry cleaning business I guess settled into Minneapolis. LS: They had homesteaded also? Minnesota BL: They had homest...my understanding is they had homesteadedin out there the same area in North Dakota and then my father in the early '30s organized the Laundry Workers and Dry Cleaners union, local 183 which he became the business agent, and organized the launderers in the dry cleaning shops including those of the people with whom, who were now management with whom he had worked or homesteaded years earlier and I do remember vividSociety memories because it was in the heart of the depression and my father came up for electionProject every year as a business agent and there was always some apprehension about whether or not there would be somebody who would run against him as the business agent or notRadicalism and it was a very low income paid profession, I think in those days he made like about $4,000 a year I think was the maximum salary. Business, it was a low paid, a very low paid occupation in the laundry and dry cleaning trade, so people didn't have much to pay in union dues if they paid it at Historyall. Historical LS: Did he run into oppositionCentury from the owners of the dry cleaners? Oral BL: Well they always just had the typical labor-management conflict, both in organizing and in negotiating the bargaining agreement. But the relationships were relatively good, there were a number of Jewish people who were in the laundry and dry cleaning business and a number of Jewish people as a matter of factMinnesota who worked in the trade. Interestingly enough for example there's a fellow in later years by the name of Jack Tannic whose son Marshall is now a lawyer Tannick and Hiens, JackTwentieth was the vice president of the Laundry Corkers and Dry Cleaners Union, interesting because I evolved in representing unions in my law practice and Marshall was representing labor unions in his law practice and his father was the vice president of that union. And then my dad got involved in Farmer Labor politics down here through the '30s. You stop if we're getting off on tangents at any point or if you want to ask some questions, so it's not you know too much of a free stream...

CR: We can catch up when you...

BL: ...got involved in the Farmer Labor Party, was very active during the Floyd Olson days of the

2 mid and late '30s. One of the vivid memories that I have as a 6 year old was attending Floyd Olson's funeral at the Minneapolis Auditorium and then going out to the Lakewood Cemetery for his interment, there aren't too many things as a five or six year old kid that you remember but I have a very vivid memory of my father taking me with him to that funeral and taking me to all kinds of political meetings and rallies. There was a place called Margolis' Garage on Plymouth Avenue and that's where all the political rallies were held in the Farmer Labor rallies during the '30s and '40s and into the '50s, it was later converted into a dry goods store, but it was a garage and it was an ideal place to hold the political rallies for functions. And there was a, before we get into the Humphrey thing and so on there was the Arbitering or Workman's Circle that had, I just remember it being located down on Olson Highway and Logan and I think the building is still there, I think it's a cultural center for the Chicanos in North Minneapolis now, but that was a building that they built and Harry Bellman, Sam Bellman's father was very close with my dad and as a matter of fact Sam Bellman was elected to the legislature from north Minneapolis, as he may have told you in 1934 probably...

LS: Yeah about '34 to... Minnesota

BL: ...'34-36 he served, I think he served about four years... in

LS: Two terms, yeah. BL: Yeah, served about four years in the House at that time. It's kindSociety of interesting because when I ran for the legislature in 1958, Sam came out of retirementProject and contested, wanted to run again, and contested my DFL endorsement [unclear] for the legislative seat, even though my father was instrumental in getting Sam elected to the Radicalismlegislature and the families were best friends.

LS: Does your father spend a lot of time at the, I mean what was your father's [unclear] Arbitering? HistoryHistorical BL: Well he spent a lot of time, I don't know whether there was any official, any official position that he had with the Workman'sCentury Circle, but he did spend, they spent a lot of time, it was a social and cultural organization, they used to Oralbring in Jewish singers, Yiddish theater both in terms of touring people and in terms of local people, I remember posters for example, or having seen posters of people local people who performed in these events at the... LS: Really, who? Minnesota BL: Well,Twentieth the only one that, there was a fellow by the name of Sam Medoff, m-e-d-o-f-f, who was one of the persons who was active in the Arbitering, there was a fellow by the name of Kates, k-a-t-e-s, who was active, the Bellmans were active, there was a whole nucleus there of about dozen families that were involved and I remember separate and apart from the social and cultural dimension of it because we used to go there for various events, I remember a lot of conflict getting into the radical movement, I remember a lot of conflict between the moderates and the so-called leftists and it was during the time when there was a lot of conflict within the Farmer Labor Party with Elmer Benson and Benson's secretary who as you know was Jewish and the flirtation of the, of some people in the Farmer Labor Party with the Communist Party or with the more radical Socialist Workers Party in those days, because I remember there, they had some very vociferous arguments 3 between the moderates, the moderate group of which my father was a part and the people who were more to the left, which included, the name escapes me, but there was a very well-to-do Jewish manufacturer...

LS: Supacks.

BL: Supacks, who were alleged to be members of the Communist Party, fellow travelers, however you want to describe it, and I know that there was a lot of conflict within the Workman's Circle between the so-called moderates or Socialists who considered themselves more moderate, and those who were more inclined to follow the so-called Party line from Moscow and I think that was in a sense some of the same kind of travail that was taking place in the Farmer Labor Party during the middle and late '30s and the conflict in which Floyd Olson very skillfully played, played all of the diverse elements of the Farmer Labor Party off against each other and managed to get the support of everyone in the days when he was the Hennepin County Attorney and the, he was what is known as a shabbas goy, Floyd Olson, where he used to, when he lived in north Minneapolis he used to go around and light Sabbath or run the errands for the people on the Sabbath,Minnesota the things that the Orthodox Jews could not do and he spoke beautiful Yiddish, better than most Jews did and that was one way in which he secured just a very solid support out of thein Jewish community which was then centered around Lyndale and Olson Highway and the old what they called Kissler building that was located on that corner. But I do remember a lot of conflict between the diverse elements politically of the people who were involved in the Workman's Circle. Society LS: Was it confined to shouting, or did it come to blows?Project

BL: Oh I don't ever recall any physical violenceRadicalism but a lot of very vociferous arguments over the Soviet Union and whether the Soviet Union policies were for real, the difference between the Manifesto and the theory and the practice of the Stalinite and Trotskyites and the whole conflict of which there was a good deal in the labor movementHistoryHistorical of the mid-'30s and the elements of Miles Dunn and those who were involved in the Teamsters strike of what, '36? Century CR: '34. Oral

BL: Were you involved, your name is familiar to me in terms of your own political involvement, is that, is my memory correct or not? Minnesota CR: Yes,Twentieth yes probably so. I was the Minnesota State Secretary of the Communist Party from 1946 to '57 when we decided to pull out.

BL: Okay.

CR: I was the, identified with the Young Communist League and the American Youth Congress here in 1930 so I have recollections...

BL: So you would remember better than I, some of what I'm saying is a combination of what I heard and some of what I've read and discussed with people like Hy Berman you know who's written the text on the labor history in Minnesota and so on.

4 CR: Right, it's surprising how accurate and how informative in some ways these even childhood recollections are, they, somehow by osmosis kind of, and from the atmosphere [unclear]_ absorb a sense of what it was, and so a testimony of people like yourself is very valuable. I have a question about the, this factionalism you were just speaking about. I happen to be of Finnish background and I know that among the Finns it was sort of foregone that the Red Finns and the Church Finns never talked to each other and so on and so forth, yet as we look at it later on we find that really they never ceased belonging to the same community and the same culture. Would it be accurate to say that in the north Minneapolis Jewish community even after the schism of the 1929-30 period when the Supacks and others identified themselves as a communist wing and others remained socialist, social democratic, and then up into the '30s when there were again this outbreak of factionalist [unclear], was there a sense that the Supacks and others were beyond the [unclear]_ or they still belong, was this a argument, a discussion that was in one community or were some people thought of as outsiders?

BL: That's a good question, I'm not sure I can answer it. I think that there was an economic divergence between those people who were not doing all that well inMinnesota the economic sense and those like the Supacks who were more successful, more upper middlein class if you would in the Jewish community, so I think that was part of the difference. I think part of it was the difference between those people who contributed financially to political or so-called left-wing causes and those people who were the activists in terms of the ideology and involved in the political parties and the political movements as such, I just, I don't ever remember having met the Supacks, I just remember tension, conflict and my father being not happy with the, with what they wereSociety representing because he I think felt early on that he recognized that there were, the Projectcommunist ideology and the practice was very far from each other and he was not aboutRadicalism to buy the philosophy and I think he was a more practical, he took a more pragmatic approach I think in part based on his involvement in the labor movement and what he saw on the firing line as so-called class conflict played out between labor and management as compared to people whoHistory looked at more of it in an ideological sense and who, I seem to have a vague recollection of some statementsHistorical that the Supacks were hypocrites because of the way they treated their peopleCentury in the so -called needle trades in those days and didn't pay them very much for the people who wereOral turning out their garments and yet they were turning around and were buying the communist philosophy and were putting their profits into the coffers of the Party while they were, the people in so-called sweat shops... CR: This has got to be some kindMinnesota of a unique situation where the extreme left was most [unclear] resented for their class position. There were several families of, who were on the left comparable to the Supacks...Twentieth

BL: Yeah, I don't remember the names, maybe you can refresh my memory besides the Supacks because I don't remember...

CR: I don't off-hand, there was at least one employer in St. Paul who occupied somewhat the same position, I just don't recall it.

BL: Supack is the only name that sticks with me because they were in a lot of conflict over it.

CR: Yeah he kind of symbolizes that. There were of course a fair number of left-wing and even 5 communist-supporting workers in the needle trades in both Minneapolis and St. Paul who represented a little bit of a left wing in the American [unclear] Clothing Workers, but never as significant as more social historians [unclear]. I think I would, I would look at much of that somewhat the same way as you do in regard to Reuben Latz here. I asked Robert Kelly whom you may know of...

BL: Kally?

CR: Kelly.

BL: Oh, Kelly...

CR: Bob Kelly, he was a business agent of local 665 Hotel and Restaurant Workers and a local organizer of the Communist Party later years. He was in the Central Labor Union a number of years with Reuben and I have the highest respect for him as a labor leader. He considered Reuben Latz as being part of a moderate to centrist kind of group largely of,Minnesota representing some of the Jewish trade union people who were normally very cooperative with or coalesced with the left on many issues in the Central Labor Union. This was apparently particularlyin true during the war. Reuben Latz seemed to have been the prime organizer of the Labor Victory Committee in the Central Labor Union and important in mobilizing trade union support for activities like the barn sales and the scrap collections and general labor support in terms of production, desiring high levels of production and so on. Do you have recollection... Society Project BL: Yes I do as a matter of fact and I think what you said is accurate and I remember my father being involved in civil defense, I think he headedRadicalism up some sort of an effort in the civil defense area on, from the Central Labor Union cause I remember he had one of these white civil defense helmets with the emblem on the front of it and he made some contacts and one in particular that I thought interesting on the part of Mrs. F. P. B. Heffelfinger,HistoryHistorical Elizabeth Heffelfinger who was also active in the civil defense area and she and my father became very good friends, she was at that time I think the Republican National Committeewoman,Century or in the '40s became the Republican National Committeewoman from MinnesotaOral and I, somewhere saw a very nice letter that she wrote to my mother when my father died in 1948 because of the association that she had had in the civil defense effort. But he was very much involved in that effort and in the human rights area, going back to the CLU days in terms of anti-discrimination efforts and got very much involved in the early days of because my fatherMinnesota was the chairman of the Board of Business Agents in the, probablyTwentieth 1943 and that was a time when Hubert was doing War Manpower Commission work and living in a quanset hut out in University Village, because I have a memory one night of, and I've talked this over with Muriel, we reminisced when Hubert was still alive because I remember going to a bingo game at the union hall one night and it got quite late and Hubert didn't have very much money and he didn't have enough gas in his car to be safe in getting them back to where they lived over at the University, I remember my mother and my father and myself following the Humphreys out to their place in University Village because he didn't think there was enough gas in his car to get him back to the, to his home out there and my dad I think claimed that he was one of the first people who launched Hubert's political career because he invited Hubert to speak to the Board of Business Agents at the time my father was the chair of the Board and of course Hubert made such a fantastic impression that they began to invite him to speak to the various labor unions that were part 6 of the central body and Hubert just took off from there and you know what his career has been, so through the years we maintained a very close relationship with the Humphrey family and used to come to the house, his father, when they dedicated the Immanuel Cohen Center Building, Hubert dedicated the cornerstone of the old Immanuel Cohen Center Building on Oak Park Avenue and then Hubert's father was with them and they came back to our house afterwards for Schnapps and cause I remember his father, signed my autograph book, I had my junior high autograph book and somewhere I still have Hubert Sr.'s autograph.

LS: You know I got a question about Zionist, you know we were talking about the Supacks and the more mainstream socialist and Carl had asked you if you thought it was you know they were outside the pale, and you didn't quite answer directly. I have the impression that you still felt that they were.

BL: They were outside the pale of the Arbitering of the, even though there may well have been some people who shared some of their views, I think there was a vast divergence, but the Supacks I think were kind of, were there but I kind of thought they were outsideMinnesota the pale, that would be the kind of recollection that I have at this point. in LS: I had a question about Zionists you know like Poa Lazium the sort of left wing Zionist parties and where they sort of fit in, I mean it seems to me as though in some instances their views you know what they were working for was so divergent that they might not enter into socialist activity but yet they might be drawing people away from work, working for socialismSociety in America. Project BL: I don't have any distinct memory of the Labor Zionist movement as such, they may very well have been quartered you know generally inRadicalism the same building and so on. My father was not a particularly ardent Zionist, I think he was more focused on what was going on to try to build a better life in this country rather than encouraging people to make alli-yah so I don't really have any significant memory along the Zionist line really.History JustHistorical to jump a little bit, I remember some conflict in 1944, my father was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1944 and he was a supporter of Henry WallaceCentury and I remember him telling me how when Roosevelt and the leadership of the Democratic Party decided toOral dump Henry Wallace that they changed all of the gallery passes on the night of the convention when the election was to be held so that all of the supporters, not the delegates, but all of the supporters who were going, who had gallery passes and who were going to conduct you know applause and demonstrations on Wallace's behalf all had their tickets changed on them so that all of the supportersMinnesota of the President and the party regulars packed the gallery and all of the WallaceTwentieth supporters were excluded from the convention hall and I remember my father coming back and telling me about that.

CR: How do you feel about the 1948 campaign when Wallace ran for President?

BL: Well, my father was dying of cancer during that period, he passed on on Christmas Eve of 1948 and so at that time he really was not involved in that campaign, I forget the number of months that were involved, but he was ill over a significant period of that '48 thing and I think at that time he was really out of...

CR: Yeah, the campaign kind of started about middle of '47 and went on... 7 BL: Yeah, I don't have any memory of his having been involved, he maintained I think pretty regular ties to the, to Hubert and and Naftalin and that group and I think pretty much in those days of the conflict leading up to the merger of the DFL and the battles there that he was pretty much on the side of the Humphrey people rather than the division into the Wallace forces in those years.

CR: Yeah, well everyone favored the merger except for a small segment of the left.

BL: It's just a question of who thought they were going to be able to control the Party after the merger took place, if my memory is correct.

CR: Yeah, I don't know if it occurred to Wallace beforehand but he certainly woke up to the fact quickly, yeah. I was going to ask you to back up for a couple moments to the earlier part of this. I assume that Reuben Latz always remained in his mind a socialist, was that accurate? BL: I don't know that we really ever talked about socialism as a philosophyMinnesota or in the organized sense. As I say I remember that he did run for office on the Socialist ticket, whatever that represented in those days on the Range. in

LS: It seems to me to be an enormously potent statement because most Jewish businessmen up there wouldn't declare what they thought, they were only there to make money and serve the public. Society BL: It was a pretty tight knit Jewish community... Project END TAPE ONE, SIDE ONE Radicalism TAPE ONE, SIDE TWO History BL: ...really is more of a division based on ideologicalHistorical views and where you fit in the spectrum of the philosophy rather and revolvingCentury around the Workman's Circle and so on, rather than a question of affiliation with the Socialist PartyOral or the Farmer Labor Party or later the DFL, but more where you fit in the spectrum from far left to moderate and you know...

CR: Well the thought behind this in my mind was that in the period from about I'd say 1912 to 1919 there appears to have taken place in the, among the people who considered Socialists or supporters of Eugene Debs, wereMinnesota socialists partially because they related closer to the culture, Jewish, Yiddish,Twentieth Socialist culture, Finnish radical, Finnish culture, that began to be quite early on a differentiation. Politically the birth of the Non-Partisan League seemed to offer to a substantial part of the socialist-minded movement an opportunity to enter [unclear] on American practical politics in a useful way, I read this into the correspondence of George Leonard with Algernon Lee in the east particularly because in one letter he discusses the need for a more practical less idealistic socialism than the European variant. On the other hand a substantial part of the socialist left of Minnesota entered farther left in this period, especially under the impetus of the Russian Revolution, wound up in the communist movement. The interesting thing is that a large part of the leadership, the early leadership of the Farmer Labor movement from 1922 on came straight out of the Socialist Party, I identified people like Reuben Latz [unclear], George Leonard was there and

8 became a close confidante of Floyd Olson...

BL: Right.

CR: I assume they carried with them much of the earlier socialist idealism if not the political practice, they had found a more practical arena for that. This kind of oblique question, see how you might sense that current in the earlier more radicalized segment of the Jewish community in north Minneapolis who began with this kind of a socialist working class orientation wound up by the late '20s and early '30s firm convinced Farmer Laborites and who saw in that a realization of those earlier goals. How did they rationalize this, did they bother to do it, how did they see themselves acting at this point?

BL: Well that's a deep question, to defer just a bit, I remember my father speaking fondly of Eugene Debs and I remember at least one volume of writings of Eugene Debs in the household. My father was always a very pragmatic person, I think that those who knew him, and he used to express his opinions strongly and without reservation, and I think myMinnesota sense was that fairly early on my father saw that the socialist movement as a political movement was not going to be successful in the practical sense of being able to make them, allow them toin realize their goals. I think it had little to do with the socialist philosophy and more with a pragmatic determination that this just not going to fly and that it was necessary to find a more mainstream method of political expression to be able to achieve any of the social and economic goals of the left, and I think my sense would be that that's why my father got involved in the Farmer Labor Party. I thinkSociety there were others, and he was among the more politically active of the people who Projectwere involved in the Workman's Circle and I think there were those who were not happy with my father because my father took a more pragmatic approach and was willing to workRadicalism more with people who were more to the center and to the right of the spectrum than the more pure, purists in an ideological sense and I sense as a young person some significant debate that went onHistory at the Arbitering over whether, between the purists, not so much as a matter of where you went in the spectrumHistorical but between those who wanted to maintain the ideological purity of theCentury socialist or of the left movement and those like my father who were trying to meld the ideological foundationsOral with the attempts to pass legislation that was going to achieve those goals but which necessitated compromise in the process and I think, I seem to recall a lot of conflict over Roosevelt you know and whether Roosevelt was not in fact, well coming from Hyde Park and with his background, whether he was somebody who was going to make it possible on a national level to achieve goals and I think Floyd Olson got caught up in, if I remember my history, in some of the same kindsMinnesota of conflicts in Minnesota in the flirtation that he had with the DemocraticTwentieth Party on a national level and was criticized very roundly if I remember the history from the left in Minnesota over his flirtation with the Democratic, with the Roosevelt administration in Washington. So I think you had a lot of that kind of conflict.

CR: Well it took the Communist left until the early part of 1934 to catch up with any sense of where Floyd Olson was [unclear]...

BL: [Unclear]. He was, he was quite a guy, and played everybody off I understand historically very well, he was able to, he was just a consummate politician.

CR: Yes, I consider him still somewhat of a political enigma but in the end he stood probably as a 9 man with a lot of sound instincts and some ideas even of the left combined with this, capacity to be the consummate politician.

BL: Well he had Rober Rutcheck whose name I couldn't remember earlier who was his secretary and of course they got into...

CR: You're now going to confuse Olson and Benson.

BL: Was Rutcheck, oh Rutcheck was Benson's secretary, that's right, that's right, that's a little, that's the '3...[unclear]

CR: Jud Vince Day was Olson's secretary and Vince Day was one of those who came out of the Socialist Party through the Non-Partisan League into prominence in the Farmer Labor movement, as was George Leonard a very close confidante of Olson, so he surrounded himself with, and identified with a group of former socialists, people who as you were trying to express it, had found their way into some kind of pragmatic practical American politics. MinnesotaThat's probably what gave the Farmer Labor movement a kind of an authentic radical aspect, some bold even innovative progressive ideas which occasionally went beyond the New Deal.in I did have a question about Benson, Benson as we now know of course was not the politician that Olson was and may have lost the 1938 election for that reason, reasons that lead to factionalism in the Farmer Labor Party and so on, but there was always that nagging and nasty fact that it was the dirty anti-Semitic campaign against him focused on Abe Harris and Roger Rutcheck that alienatedSociety voters from him. This must have been a deep concern to the Jewish community whetherProject or not they were Benson supporters. Have you any sense of the response and reaction in the Jewish community to this rise of anti- Semitism in '38? Radicalism

BL: Not really in a personal sense, cause I was too young at that point, I have a general sense that my father was not a particularly strong supporterHistory ofHistorical Elmer Benson. I do not know why, but I don't have the recollection that my father had any particular affinity to Elmer Benson or Elmer Benson's administration and I don't knowCentury particularly what the reason for that would have been, it's just a general historical sense that I have Oralof the discussions and I don't know what the reason for that or whether Benson was close to the labor movement particularly in Minneapolis or not during that time...

CR: Benson became alienated fromMinnesota the AF of L in the course of his administration and even the progressivelyTwentieth oriented Central Labor Body was not enthusiastic and reluctant supporters in that time [unclear]. I'm sure that Reuben Latz shared that view of the trade union movement, but as I said regardless of whether they were Benson supporters [unclear][unclear] and the issues could not but have disturbed the Jewish community.

BL: The only thing that I remember and this is a personal diversion I guess, I don't know whether George Leonard identified himself as a Jew as such. The interesting part of it was is that George Leonard was on the Board of Regents, had been appointed I think by Floyd Olson to the Board of Regents at the and when I was elected to the Board of Regents in 1975, some people thought that I was at that point the first, there were several Jews who were elected at that time, but just in the way the order came that I was the first Jew who had served on the Board of 10 Regents at the University and when somebody raised the name of George Leonard they said well George Leonard was either not Jewish or never affiliated himself with the Jewish community in Minneapolis although he was obviously a close advisor to the Governor and I remember however somebody telling me some University history because Lotus Coffman who at that time was the President of the University of Minnesota did not do anything to stop rampant anti-Semitism that was taking place and there were stories that were told about Coffman and about some of the liberals on campus like Eric Severeid and others and things that Coffman was trying to do with, to put a squelch on Severeid and I forget who the others were who were more militant in those days and how George Leonard took Lotus Coffman on to try to get Coffman off the backs of the liberals who were running the Minnesota Daily, and I forget who was the editor of the Minnesota Daily in those days, whether it was Severeid and someone else who was later very prominent...

CR: In the '30s?

BL: In the '30s, in the middle '30s, but that's a divergence on, it was a tough time for the Jewish community but I know that only historically in that '38 campaign. Minnesota CR: The editor I think was Harold Grant, a very left oriented memberin of the student body, student affairs were run by a coalition of the left organizations like the National Student League and some others and the Jocaban Club which was Severeid along with somebody else who became... BL: There was one other person who later became very prominent...Society Project CR: Became a judge as a matter of fact... Radicalism BL: Who's that? CR: Became a judge as a matter of fact. HistoryHistorical BL: Well the name will comeCentury to me at some point, I don't remember. Oral CR: It's neither here nor there if we can't remember it. Well I was just asking the question to get some insight into the reactions of the community.

BL: I'm really not cognizant of what went on other than what I've read historically about the virulence of the newspaper, they,Minnesota the part that I remember only is the kind of class conflict in the TeamstersTwentieth strike between people in the Jewish community on the northside who were in the fruit business and who were targets of the Teamsters strike in '34 and created some conflict in the Jewish community in north Minneapolis between people like my father and those who supported the Teamsters strike and those like I remember one particular company, the Bearman Fruit Company, b-e-a-r-m-a-n, who I think were one of the targets of the Teamsters strike and I know there was some polarization in the Jewish community in north Minneapolis over the supporters of the Teamsters strike and those people who were targets of the strike in the Jewish community. I know my father was on the side of the Teamsters as you might imagine.

CR: Within the range of more of your personal experience, I don't think we have even the history of the civil rights movement, of the relationship of the questions of anti-Semitism and Jewish 11 situation in Minneapolis in regard to employment so I don't think even this is too well documented although there are the Shiner papers and things like that. What was the role of Reuben Latz in relation to the Humphrey Committee on Human Rights and the activities of that period, how does the community respond to this?

BL: Well as you say Carl my father was involved in Humphrey's first human relations, the committee that Hubert formed and I remember the self-survey of human relations attitudes in Minneapolis which was a first time classic study, I think the first time that the community, that any community in the United States had surveyed itself which was part of that Human Relations Committee and in part it evolved around Carrie McWilliam's book in which he labeled Minneapolis as the capital of anti-Semitism in the country and I think that gave Hubert and the committee the opportunity to move forward that particular area, the same Shiner and the Minnesota Jewish Council, at that time my father was on the Council, had been and worked closely with Sam and I remember Sam because Sam to make a living used to play the piano I think at Murray's and at other restaurants in town, he was a very accomplished pianist and his job in the Minnesota Jewish Council did not pay enough to support himself and his family and heMinnesota was a lawyer by profession, but I don't think he ever, or he didn't practice law so he used to inplay the piano at social gatherings to make a few bucks on the side to help him be able to labor the vineyards with the Minnesota Jewish Council, so my father was involved in Sam Shiner's organization, was involved in the B'nai Brith, in later years in the '40s, but I don't remember anything specific about the Human Relations Committee as such other than to know that my father was very much involved in it and I got involved in it personally as you might expect later on, both in the MinnesotaSociety Jewish Council and later in the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai Brith, but I Projectdon't have any really distinct memories of specifics during the '40s on that. I didn't getRadicalism involved until '48 right after my father died, I think you might find this interesting because I became the chairman of the 5th, either it was the 5th Ward or the 3rd Ward DFL Club at age 18, not long after my father died, and this was during the period of time when there was a lot of turmoil withinHistory the DFL over the so-called communist influence in the Democratic Farmer Labor Party and I remember a personHistorical who is now and has been for many years our very dear friend Nellie StoneCentury Johnson who as a matter of fact I'm speaking at her testimonial dinner in a week or so, they're havingOral a testimonial for Nellie... CR: Oh, no one's offered me a ticket yet...

BL: Well somehow or other they missed sending it out, I didn't get one either except I got a call from Nellie asking me to be oneMinnesota of a couple of people to give some vignettes of, cause I've known her for a Twentiethlong time and I remember very distinctly because Nellie had been accused of being a Communist Party member and there was a big fight in the DFL as to whether Nellie should be admitted as a member of the Club and there was a woman in the DFL Club by the name of Ruth Ann Withrow, Ruth Ann Withrow you may recall was at one time a Communist Party who turned into an FBI informant...

CR: Right, right.

BL: And she was a member of the Club and we had a knock down drag out battle over whether Nellie was number one a communist or had been a communist or a Communist Party member and number two whether or not Nellie should be admitted to membership in the Club and I did a fairly 12 thorough investigation checking a number of sources that I thought were reliable and talking to Nellie at some length and to make a long story short Nellie was admitted into membership into the DFL Club much to the disgust of this Ruth Ann Withrow who kind of felt herself to be the guardian of the DFL Club.

CR: Yeah, Nellie never told me about that story, I interviewed her at some length back in '78 or '79 and again last year. She's a member by the way of the steering committee of this project. We needed some lay non-historian people who would give us the contact of people not only with the information but people who were...

BL: One of the things that was kind of interesting, that in 1935 my father ran for the Library Board in Minneapolis and Nellie ran as Nellie Stone Johnson for the Library Board at that same time. Nellie went on to become elected, my father lost and Nellie got elected which I think she honestly admits because her name was on the ballot as Nellie Stone Johnson, nobody knew she was a black woman, and they voted for her based on the name of Johnson, they assumed that she was a Scandinavian... Minnesota CR: That's entirely possible given Minnesota politics... in

BL: Right, right, well the Gallaghers and you know there's a long litany in Minnesota politics of well known names in which people got elected because of, Gallagher the street cleaner got elected to Congress in the 3rd Congressional District many years ago... Society Project CR: [unclear] know that story, nobody knew who he was, but his name was on the ballot so they elected him. Radicalism

BL: He was a street cleaner, he served one term in Congress in the, I forget when the '40s or '50s. So Nellie did get elected and she considers HistoryReuben Historicalas having been her mentor and so I go long, I go long back... Century CR: Yes, she speaks very highly ofOral him on the record.

BL: Yeah, well we've been very close and she was a very strong supporter of mine when I ran for the legislature and so on. Minnesota LS: I had one question about your father and the people who were active in the Farmer Labor Party, peopleTwentieth who were active in the DFL vis-à-vis the Saga-going, the Shul Yidden, I mean was there a split?

BL: There was a split, as a matter of fact most of those people were not affiliated with the synagogue and my father was not formally affiliated with a synagogue. I began, when I wanted to be bar mitzvahed so they hired a tutor for me and...

LS: You were not sent to Talmud Torah?

BL: I went to the Talmud Torah for several years, the old Talmud Torah on Logan Avenue and I was a Talmud Torah drop-out cause my parents were not religiously oriented and I think it went 13 back to the socialist ideology, I think those people did not, most of those people at the Arbitering, my memories is were not affiliated with a synagogue. And I was bar mitzvahed at Beth-El through Rabbi Aaronson's behest and then became very active and became a member in my own right even though my parents were not members.

LS: Well what did, I mean what was your father's reaction to his son wanting to be bar mitzvahed?

BL: Very positive, it just was not his thing, organized religion was not his way of achieving his goals in life and he was not irreligious, just organized religion was not a meaningful thing to him and I think that that's probably fairly typical of the others that were involved in the socialist or liberal movement at least as it was centered around the Workman's Circle activities.

LS: Were there activities for young children, for people your age at the Workman's Circle?

BL: Well my situation was a little unusual because there was eight years difference, I was the youngest of 7 and there was an 8 year gap between myself and my nextMinnesota oldest sister so in those, my folks used to take me around to all of these functions cause I was the last one either left at home, or the last how didn't have teenage kinds of activities so from the intime I was a very young kid I went to all of the rallies and the political functions and the meetings in Margolis' garage and they didn't have babysitters so they took me to the Workman's Circle or to stuff at the Labor Temple downtown, political functions at the Central Labor Body, things of that sort. Society LS: Did your siblings to to any schools at the Labor Lyceum?Project BL: Not to my knowlege, although I thinkRadicalism a couple of my sisters may have been in what they called Kiddie Reviews, in those days some of the musical kinds of functions that were put on, but I don't think any of them really had any activities that were centered around the Labor Lyceum. History CR: The last evidence I have of Kinder School wasHistorical in the late '20s, '27-28-9 in that period, I don't know whether that carried overCentury much into the '30s even, the early '30s. Oral BL: I don't think so, not to my, it was more cultural you know with speakers and so on, but not anything in terms of, beyond that. LS: Carl do you have any otherMinnesota questions? CR: WasTwentieth there ever a Yiddish theater at the Labor Lyceum? A local...

BL: Very active, some of the people I've mentioned, [unclear] Metoff and Hatus and there was a woman I think who was the mother of my brother-in-law who lives in Arizona by the name of Celia Cook, c-oo-k, I happen to remember the name because I have a picture of a poster of someone having come in from New York from the Yiddish Theater and having performed at the Labor Lyceum and then there having been local performers who were part of the program.

LS: And what is this picture of, sounds like something I should get a copy of.

BL: Of some, I'm trying to remember where I saw it, whether or not my brother-in-law and sister 14 who now live in Scottsdale have..., I'm going out there this weekend and I'll ask my brother-in-law if they have any of the memoirs, or posters or anything from Yiddish Theater because his mother was a singer in the local Yiddish Theater.

LS: Gee, that would be nice to have, we can get some copies of that [unclear] Jewish Historical Society would be wonderful.

BL: I'll find out, I remember having seen this and I don't remember where, but there was an active Yiddish Theater.

CR: That was up into the '30s or...

BL: Oh I think the '30s, early '40s I would say.

CR: So there must have been actually a functioning theater company in the Lyceum in, back in the '20s. Minnesota BL: I suspect so because there were a handful of people who werein very much into the theater arts whether it was a company as such or they just put on periodic performances because they were the people who came out of the east you know on the Yiddish theater circuit who were the headliners so called at the performances they had.

LS: Sam Bellman couldn't remember a single person he had heard speakSociety or perform. I'll have to go back and jog his memory. Project Radicalism BL: I have the picture of and I remember discussions with my brother-in-law Ted Cook over the fact that his mother was, they may have a framed poster for all I can recall, but I'll make a point to ask him and call him if there's something thatHistory turns Historicalup. LS: Okay, okay. I have justCentury one other question, it seems to me that I had read there were a lot of gangsters who were praying on JewishOral owners of dry cleaning businesses of the '30s... END TAPE ONE SIDE TWO TAPE TWO SIDE ONE Minnesota BL: ...didn'tTwentieth make any difference, it was the conflict between management and labor you know which was endemic...

LS: Yeah, yeah.

BL: But I don't remember anything about any...

LS: Jewish dance studio?

BL: No, no.

15 LS: Okay.

CR: Perhaps I should ask one more question, have you any idea how the Jewish Historical Society could successfully induce people in the community who have some papers, documents and materials somewhere to part with them, at least to call them to the attention of the Society and give them a chance to ask for them? Our experience says that there are this kind of documents to be found, last, a few weeks ago we dug up five years of the Two Harbors Socialist. Last week I got 600 pages of materials assembled by the Labor Education Project of the WPA. About a year ago the minute books for the 1923 or 1927 of the Workers, Finnish Workers Society [unclear] committee of the Young Workers Communist League of Cloquet turned up at the Carlton Historical Society, stuff is out there.

BL: Yeah it is, it is.

CR: And we're going to lose the documentation of a whole era of Jewish life and I think maybe more important than not just the Jewish life, but a Yiddish culture, Minnesotawhich is a distinct aspect of that and more closely wedded to East European Jewish life and Jewish radicalism. The community elders, the community leaders must somehow engage themselvesin in recovering this past.

BL: Well a couple years ago when the Jewish Historical Society was formed I know there was a marvelous exhibit over at the Historical Society that was very well attended. That I think maybe jogged something. I don't know how you do it except just finding sourcesSociety and you know publicizing things and asking people. The thing that I'm Projectmost regretful about was that I didn't tape my mother's recollections, there was no tape recorders and stuff back when my dad died but I think the mistake that I made was not when video,Radicalism not video tape but just when cassette tapes were available that I didn't tape my mother's recollections and I would think the easiest or most productive way to at least maintain some of the continuity from a fact standpoint, the history, is to urge people because of everybody's got tapeHistory recorders,Historical is their parents or their grandparents at least while they're still able to do so is to tape their recollections of what early life was, separate and apart from their own family historyCentury for the continuity of the generations would be to preserve that history that you're talking about in the JewishOral community because there aren't too many of those folks that are still left that have those memories. Papers get you know just thrown out in moves because nobody including myself at the time had any realization of the importance of the documentation.

LS: I think maybe the Jewish peopleMinnesota have just moved too much, I mean they moved from North MinneapolisTwentieth to South Minneapolis to further west, and back at the condominiums and each time you lose some of that paper...

BL: Or the stuff gets divided up between kids.

LS: That maybe part of it.

BL: Some of the stuff we have, I think we still have maybe pictures of my mother and her brother outside a sod hut in the Dakotas, I mean little things, little things like that with the cowboy on a horse in the background and you know that kind of stuff which goes back.

16 CR: A Jewish farmer in a sod hut on the prairie would be very interesting [unclear]_...

LS: You should make us a copy.

BL: Yeah I think I still have that...

LS: You really should make us copy.

BL: I still have it, I could probably copy, I have, I did preserve a postcard collection that my mother had that includes picture postcards of early Duluth, early Minneapolis, written Yiddish, cards that were written and kept to and from the old country, some of them humorous and so on, I just kept that as family memories. Some of those copies at least of those might be of interest. I'll dig that out and see, I'll look at the stuff that looks like, but some of it, early pictures of the ore docks at Lake Superior in Duluth, downtown Minneapolis, Nicollet Avenue in 1916, I mean things like that. I figured at some point I probably would donate those to the Historical Society but I don't want to give them up quite yet. I'll look through some of that stuff, if there'sMinnesota some of it that I think would be productive I can make some photocopies. in LS: Okay, but I'd love to have a copy of that sod hut.

BL: Yeah, I think we still have the picture of my mother and her little brother, cause the two of them lived alone in the sod hut out there in western South Dakota, so,Society let me try to come up with some of that stuff. I'll be happy to try to put it together. Project CR: [unclear] if I can venture an opinion ofRadicalism my own [unclear] the... LS: Where is it, is that the question. History CR: The Jewish Historical Society's been kind of coastingHistorical along gathering some [unclear] and has done obviously some variedCentury things, but maybe also needs another boost and maybe it needs an infusion of more muscle which theseOral days comes with dollar tags attached to them generally. It seems to me that there ought to be some organized discussion about the problem among the people who are capable of making changes in the picture, actually draft a more thorough plan and organization and effort and consider it how to reinforce your one devoted organizer of the society with some more, some assistanceMinnesota and so on. BL: DoesTwentieth the Federation provide any kind of a [unclear]

LS: They have, yeah they have but the major problem is not so much the, it may be muscle but finding the material you know from private sources is just proven to be a task that's had...

CR: There's an awful lot of leg work attached to that.

LS: I've had very little success in really finding a lot, that's why I you know, I decided to approach all the social service organizations first, I mean, one knows they've had no continuity.

CR: But it is something for people to put their heads together about. 17 BL: Well it was a matter of some interest to me except that I'm just, I'm withdrawing from organizations at this point rather than getting involved in them again, so I really never got to that...

LS: But I mean if you think about who might have something.

BL: If I run across somebody, I'd sure, I'd be more than willing to try to see what I could do to induce, call or call you or ask them to try to put the stuff together. Well I hope it's been helpful, but interesting for me anyway.

LS: Okay, thank you.

END INTERVIEW

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