Clarina Michelson Papers
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Abstract
Clarina Michelson, the daughter of an affluent and conservative Boston family, was a Communist and labor organizer most active in the 1930s. After attending Radcliff College, she enrolled in the Rand School in New York and joined the Communist Party. She served on the board of the American Fund for Public Service, a foundation that supported labor and radical causes, became a Party organizer in Georgia, played an important role in the Harlem section of the Communist Party and the League of Struggle for Negro Rights, and organized workers for the Department Store Section of the Office Workers Union. The collection contains Communist Party and Communist-led organizations' flyers, leaflets, and internal documents, including meeting notes, clippings, an autobiographical notebook, and an oral history transcript.
Historical/Biographical Note
Clarina Michelson (b. April 22,1892) came from an affluent, conservative Boston family, and attended Radcliffe College. She moved to New York City, where she attended the Socialist Party's Rand School, then later joined the Communist Party, becoming a long-time activist and sometime cadre. Michelson served (1927-1933) on the board of the American Fund for Public Service, a foundation that supported labor and radical causes. In 1932 she was an Atlanta, Georgia-based Party organizer, working on the 1932 electoral campaign, and on labor and civil rights issues, including the Scottsboro case. Returning to New York, she played an important role in the Harlem section of the Communist Party, and in the League of Struggle for Negro Rights (1932-1934). In 1935 Michelson organized workers for the Department Store Section of the Office Workers Union (affiliated with the Trade Union Unity League), and for the remainder of the decade continued to work in this area after the dissolution of the TUUL. Michelson may have been a Communist Party section organizer in the 1930s and 1940s. In 1979, she was interviewed for the Tamiment Library's Oral History of the American Left Project.
Arrangement
The files are grouped into 1 series.
Folders are arranged alphabetically.
Scope and Content Note
Arranged alphabetically. This small collection contains a valuable selection of Communist Party and Communist-led organizations' flyers, leaflets, and internal documents, including meeting notes, political analysis and reportage by Michelson, as well as clippings, an oral history transcript and a fragmentary autobiographical notebook (both) from her later years. There is an extensive although incomplete set of minutes (1927-1933) of the American Fund for Public Service, and a related file on the Brookwood School (funded in part by the AFPS) concerning the dispute between A.J. Muste and others re the future of the school. The bulk of the material is from the years 1932-1935, and documents Communist Party activities and initiatives, and to a somewhat lesser extent, Michelson's role therein.
Folders for several Southern states (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky and Tennessee) document the Party's 1932 electoral campaign and anti-lynching and other civil rights struggles, and also some mining and textile organizing activity. Three folders cover New York based Scottsboro case activities of the International Labor Defense's Harlem branch and the Party. Other Harlem-centered activity is documented in folders titled Bus Workers (a campaign to obtain jobs from the Fifth Avenue Coach Company), and League of Struggle for Negro Rights (includes minutes of the League and of the Communist fraction therein). Communist Party materials include Harlem Section notes by Michelson, a folder covering the 1946 anti-Browder campaign in the Lower West Side Club, Michelson's notes from the New York County's Leadership Training School, and a Section Headquarters list for New York State. The Department Store Section of the Office Workers Union is represented by brief files (all from 1935) on various stores, which include issues of short-lived shop papers, and there is also a file on a strike it led at the Jewish Morning Journal. The oral history transcript is of a 1979 interview with Michelson (principally) and several other activists, which chiefly concerns the organizing of department store workers.
The Unemployed folder contains documents from a variety of mass and labor organizations, and exemplifies a research strength of this collection, namely its documentation of the Communist Party's late "Third Period" and the beginning of its transition to a Popular Front orientation (see also the folder on the Joint Unity Committee of Independent Trade Unions). The Teachers Union folder includes several mimeographed issues of the Teacher News, and one issue of the Teachers Union Substitute News. The International Ladies Garment Workers Union Education Department file contains several training documents of left-wing orientation. Finally, there are brief files titled/re: American Labor Party NYC Elections (1946), Children, Radical Leaflets, Women (Communist documents), and the Workers School (NY).
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Conditions Governing Access
Materials are open without restrictions.
Conditions Governing Use
Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archive has no information about copyright ownership for this collection and is not authorized to grant permission to publish or reproduce materials from it. Materials in this collection, which were created in 1926-1979, are expected to enter the public domain in 2099.
Preferred Citation
Published citations should take the following form:
Identification of item, date; Collection name; Collection number; box number; folder number;
Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives
Elmer Holmes Bobst Library
70 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012, New York University Libraries.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Provenance unknown. The accession number associated with this gift is 1950.082.
