INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be firom any type of corrq)uter printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and inqnoper alignment can adversefy aSect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing from left to right in equal sectionssmall withoverlq>s. Each original is also photographed in one exposure and is included in reduced form at the back of the book. Photogr^hs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6" x 9" black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. UMI A Bell & Howell Information Company 300 North Z eeb Road. Ann Arbor. Ml 48106-1346 USA 313.'761-4700 800.'521-0600 VANGUARDS OF WOMEN'S LIBERATION: THE OLD LEFT AND THE CONTINUITY OF THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT IN THE UNITED STATES, 1945-1970S DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of the Ohio State University By Kathleen Anne Weigand, B.A., M.A. ***** The Ohio State University 1995 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Leila J. Rupp Susan M. Hartmann A(ÿ&iser Warren Van Tine Department of History ÜMI Number: 9526105 Copyright 1994 by WEIGAND, KATHLEEN ANNE All rights reserved. UMI Microform 9526105 Copyright 1995, by UMI Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103 Copyright by Kathleen Anne Weigand 1994 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In the course of researching and writing this dissertation, I have benefitted from the help of many people. First and foremost I would like to express my great thanks and appreciation to Leila Rupp for her advice, insights, encouragement and reassurance throughout every stage of this study. Without her always calming and confidence-boosting words I am not sure I ever would have undertaken, much less finished, this big and intimidating a project. She has been a model of an excellent dissertation director. I also thank Susan Hartmann and Warren Van Tine for their helpful comments and suggestions. I thank the following people for reading and responding to sections of the dissertation or suggesting useful ideas and directions: Sara Evans, Dorothy Healey, Maurice Isserman, Paul Mishler, Linn Shapiro, Paula Schwartz, Nancy Whittier, and Gerald Zahavi. Linn Shapiro and Katherine Campbell both aided my efforts my lending me important primary source documents that I could not have located elsewhere. I am also extremely grateful to the women I interviewed who were very generous with both their time and their memories. 11 The staffs of several libraries and archives provided critical assistance. Irene Still Meyer and Kristie French in the Special Collections department of the California State University-Long Beach Library made it possible for me to have access to the Dorothy Healey collection even though the building was under renovation. Eva Moseley at the Schlesinger Library arranged to have the Mary Inman papers processed, despite a major manuscript-processing backlog, so that they would be available for my use. Elizabeth Swain at the Wesleyan University Library located a full run of The Worker in library storage and had them hauled into the main reading room so that I would not have to go to Washington B.C. and read them in the Library of Congress. The staff of the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College took great interest in my project and provided expert assistance at locating relevant source materials. The reference staff and inter-library loan staff at the Neilson Library at Smith College also provided much appreciated assistance. My research was funded by a Women's Studies Small Grant from the Center for Women's Studies and a Graduate School Alumni Research Award, both from Ohio State University. A Presidential Fellowship awarded by the Graduate School at Ohio State provided me with a year free from teaching responsibilities to devote to the dissertation. That funding allowed me to complete this project more quickly and easily than I would have otherwise. iii Finally, I thank Nancy Whittier for the seemingly limitless emotional and intellectual support she provided me over the whole course of this project. Our long late-night conversations about social movement continuity, the origins of everythi ng in the Communist Party, and the importance of culture and préfigurâtive politics were critical to the formation of many of the ideas I advance herein. Her willingness to cook more than her share of dinners kept me well nourished, especially over the last months of writing. And her timely reminders that there was life away from the computer keyboard sustained me in times when it seemed as if the work would never end. IV VITA February 20, 1965 ............ .. Born - Cleveland, Ohio 1987 ................................ B.A., Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio 1989 ................................ M.A. , The Ohio State University, Columbus Ohio FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: History Studies in: Women's History, U.S. History V TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS............................................ ii VITA ...................................................... V CHAPTER PAGE I. INTRODUCTION ......................................... 1 II. THE MARY INMAN CONTROVERSY AND THE MAKING OF THE HISTORY OF WOMEN IN THE AMERICAN COMMUNIST PARTY, 1930-1945 .............................. 31 III. THE CONGRESS OF AMERICAN WOMEN: CATALYST FOR WOMEN'S LIBERATION ......................... 72 IV. WOMEN'S WORK IS NEVER DONE: THE EVOLUTION OF COMMUNIST PARTY THEORY AND PRACTICE ON THE WOMAN QUESTION, 1945-1956 ................... 118 V. DEALING WITH DIFFERENCES: COMMUNISTS' INTEGRATION OF RACE, CLASS AND G E N D E R ...................... 184 VI. COMMUNIST MOVEMENT CULTURE AND THE POLITICIZATION OF PERSONAL L I F E ................................ 218 VII. CONCLUSION: THE IMPACT OF THE OLD LEFT ON THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT OF THE 1960S AND 1970S . .265 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................. 308 VI CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION For many years historians writing about the Old Left regarded the American Communist Party (CP) as a Soviet- controlled and totalitarian organization that had little relevance for understanding the progress of struggles for social change in the United States since the 1920s. ‘ In the last two decades a younger generation of historians and 'This was the dominant scholarly view of the Communist Party from the 1950s until the mid-1970s. See, for example: Daniel Bell, "The Background and Development of Marxian Socialism in the United States," in Donald Drew Egbert and Stow Parsons, eds., Socialism and American Life (19 52); Theodore Draper, The Roots of American Communism (New York: Viking Press, 1957) and American Communism and Soviet Russia (New York: Viking Press, 1960); Irving Howe and Lewis Coser, The American Communist Party, a Critical History. 1919-1957 (New York: Praeger, 1962); David Shannon, The Decline of American Communism: A History of the American Communist Party since 1945 (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1959); Nathan Glazer, The Social Basis of American Communism (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1961); Joseph Starobin, American Communism in Crisis (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972); Harvey Klehr, The Heydav of American Communism: The Depression Decade (New York : Basic Books, 19 84); Harvey Klehr and John Earl Haynes, The American Communist Movement: Storming Heaven Itself (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1992). Maurice Isserman's article "Three Generations: Historians View American Communism," Labor History 26, 4 (1985): 517-545 and Michael E. Brown's introduction to the book New Studies in the Politics and Culture of U.S. Communism (New York : Monthly Review Press, 1993) are both critical examinations of the historiography of the CP and discuss these historians' work in greater detail. 2 writers has begun to rehabilitate the history of the American CP. Countering the Cold War analyses of the 1950s and 1960s they have described the Communist Party of the 1930s and 1940s as the center of a vital mass-based progressive movement whose participants made important contributions to the labor movement, the civil rights movement and the New Left, even though Party leaders often followed inappropriate political directives from the Soviet Union.' ^Although some historians of Communism-- especially Theodore Draper, John Earl Haynes, and Harvey Klehr have continued to advance their Cold War influenced arguments about the Communist Party into the 1980s and 1990s other and more forgiving historians' and writers' analyses have come to dominate the literature on the American Communism since the mid-1970s. See, for example: Peggy