20TH CENTURY RADICALISM IN MINNESOTA ORAL HISTORY PROJECT:

Availability:

The collection is open for research use.

Use Restrictions:

Interview with Earl T. Bester and Joseph Paszak requires permission from radio station KUMD, Duluth to quote the interview. Interviews with Walfrid Engdahl; Max and Shevi Geldman (1977); Clarence Hemmingsen; Irwin Herness; Clara, John and Peter Jorgensen; John Kykyri; Yank Levine; Jennifer Mayville; Eino Niemela; Orville E. Olson; Frank Puglisi; Clarence Sharp (1977); Ruth Siegler; Carl Skoglund; James Thomblison; and Elizabeth Watson may not be quoted directly for publication.

Preferred Citation:

[Indicate the cited item and/or series here]. 20th Century Radicalism in Minnesota Oral History Project. Oral History Interviews of the 20th Century Radicalism in Minnesota Oral History Project. Minnesota Historical Society.

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Processing Information:

Processed by: Karen Obermeyer-Kolb, June 2019

Catalog ID number: 990016804530104294

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Biographical Information:Albert Allen, Jr., was born in Hannibal, Missouri, in 1913. His family moved to Minneapolis and settled on the north side around 1917. Mr. Allen, Sr., became the state's first African American grocer, though the Great Depression forced him out of business. He then became the chauffeur and personal assistant to the president of the Minneapolis-Moline Power Implements Company. Mr. Allen, Jr., graduated from North High School in 1929, with an outstanding record in athletics. He hoped to become an athletics director, and was unable to continue his education at the University of Minnesota because of the depression. Instead, he went to work at the Minneapolis Athletic Club and effectively ran the handball court there until the U.S. entered World War II. At the Athletic Club Mr. Allen joined the Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union Local #665 (Miscellaneous Workers) and was soon elected vice-president of the local, apost he held for several years. During the war Mr. Allen worked at several defense plants, and served as a shop steward for the united Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers' Union Local #1146 at the Minneapolis-Moline plant. After a brief return to the Athletic Club, he became a skycap for Northwest orient Airlines at the international airport. There again he helped to form a union, Clerical-Workers' Union Local 3015, and served briefly as an officer. Outside of work, Mr. Allen continued his amateur athletic career, and won the Twin Cities men's singles tennis championship for nine years in the 1940s. He also was president of the Minneapolis chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People from 1946 to 1949. Mr. Allen was married in 1932, and had two children. At the time of the interview, he was retired and living in south Minneapolis.

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OH 30.1

Oral history interview with Albert V. Allen, Jr., June 17, 1981. 2 master audiocassettes (1 hours, 27 minutes, 33 seconds), 3 submaster audio files: WAV, 3 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (25 pages).

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Memories of growing up as an African American in Minneapolis: racially-motivated fights and other incidents. Park board athletic activities, 1920s and 1930s. Attitudes about racial terms. Divisions within the African American community based on skin color; perceptions of affirmative action (1970s). Descriptions of the Minneapolis Athletic Club, 1930s: discrimination against women, business deals made, financial stability of the Club. Impressions of George Naumoff and Swan Assarson, organizers for Local 665. Mr. Allen's own conversion from an anti-union attitude to joining the union. Impact of the Fair Employment Practices Commission on the Twin Cities African American community. Description of working in a defense plant during World War II. Union organizing drive at Northwest Airlines, 1948 or so. Discrimination against African Americans in hotels, restaurants, and at Lakewood Cemetery inMinneapolis, 1940s. Activities of the Minneapolis NAACP, 1940s.

Interviewed by: Carl Ross.

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Biographical Information:Jacob Anderson was of Finnish ancestry, born in the woods of northern Minnesota. He learned the tenants of socialism from itinerant workers in his father's mill and joined the IWW at age fifteen. In 1928 he joined the Communist Party and worked as an organizer.

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OH 30.2

Oral history interview with Jacob Anderson, February 2, 1977. 1 master audiocassette (1 hours, 31 minutes), 2 submaster audio files: WAV, 2 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (23 pages).

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Communist Party education effort; Reino Tantilla; farmers' hunger march; Party decision-making; small Minnesota logging operation; Montana mines; Dakota harvesting; Northern Minnesota co-ops; Sacco and Venzetti protest.

Interviewed by: Tom O'Connell and Steve Trimble.

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Biographical Information:Arnold Arnio was born in Finland in 1904, and came to the United States soon after. His family first settled on Minnesota's Iron Range, where his father died. The younger Arnio moved to Duluth and went to work for the Soo Line Railroad as a carman. He was involved in the shopmen's strike of 1921-22, and then in the Trade Union Educational League chapter in Duluth. In the late 1920s or early 1930s, he went to Europe for three years, and spent some of that time in the Soviet Union. There he was part of the effort to build up Soviet industry, as a foreign worker. During the Second World War he returned to Europe for another three years, as a soldier, and was decorated for bravery. After the war he returned to Duluth, though he was largely blacklisted from his former union activities because of his radical views. He remained a close associate of Earl Bester, who served as the sub-director and district director forthe United Steel Workers of America in the 1940s and 1950s.

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OH 30.3

Oral history interview with Arnold Arnio, November 13, 1987. 1 master audiocassette (29 minutes, 36 seconds), 1 submaster audio files: WAV, 1 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (9 pages).

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include 1916 iron miners' strike on Minnesota's Iron Range; shopmen's strike; steelworkers' organizing efforts in the 1920s; the Farmer-Labor Party; service in Eurpoe during the Second World War; experiences of Nazism in Germany between the wars; activities of the steelworkers' retirees and Duluth Labor Assembly retirees.

Interviewed by: Carl Ross.

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Biographical Information:Rosalind Matusow was born in New York in 1917. Her mother, a Russian immigrant and a single parent, worked as a milliner, and was active in the Hat, Cap, and Millinery Workers Union. Rosalind came to the University of Minnesota in 1934 hoping to become a doctor. Instead, she was swept into the student peace movement of the time. Since the dream of being a doctor seemed beyond her reach, and there was so much to do in the radical political world, she dropped out of school after a year and a half and became an organizer for the Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union Local #665. She helped to build the union and contributed to its early successes. In the late 1930s Ms. Matusow returned to the University and became a public health nurse. Following her graduation she moved to California. There she met and married Alfredo Belmont, and raised a family. She also pursued a career in public health nursing. At the time ofthe interview she was semi-retired.

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OH 30.4

Oral history interview with Rosalind Matusow Belmont, April 4, 1982. 3 master audiocassettes (2 hours, 12 minutes, 20 seconds), 5 submaster audio files: WAV, 5 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (39 pages).

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Socialist activity in Russia, early 1900s; Russian immigrant experience in New York; student peace activities at the University of Minnesota, 1930s; student response to the 1934 Minneapolis truck drivers' strike; Bulgarian-Macedonian Workers' Club, Minneapolis; impressions of George Naumoff, Swan Assarson, and Leslie Sinton; descriptions of hotel workers, 1930s: ethnic backgrounds, duties, working conditions that led to unionization; memories of organizing chamber maids and kitchen workers in Minneapolis hotels, late 1930s; meetings of Local 665; relations between Local 665 and 458, and the loss of 665's charter; memories of organizing cafeteria workers in Minneapolis, late 1930s and early 1940s, especially Miller's Cafeteria; Miller's Cafeteria strike, 1941; impressions of Gunhild Bjorklund; sexism within the union and the union's record on equal pay; impressions of Roy Wier; AfricanAmericans in Local 665; impressions of William Mauseth; memories of the formation of the united Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers' Union and of miscellaneous labor struggles in the late 1930s; opinions of labor leaders; lessons learned from union organizing,

Interviewed by: Carl Ross.

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Biographical Information:Earl Bester was born on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in 1900. After the copper miners' strike of 1913, his family moved to Minnesota. After serving in the First World War, Bester went to work for US Steel Company in Duluth, as a crane operator. In the 1930s he became active in the movement towards unionization, and was elected president of American Steel and Wire Local 1028 of the United Steelworkers of America (CIO) in 1936. The next year he was called to Chicago to help organize steelworkers there in connection with the Fansteel Metallurgical Corporation strike and the Little Steel strike. Although he received offers to join the Steelworkers Organizing Committee (SWOC) staff at that point, he declined them. He did continue his organizing work on the Minnesota Iron Range, however. In 1941 he became the assistant director of USWA' s District 33, and served as director of that district's CIO-Political ActionCommittee when that group was formed in 1944. He directed the 1946 steelworkers' strike, which lasted 105 days in Minnesota (30 days nationally). In 1952 he succeeded Henry A. Burkhammer as director of District 33, and he stayed in this post until his retirement in 1965. At the time of the interview Bester was living in Duluth. Joseph Paszak was president of USWA Local 1210, centered at the Universal Atlas Cement Company in Duluth. He was the first chairman of the Duluth CIO Council, and served on the Minnesota CIO Council in the 1940s. He comments frequently in this interview.

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OH 30.5

Oral history interview with Earl T. Bester and Joseph Paszak, 1980. 2 master audiocassettes (1 hours, 17 minutes, 2 seconds), 2 submaster audio files: WAV, 2 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (30 pages).

Use Restrictions:Permission to quote from the interview is required from radio station KUMD, Duluth.

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Efforts of copper miners in Michigan to organize (1912-1913); barriers to organizing steelworkers in Duluth in the 1920s and 1930s; Little Steel and Fansteel strikes in Chicago, 1937; split in the Duluth Trades and Labor Assembly and the formation of the Duluth CIO Council (1936); merger of the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (1955); opinions about Eighth District Congressman John A. Blatnik, Senator Hubert H. Humphrey, and organized labor in the 1970s; organizing the unemployed in the 1930s; Spies in Steel (book by Frank Palmer) relations between steelworkers at Universal Atlas Cement Company and steelworkers at US Steel (1940s); steel strike of 1946; Steelworkers Organizing Committee national convention of 1937; organizing steelworkers on Minnesota's Iron Range; relations between the Mine, Mill, and Smelters Workers Union and SWGG (1930s and 1940s);communist influence in the CTO; harassment from the Federal Bureau of Investigation; congressional campaigns of John Blatnik, 1946 and 1948; International Labor Organization convention of 1957; Paul Robeson's visit to Duluth; National Maritime Union strike of 1946; structure of the steelworkers' negotiating committees; benefits for retired steelworkers (1970s); Timber and Sawmill Workers' Union strike of 1937; election campaign of 1938.

Interviewed by: Jean Johnson.

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Biographical Information:Frank Blatnik was born in Chisholm, Minnesota in 1914 to an immigrant Slovene family. His brother was Congressman John A. Blatnik. As Frank was growing up, his father had a number of different jobs: miner, janitor, delivery truck driver, bartender, policeman. His mother worked in a Slovenian boardinghouse. Frank graduated from Chisholm High School in 1932, and from Winona State Teachers College in 1935. He worked as a teacher first in the Works Progress Administration's Workers' Education Division. In 1941 he became an administrative assistant to Arthur Lampi, the St. Louis County Superintendent of Schools, and during WWII he taught in rural schools in northern St. Louis County. In 1945, he began to work for the county civil service commission, where he remained until his retirement. He was married and has two sons. At the time of the interview, he was living in Duluth.

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OH 30.6

Oral history interview with Frank P. Blatnik, June 6-7, 1989. 4 master audiocassettes (3 hours, 50 minutes, 20 seconds), 8 submaster audio files: WAV, 8 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (63 pages).

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include This wide-ranging and detailed interview covers many subjects including life in Slovene boardinghouses on the Iron Range in the 1910s and 1920s; daily chores and yearly tasks like butchering, hauling wood for heating, and cooking; games played by boys around Chisholm; reflections on ethnic differences among children; athletic clubs and activities among immigrant miners; fraternal organizations, particularly the Slovenska Norodna Podporna Jednota; working conditions in iron mines; political influence of the steel companies in local government and development of opposition to their control; social, political, and religious differences between European immigrants; attitudes towards and personal experiences with the Roman Catholic church and the Kranjsko-Slovenska Katoliska Jednota (fraternal benefit society); political activities of Blatnik's father and uncle, particularly in the United Units of Chisholm; life as a student during the depression (Hibbing and Winona); radicalizing effect of the depression on Blatnik's own political philosophy; the Socialist Labor Party in Winona in the 1930s; teaching parliamentary procedure in the Workers' Education Project of the WPA (Winona and the Iron Range), including organizing those classes; association with Communist Party organizers and members, especially Martin Mackie, Leo Koski, Andrew Tomasich, Andrew Roine; connections between the workers' education classes and the Steel Workers Organizing Committee on the Iron Range; state election campaign of 1938; impressions of the impact of the 1907 and 1916 iron miners' strikes on Slovene miners and the difficulty of organizing them later; the role of the Junior Chamber of Commerce in Chisholm as a think-tank for young liberals in the late 1930s and early 1940s and some of their economic development ideas; recollections of John T Bernard, memories of the GreatDepression; role of the South Slavs in the United Steelworkers of America, especially Peter Krompotich; the economic impact of World War II on the Iron Range and Duluth War booster-ism; technological developments within the steel industry, the St. Louis County Civil Service Commission; the changing role of women in society during and after the war; effects of the ethnic conflict in Yugoslavia during World War II on South Slavs in the U.S.; and the congressional career of John A. Blatnik.

Interviewed by: Carl Ross.

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Biographical Information:Andre Boratko was born in Czechoslovakia in 1911, and immigrated to the United States with his parents when he was three years old. The family settled in St. Paul, where Boratko graduated from Mechanic Arts High School. He attended the Chicago Art Institute and returned to the Twin cities to teach at the St. Paul School of Arts (1935-36). He also worked under Clement Haupers on the WPA Federal, Arts Project. As a WPA artist he painted a mural in the town hall at Milaca, Minnesota, and the Faribault School for the Deaf. Before that project was finished, however, he was transferred to the WPA Federal Art Project in South Dakota, where he taught community art classes. After he and his wife, Dorothy, moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, Boratko taught at the California college of Arts and Crafts from 1946 to 1954. Besides his murals, he also worked in oil, water-color, and sculpture. His murals were generallypainted in restaurants and shopping centers. Boratko died in 1990 (see obituary in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Aug. 25th, 1990).

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OH 30.7

Oral history interview with Andre Boratko, February 18, 1988. 1 master audiocassette (46 minutes, 16 seconds), 2 submaster audio files: WAV, 2 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (6 pages).

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Boratko talks about his family and his training as an artist. He describes some of the art works he began in the WPA, and the mural in Milaca. He touches on the philosophy of the Federal Arts Project, and recalls his work in South Dakota. He taught Dakota Indians, and gives his impression of their attitudes and lives.

Interviewed by: Salvatore Salerno.

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Biographical Information:Art Borchardt was born in Duluth, Minnesota. He moved to the Twin cities in 1916. As a young man his political beliefs were influenced largely by his wife's family toward communism. He returned to Pine County to resume farming and became a local political participant and leader. He was a member of the Non-Partisan League and took a keen interest in agricultural policy formation. He aided development of the Farmer-Labor Party and served on the merger committee of the DFL.

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OH 30.8

Oral history interview with Arthur Borchardt, June 2, 1976. 2 master audiocassettes (1 hours, 33 minutes, 47 seconds), 3 submaster audio files: WAV, 3 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (28 pages).

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Mr. Borchardt discusses the chapter formation and his membership in the Non-Partisan League. Activities advertised through word of mouth; postmaster was an organizer, spread word well. During World War II, he received threats and got into fights because of his German heritage. Farmers supported strikes, i.e. teamsters' strike in 1934, farmers gave them food, got no thanks. Penny sales were protest. Not many occurred in Pine County. CIO and Communist Party discussed favorably. "Red-baiting" occurred in 1930s. Benson gave speech against communism in Garrison, Minnesota but later admitted he knew nothing about it. Some people were opposed to merger of Farmer-Labor with Democrats.

Interviewed by: Tom O'Connell and Steve Trimble.

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Biographical Information:Elwin "Al' Brawthen was born in 1913 and grew up in Minneapolis. His father was an immigrant from Norway, and his mother was a Norwegian American. His father owned a small hotel, and so it was natural for Al to find employment in the hotel trade when the Depression prevented him from going to the University of Minnesota. Working at various hotels and clubs, he ran into organizers for Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union Local #665, and some left-wing radicals. He soon joined the union, and became a shop steward at the Hotel Radisson. Additionally, Mr. Brawthen served as president of the American Peace Mobilization (which operated out of the union office). When World War II broke out he joined the army and spent several years on the home front, including at Camp Ripley, before being sent to Africa and Europe. Upon his return, he found it difficult to retain employment because he was suspected of being aCommunist. At one point he was even threatened with prosecution under the Smith Act. Eventually he found a job with an insurance company, and ceased his involvement with labor unions. Marjorie Brawthen was born in 1921 in Oregon. She married Walter Young in 1938, and the couple enrolled at Commonwealth College in Mena, Arkansas. After only a year there, Walter decided to switch to the Northwestern Bible and Missionary Training School in Minneapolis. Margie secured a job at Miller's Cafeteria, and was swept almost immediately into a strike called by Local #665 in 1941. During the war the Youngs moved to Ironwood, Michigan, where Mr. Young was the business agent for a local of the International Woodworkers of America, and Mrs. Young began to raise their six children. Mr. Young was drafted into the army and served in the Pacific theater, then returned to the Upper Peninsula and the timberworkers. It is unclear how their marriage ended, or when Margie Young marriedAl Brawthen. At the time of the interview the Brawthens were retired and living in California.

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OH 30.9

Oral history interview with Elwin T. and Marjorie J. Brawthen, March 13, 1982. 2 master audiocassettes (1 hours, 32 minutes, 41 seconds), 3 submaster audio files: WAV, 3 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (29 pages).

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Strikes by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local #574 in Minneapolis, 1934. Organizational drive for Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union Local #665. Memories of Swan Assarson. American Peace Mobilization activities in Minneapolis, late 1930s. Surveillance by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Military Intelligence. Service in World War II. Working conditions for letter carriers, 1940s. Threat of prosecution under the Smith Act, late 1940s. Difficulty of holding a job, due to accusations of communist sympathies. Description of working conditions in the hotel industry in the 1930s; comparisons of small hotels to large ones; memories of the Minneapolis Club. Union meetings; impressions of local president George Naumoff. Miller's Cafeteria strike, 1941: estimation of its effectiveness; activities at strike headquarters; raising money for the strike fund; description of theworkforce and conditions. Memories of Swan Assarson. Memories of the Northwestern Bible and Missionary Training Institute, 1940s.

Interviewed by: Carl Ross.

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Biographical Information:Alan Bruce was born in Minneapolis in 1910. His parents, Robert Cameron Bruce and Thora Storlie Bruce, were of Scottish and Norwegian decent, respectively, and were both born in this country. Alan Bruce grew up in Minneapolis and attended the University of Minnesota. In the mid-1930s, he was hired as a teacher for the Works Progress Administration's Worker Education Program, and quickly became a supervisor: first for Minneapolis, and then for the whole state (1937-1940). In 1940 Bruce married Elizabeth Hoff, another workers' education teacher, and they moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he became director of the Cincinnati Labor School. Two years later the couple returned to Minneapolis, where Bruce went to work for the Labor Education Committee of the National Labor Relations Board. At the time of the interview, Bruce was retired and living in Richfield, Minnesota.

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OH 30.10

Oral history interview with D. Alan Bruce, December 2, 1988 and June 26, 1989. 2 master audiocassettes (2 hours, 4 minutes), 4 submaster audio files: WAV, 4 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (20 pages).

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Experiences as a teacher and administrator of the WPA's Worker Education Program. Accusations of radicalism against the program. Truth and falsity of these accusations. Philosophy, origins, and curriculum of workers' education. Goals of the program. Efforts of Communists and Socialists to influence the program. Effect of the Second World War upon his work. Evaluation of the militant labor movement. Impressions of labor leaders Luverne Noon and Peter Warhol.

Interviewed by: Carl Ross.

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Biographical Information:Elizabeth "Betty" Hoff was born in La Crosse, Wisconsin, in 1913. Her father, Otto Hoff, was a banker, and died when Betty was still young. Her mother, Alette Fjelstad Hoff, became a teacher in order to support her family. Ms. Hoff moved to Minnesota in 1931 to attend the University in Minneapolis. Because of the Great Depression, she soon dropped out and became a teacher for the Worker Education Program of the Works Progress Administration. Her particular specialty was drama: writing, acting, and producing plays about workers' lives. She was quickly promoted to administration, however, and directed the Minneapolis workers' education program. In 1940 she married Alan Bruce, and the couple moved to Cincinnati, Ohio. Ms. Bruce continued to teach through the Southern School for Workers and the American Labor Education Service. The Bruces returned to Minneapolis in 1942, and Ms. Bruce joined the board of directorsof the Young Women's Christian Association, as chair of the industrial department. During the Second World War, this position drew her into the YWCA's efforts to find employment and housing for Japanese American women (relatives of Nisei men who were in training at Fort Snelling). After raising a family, Ms. Bruce returned to work for the North East Neighborhood House, where she had lived and worked as a student. Her job included developing programs for senior citizens, helping the neighborhood to adjust to urban renewal projects, holding classes and social activities for young mothers, and organizing a neighborhood association. At the time of the interview, Ms. Bruce was retired and living in Richfield, Minnesota.

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OH 30.11

Oral history interview with Elizabeth Hoff Bruce, June 26, 1989. 2 master audiocassettes (1 hours, 59 minutes, 4 seconds), 4 submaster audio files: WAV, 4 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (34 pages).

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Use of theater in workers' education, 1930s. Unionizing workers' education teachers. Organizational structure of the WPA Worker Education Program and description of the course offerings. Evaluation of the successfulness of the program. Political pressures on the program from state administrators, Communists and Trotskyists, and union leaders. Training of worker education teachers. Founding of the Minneapolis Labor School, and its structure. Development of labor union sports teams. Attempts to start worker education classes for women. Working with both the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial. Organizations in the Minneapolis Labor School, late 1930s. Recruiting Hubert Humphrey to be state director of worker education. Growth and development of worker education programs nationally, especially those for women workers. Experiences in worker education in North Carolina andGeorgia, including adjusting to racial segregation. Persecution of labor organizers in the South, early 1940s. Racial integration at the Minneapolis YWCA. Resettlement of Japanese Americans in Minnesota during World War II. Programs and activities of the North East Neighborhood House (Minneapolis), 1960s and 1970s. Urban redevelopment in Northeast Minneapolis, 1960s. Involvement with the League of Women Voters, 1960s and 1970s. Structure and program of the Greater Minneapolis Federation of Neighborhood Centers, 1970s. Impressions of Robbins Gilman; his concern about child labor.

Interviewed by: Carl Ross.

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Biographical Information:Paul Buhle is a historian of the Left in the U.S. He directed the Oral History of the American Left Project (headquartered at the Tamiment Library in New York), and the Oral History of Rhode Island Labor. He has published several books, including Marxism in the United States (1987), and Working for Democracy: American Workers from the Revolution to the Present (1985), co-edited with Alan Dawley. Buhle himself was an active participant in the New Left.

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OH 30.12

Oral history interview with Paul M. Buhle, August 7, 1987. 2 master audiocassettes (1 hours, 35 minutes, 14 seconds), 2 submaster audio files: WAV, 2 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (22 pages).

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include The interview touches on how Buhle became interested in the history of the Left; how he defines the Left; and his observations about radicalism among members of different ethnic groups. The interview was taped when Salerno was beginning a series of oral history interviews, so Buhle offers many practical hints on conducting oral history interviews. They discuss some of the controversies then current in the field as well.

Interviewed by: Salvatore Salerno.

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Biographical Information:Grace Holmes was born in St. Paul in 1906. Her father, an Irish American, was a boilermaker for the Great Northern Railroad. Her mother, of German descent, encouraged Grace and her sister Dorothy to get good educations. The two girls went to Roman Catholic grade schools and high schools, then on to the College of St. Catherine. Both continued their educations at the University of Minnesota, and Grace earned a doctorate in psychology and educational psychology in 1933. For the first few years after her graduation, Ms. Holmes taught at the University. She also joined the Farmer-Labor Party, and in 1935 she got a job in the Minnesota Department of Education, in the vocational rehabilitation program. Her association with the Farmer-Labor Party did not last long, however. Through her sister, she met some of the leaders of the general drivers' local of the teamsters union, which had just conducted its historicstrike in Minneapolis. Since the teamsters' leadership was largely Trotskyist, both the Holmes sisters were soon drawn into the Workers Party of America. There Grace met and married Gilbert Carlson, the attorney for the teamsters union. Dorothy met and later married Henry Schultz, another Trotskyist. When the Workers Party merged into the Socialist Party in 1936, Ms. Carlson became a Socialist, and when the Trotskyists left the Socialist Party in 1938 she attended the founding convention of the Socialist Workers Party. In 1940 she left her job with the state of Minnesota to work full-time for the SWP, as its state organizer. A year later she, her sister, and many of the other leaders of the SWP and Teamsters' Local 544 were indicted under the Smith Act for trying to overthrow the government through force and violence. Ms. Carlson and seventeen others were convicted, and she served thirteen months in a federal prison. Since the Smith Act trial made her somethingof a celebrity in radical circles, Ms. Carlson toured the country after her release from prison in 1945. Returning to St. Paul in 1946, she resumed her role in the SWP, and ran for U.S. Senate in 1946 and U.S. Congress in 1950. In 1948 she ran for vice-president, and toured the country again with her running mate, Farrell Dobbs. On the eve of the senatorial campaign of 1952, Ms. Carlson abruptly announced her withdrawal from the SWP. Her father's death a year before had shaken her considerably, and she found herself asking questions that a political party could not answer. Although she remained a Marxist until her death, she ceased her party activities, rejoined the Roman Catholic church, and reunited with her estranged husband. This choice led to a period of alienation from her sister, until Dorothy and Henry Schultz were in turn expelled from the SWP some four years later. Ms. Carlson first found a job at St. Mary's Hospital in Minneapolis as a secretary.Soon, however, she was hired to teach at the hospital's school of nursing, which later became St. Mary's Junior College. She retired from that institution in 1972. She remained involved in peace and social justice work through the church until her death in 1992.

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OH 30.13

Oral history interview with Grace Holmes Carlson, July 7 and 14, 1987. 4 master audiocassettes (3 hours, 27 minutes, 14 seconds), 7 submaster audio files: WAV, 7 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (48 pages).

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Memories of growing up in St. Paul's Rice street neighborhood; sources of her radicalism; the First World War. Railroad shopmen's strike, 1922. Comparisons of the Farmer-Labor Party and Workers Party of America. Smith Act trials, 1941. Alderson Federal Correctional Facility, 1944-45: description of inmates activities there; educational testing program in the prison system. Impressions of the St. Paul branch of the Socialist Party, 1930s. Memories of Mulford Sipley. Trotskyist strength in Minnesota; relationship between the Trotskyist parties and Local 544; Trotskyists in other trade unions; participation in the Farmer-Labor Party and Worker Education Program of the Works Progress Administration. Controversy over Dr. John G. Rockwell, state director of education, 1940. Memories of John Jacobsen. Assessment of Elmer A. Benson and Floyd B. Olson. Descriptions of Vincent, Miles, and Grant Dunne.Relations between Trotskyists and Socialist, especially during the period when the Trotskyists belonged to the Socialist Party, 1936–37. Reflections on leaving the SWP, 1952; requests from the FBI to turn informant. Opinions about the impact of the SWP on the labor movement; comparisons of the Communist Party and SWP successes; importance of the social life of both parties to their members; factionalism in the SWP. Experiences with present-day Trotskyists, 1987. Reactions to glasnost in the U.S.S.R., 1987.

Interviewed by: Carl Ross.

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Biographical Information:Anthony Brutus Cassius was born in Meridian, Oklahoma, in 1907. His father, an African American minister, gave each of his eighteen children a deep appreciation of education. Although Tony left Meridian at the age of thirteen, he finished high school once he had settled in St. Paul (Mechanic Arts High School, class of 1926), and went on to Macalester College and the University of Minnesota. Lack of money cut short his opportunities for formal learning, however. Mr. Cassius married Florence Allison in 1927 and started to work as a waiter at the Curtis Hotel in Minneapolis. He quickly began to question the low wages paid to the all-black Curtis waiters, and organized his co-workers into a union, Local #614 of the Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union. It received its charter in 1930. Since the International union did not accept African Americans into full membership, and did not encourage racially integratedlocals, Local #614 grew to include black waiters and cooks at other restaurants as well. Local #614 sued the Curtis Hotel over its discriminatory pay scales, and in 1940 won a settlement in its favor. Mr. Cassius served as the business agent of the local until 1939, and as president of the Local Joint Executive Board of the HRE. In the mid-1940s Local #614 merged with Local #665. In 1939 Mr. Cassius and his brother purchased a restaurant in south Minneapolis and opened the Dreamland Cafe and Tavern. Eight years later they bought a second restaurant downtown, and turned it into the Cassius Club Cafe. Mr. Cassius' attempt to obtain a liquor license led to a legal battle with two city aldermen, who questioned his political views and accused him of belonging to the Communist Party. After two and a half years, though, he became the first African American to hold a liquor license in Minneapolis. The Cassius Club was a popular gathering place for Twin Cities AfricanAmericans for another three decades. The restaurant closed in 1980. Mr. Cassius was active in civic affairs. He belonged to both the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Urban League at different times. He was also a founder of the Minnesota Club, an association of black professionals and business people, and on the board of The Way, a social service center for black youth in Minneapolis. He had two children, Alvedia Cassius Smith and Donald Cassius. At the time of the interview Mr. Cassius was retired and living in Minneapolis. He died on August 3, 1983.

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OH 30.14

Oral history interview with Anthony Brutus Cassius, December 1, 1981 and February 3, 1982. 4 master audiocassettes (2 hours, 48 minutes, 23 seconds), 7 submaster audio files: WAV, 7 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (56 pages).

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Description of arrival from the south; St. Paul high schools; educational opportunities for African Americans. Working conditions for waiters at the Curtis Hotel, late 1920s. Organization of Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union Local #614, and support it received from Local #665 and Local #544 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Memories of the organization of HRE Local #665 (Miscellaneous Workers). Importance of picnics in the labor movement, especially among white ethnic groups. Memories of the 1934 teamsters' strike in Minneapolis. Harassment by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1940s. Difficulties for an African American in starting a business, 1940s. Organized crime in the liquor industry in Minneapolis, and impressions of Albert J. Kilday. Memories of John Thomas. Employment and unemployment among African Americans in Minneapolis, 1920s and 1930s. Dining Car Employees Local#516 of the HRE, St. Paul, and the career of Maceo Littlejohn. African Americans in Minnetonka, 1930s. Organization of tunnel workers in Minneapolis into the International Hod Carriers, Building, and Common Laborers' Union, 1930s. Racial discrimination in American Federation of Labor unions. Impressions of Harold L. Stassen, Elmer A. Benson, and Floyd B. Olson. Minneapolis chapter of the Urban League, 1940s. Impressions of Lloyd MacAlomn. Deportation hearings against Peter Warhol, 1940s. Conditions for black labor union organizers in the South, 1940s. Protests against the film The Birth of a Nation in Minneapolis, 1930s. Formation of the Minnesota Club. Racial discrimination in Minneapolis hotels and restaurants, 1930s and 1940s. Employment opportunities for African Americans during World War II. Forums on issues affecting the African American community, held at the Phyllis Wheatley Settlement House, 1930s. Tolerance of racial discrimination in white churches,1930s. Impressions of Cecil B. Newman. Labor union response to the influx of African American workers during World War II, especially by the United Packinghouse Workers of America. African American farmers around Minneapolis, 1920s. African American settlers in St. Paul, late l800s. African Americans in Duluth, early 1900s; lynching of three men in 1920. Memories of William Herron and Ralph Helstein. Role of the Minneapolis Urban League in opening up employment opportunities for African Americans, 1940s. Election of Nellie Stone to the Minneapolis Library Board, 1945.

Interviewed by: Carl Ross.

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Biographical Information:Harry DeBoer was born in 1905 and grew up a socialist, following his father's example. His father had come to the Midwest from Holland, and employed seasonal workers on his farm. Many of these workers belonged to the Industrial Workers of the World, and Harry absorbed their beliefs. He left home at age fifteen to try his hand at boxing. After some travelling (where again he met many Wobblies), he settled in Minneapolis in the early 1930s. Working as a coal hauler, he became involved in the strikes of 1934 (first the coal strike and then the general drivers' strike). He was shot in the knee during the struggle, which ended his aspirations to be a boxer. Instead, he became a paid organizer for the Teamsters, and participated in an organizing drive throughout an eleven-state area under the auspices of the North Central District Drivers Council. In 1941 DeBoer was tried and convicted for conspiring to overthrowthe government violently, under the Smith Act. He served a year in prison on this conviction. Jake Cooper was born in St. Paul in 1916, and grew up in Chaska, Minnesota. He participated in the 1934 truckers' strike, and evidently belonged to the Trotskyite parties. In 1949 he and his wife, Lillian, took over a general store in Chaska and ran it successfully for many years. Cooper remained active in community affairs, and a strong supporter of militant unionism. In 1985 he organized delivery of 200,000 pounds of food to striking Hormel workers in Austin, Minnesota. The Chaska Educational Association established the Jake Cooper Scholarship to recognize his support for the teachers' union. He also took a leading role in the Chaska chapter of the Minnesota River Watershed Association during the 1960s; was president of the Chaska Jobs and Industry development corporation; and belonged to the Greater Chaska Business Association. He died in 1990, following a stroke.(Obituary, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Sept. 10, 1990)

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OH 30.15

Oral history interview with Harry DeBoer, Pauline DeBoer, and Jake Cooper, March 14, 1988 and June 22, 1988. 2 master audiocassettes (1 hours, 5 minutes, 25 seconds), 2 submaster audio files: WAV, 2 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (33 pages).

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include In these interviews, DeBoer discusses his organizing work with the truck drivers, and his association with the Trotskyite parties. He talks about his sympathies with the IWW and antagonisms with the Communist Party. He gives his impressions of some of the leaders of the teamsters: Ray Dunne and Carl Skoglund in particular. There is no information about the Smith Act trials or his later life. Jake Cooper comments extensively and helpfully in the first interview.

Interviewed by: Randy First, Peter J. Rachleff, and Salvatore Salerno..

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Biographical Information:Ernest DeMaio was born in 1908, in Hartford, Connecticut. His parents were Italian immigrants, and his father worked in the construction trades. After graduating from high school, Ernie became a machinist. His main talent lay in organizing, however. At some point in the early 1930s he joined the Communist Party and began to agitate for a union. Not satisfied with the craft union approach of the American Federation of Labor, he helped to found the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America (UE) in 1936. As a staff organizer for the UE, he moved gradually west, building the union as he went from Connecticut to Pennsylvania to Ohio. In 1940 he arrived in Chicago, to head District Eleven of the UE, which included Minnesota, where he spent a fair amount of time. He was a frequent contributor to the newspaper of the Congress of Industrial Organizations in Minnesota, Midwest Labor (later MinnesotaLabor). As president of District Eleven, Mr. DeMaio was also an international vice-president of the UE. The Communist Party considered him one of its "influentials" in the labor movement. His dual role was full of tensions. He frequently found himself disagreeing both with the non-communist leadership of the CIO and with the Communist Party leadership's directives for its labor movement activists. This tension came to a head in 1949, when the UE was expelled from the CIO for its communist sympathies. Mr. DeMaio stayed with the UE, rather than affiliating with the new CIO union, the International Union of Radio, Electrical, and Machine Workers (IUE). The strength of the UE diminished from 1949 onward, under raids from the IUE, teamsters' union, and auto workers' union on the one hand, and pressure from the government's anticommunist crusade on the other. At the same time, most of the Communist Party leadership went underground, even further removing itself fromthe realities of the labor movement. Mr. DeMaio's increasingly vocal opposition to CP directives led to his expulsion from the Party in 1956. Shortly thereafter he also left the UE, and for twelve years he represented the World Federation of Trade Unions at the United Nations. This position involved traveling extensively, which broadened his perspective on trade unionism in the U.S. and abroad. Mr. DeMaio married Mary Karpa in 1936. At the time of the interview he was retired and living in Norwalk, Connecticut.

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OH 30.16

Oral history interview with Ernest DeMaio, May 25, 1988. 2 master audiocassettes (2 hours, 46 minutes, 13 seconds), 4 submaster audio files: WAV, 4 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (46 pages).

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Early growth of the UE, both nationally and in Minneapolis (especially at the Honeywell plants). Impressions of Robert Wishart. Harassment from the Federal Bureau of Investigations. Impact of World War II on union organizing efforts. Divisions on the Left: Communists and Trotskyists, Browderites and Fosterites in the Communist Party. Impressions of Hubert Humphrey, and labor's role in his election as mayor of Minneapolis. Opinions of Phillip Murray. Expulsion of the UE from the CIO, and the role of the Roman Catholic Church in the purge of Communists from the labor movement. Raids on the UE by CIO unions (particularly the united Auto Workers) after the expulsion. Impressions of James B. Carey. Opinions of Earl Browder and his policies. Opinion of Samuel K. Davis. Merger of the Farmer-Labor and Democratic parties in Minnesota, 1944. Factors that contributed to the demise of the UE inMinneapolis: Clarence Hathaway's leadership of UE Local #1139; Douglas Hall; Leo Giovannini; company strategies to weaken the union; the Taft-Hartley Act; post-war prosperity; Hubert Humphrey. CIO convention of 1946. Reasons that Phillip Murray supported Harry S. Truman in the 1948 presidential campaign, instead of supporting Henry A. Wallace. Memories of organizing Jones and Laughlin Company workers in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, 1937. Assessment of the collapse of the CP and the radical labor movement, late 1940s and early 1950s. Opinions of the labor movement of 1988; assessment of the economic strength of the US in 1988; chances for a revival of the labor movement. Impact of the Trotskyists on the Minneapolis labor movement, 1930s; comparisons with the communist impact on organized labor. Reorientation of CP policy regarding trade unions in 1954; CP position on cooperating with the Taft-Hartley Act's non-communist affidavits. Opinions of Samuel Kushner, MaxWeiss, Gilbert Green, and Louis Torrey. Opinions about the workings of the free market system comments on labor conditions in Mexico, and the loss of US manufacturing jobs to plants overseas, 1988. Opinion of the National Recovery Administration. Success of the CIO in organizing the first- and second-generation immigrant workers, late 1930s and 1940s; changing demographics of the working-class and northern cities after the Second World War; entry of African Americans into the skilled trades, especially the building trades. Opinions about the national debt, 1988. Comments on the future of the labor movement, and how it might renew itself; the chances for broad-based coalitions of progressives; the Jesse Jackson presidential campaign of 1988. Evaluation of the role of the Left generally; the difference between reformism and revolution; the inevitability of a collapse of capitalism. Opinions of the reforms of Mikhail Gorbachov in the Soviet union, 1988; memories ofa trip to Leningrad, 1970s; reflections on the history and culture of the USSR; comparisons of Gorbachov and Nikita Khrushchev; the promising future of the USSR and the bleak future of the U.S.; relations between the two countries. Peace and war in the Middle East, 1988.

Interviewed by: Carl Ross.

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Biographical Information:George Dizard was born in Duluth, Minnesota, in 1917 and spent most of his formative years there. From his mother, a Danish immigrant, he learned a deep commitment to peace and justice. During the Great Depression, Dizard attempted to go to college and was forced to drop out for lack of money. During his years as a student he did participate in the American Student Union and the Minnesota Youth Congress. He worked briefly on a project of the National Youth Administration and (after his marriage to Rhoda Levine in 1940) on the Clerical Project of the Works Progress Administration. Just before the US entry into the Second World War, Dizard got a job at Diamond Caulk and Horseshoe Company (later Diamond Tool) in Duluth. He quickly became active in the union, Federal Local 18650 of the American Federation of Labor. During the next twenty years he held various offices in the union, in the Duluth Federated Tradesand Labor Assembly, and in the state AFL-CIO. Dizard was equally active in the Democratic Farmer-Labor Party. In 1946 he ran for a seat in the state legislature. He served as secretary for the St. Louis County DFL, and in 1948 led the supporters of Henry Wallace out of the county convention. After retirement Dizard remained active with the Trades and Labor Assembly retirees and various groups working on peace and justice issues. He was a founder of the Minnesota Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign in 1982. At the time of this interview he still lived in Duluth.

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OH 30.17

Oral history interview with George Dizard, July 31, 1987 and October 25, 1987. 3 master audiocassettes (2 hours, 23 minutes, 46 seconds), 5 submaster audio files: WAV, 5 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (36 pages).

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Development of his political ideas; political experiences growing up; American Student Union activities; the Minnesota Youth Congress; NYA and WPA projects; labor union activities in Duluth and in the U.S. as a whole; opinions on the mistakes and future direction of the labor movement; Congressman John A. Blatnik Presidential campaign of Henry A. Wallace.

Interviewed by: Carl Ross.

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Biographical Information:Edwin Drill was born in 1910 in Shoreville, Wisconsin. His parents, George and Ella Drill, were both of German extraction; his father had been born in Germany. When Edwin was three years old, the family moved to Duluth, where his father became a crane operator at the U.S. Steel plant, and later at Universal Atlas Cement Company. Edwin Drill went to work at the western Paint and Varnish Company factory while he was still in high school, and upon graduation (Morgan Park High School, 1929), he took a full-time job at Western Paint as a maintenance engineer. He was instrumental in forming a labor union there in 1934. At first the local was a Federal local of the American Federation of Labor (#12079), and by 1938 it had joined the United Mineworkers of America's Chemical Division (Congress of Industrial Organizations). Still later, #12079 affiliated with the Gas, Coke, and Chemical Workers of the CIO. Ed Drill wasactive in the union, and served on the grievance committee, as treasurer of the local, and as representative to the Duluth CIO Council. He also became involved in the southern St. Louis County Farmer-Labor Party. From 1934 to 1936 he was secretary of that body. In 1961, he left Western Paint and started a marina company in Duluth, Drill's Marina, Inc. From his original site, he expanded to include a boat sales office at Lake Minnetonka (outside the Twin Cities) and finished off his career managing a new marina on the Knife River. Ed Drill was married to Jean Drill, and they had four children. At the time of the interview he was living in retirement in Duluth. "I am somewhat disappointed in the present political picture," he said.

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OH 30.18

Oral history interview with Edwin G. Drill, October 14, 1987. 2 master audiocassettes (1 hours, 45 minutes, 49 seconds), 4 submaster audio files: WAV, 4 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (30 pages).

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Conditions that led to unionization at Western Paint Management; labor relations after unionization. Memories of labor leaders Earnest Pearson, Herman Griffith, Patrick Magraw. Struggle to get a charter for A F of L Federal local #12079. Development of unions among the workers in Duluth's heavy industries (Coolerator Company, Diamond Caulk and Horseshoe, U.S. Steel, and other steel-related manufacturers). United Steelworkers. of American locals #1028 and #1096. Left-wing leadership of the organizing efforts in various unions. Duluth CIO Council. Comparisons of the Duluth newspapers Labor World and Midwest Labor. Relationship between the CIO unions and the Farmer-Labor Party in Duluth. Memories of Congressman John T. Bernard. Merger of the Farmer-Labor and Democratic parties. Economic impact of the Second World War on Duluth, and the loss of heavy industry afterward. Ore shipping and ore boatson the Great Lakes. Deterioration of organized labor in Duluth.

Interviewed by: Carl Ross.

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Biographical Information:John Enestvedt was born in 1906 and raised on a farm near Sacred Heart, Minnesota. He became acquainted with the Industrial Workers of the World through the field hands and seasonal laborers who worked on the family's farm, and as a young man took an active role in the Nonpartisan League. In 1928 he joined the Socialist Party, and quickly aligned himself with the faction which evolved into the Socialist Workers' Party. During the early 1930's he participated in the Farm Holiday Association, and then apparently spent some time in the Twin Cities, where he became friends with the organizers of the Teamsters Local 574/544. He taught adult education classes for the Works Progress Administration, and organized for the Federal Workers Section of Local 544. Before long, however, he seems to have returned to farming, and at the time of the interview was living near Sacred Heart again.

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OH 30.19

Oral history interview with John Enestvedt, May 21, 1988. 1 master audiocassette (59 minutes, 10 seconds), 2 submaster audio files: WAV, 2 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (17 pages).

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include The interview touches on a number of subjects: Enestvedt's Norwegian heritage; the IWW and the Nonpartisan League; the Farm Holiday Association; his membership in the Socialist and Socialist Workers Parties; the tensions between Trotskyites and Stalinists in the 1930's; and the people active in the Teamsters Local 544. Enestvedt was particularly friendly with Farrell Dobbs, and gives a lot of anecdotal information about him. He also describes farming practices in the late 1910s, before tractors were common.

Interviewed by: Salvatore Salerno.

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Biographical Information:Mr. Walfrid Engdahl was one of the founders in Sweden of the syndicalist movement. He immigrated to the United states in 1909, when he was black-listed for having taken part in the general strike in Sweden that year. He worked in Minneapolis as a union carpenter. He was an active member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and publisher of the socialist newspaper, Alaarm. He was a member of American Federation of Labor (AFL) for over fifty years.

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OH 30.20

Oral history interview with Walfrid Engdahl, 1972. 1 master audiocassette (29 minutes, 2 seconds), 1 submaster audio files: WAV, 1 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (7 pages).

Use Restrictions:Interview may not be quoted directly for publication.

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Engdahl discusses his involvement with the syndicalist movement in Sweden, his union work in Minneapolis, the IWW, AFL, and the newspaper Alaarm.

Interviewed by: Steven Benson.

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Biographical Information:Ole Fagerhaugh was born in north Minneapolis to a Norwegian immigrant couple. Ole and his two brothers, Paul and Peter, all became involved in the labor struggles of the 1930s: Ole with the Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union, Paul with the machinists, and Peter with the American Federation of Hosiery Workers. Ole served as an organizer for HRE Local #665 and for the Local Joint Executive Board in Minneapolis from roughly 1937 to 1941. His special assignment was to organize cafeteria workers. This made him a key player in the Miller's Cafeteria strike of 1941. He also participated in the Minneapolis Theatre Union, and joined the Communist Party. After the U.S. entry into the Second World War, Mr. Fagerhaugh enlisted in the army. Following the war he settled in San Francisco, California. He and his wife Dorothy still lived there at the time of the interview.

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OH 30.21

Oral history interview with Ole Fagerhaugh, March 11, 1982. 1 master audiocassette (43 minutes, 34 seconds), 2 submaster audio files: WAV, 2 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (15 pages).

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Labor struggles of the 1930s in Minneapolis. Unemployed demonstrations and demands, 1930s. Northwestern Bible and Missionary Training Institute. Impressions of Roy Wier. Political disputes and tensions within Local #665; impressions of Raymond Wright and Swan Assarson. Local #665's stand against racial discrimination. Local #665's support for unemployed workers' organizations. Relative influence of the Trotskyists and Stalinists on the Minneapolis labor movement, 1930s. Ethnic backgrounds of the workers in the hotel and restaurant industry, 1930s. Organizing cafeteria workers, 1930s and 1940s, especially at the Forum Cafeteria of America and Miller's Cafeteria. Theoretical education and understanding in the Communist Party. The Minneapolis Theatre Union: origins, relation to the labor movement, and connection to the New York Theater Union.

Interviewed by: Carl Ross.

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Biographical Information:Fred Fine was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1914, to a Ukrainian-American family. His father, Julius Fybusowich, had immigrated in 1910; his mother, Doris, was born in Canada. Fred was named Maurice, and used that name until he moved to Minnesota, where his Communist Party associates gave him a new name to avoid confusion with another Morrie. Fred's family was active in the left-wing Jewish labor movement in Chicago, and he joined the Young Pioneers and Young Communist League at an early age. He was only sixteen when he attended the national convention of the YCL in 1931. He went to Tuley High School, and left in his senior year to devote himself to political activities. Among other things, he organized workers in the steel mills of Chicago. Mr. Fine's first extended visit to Minnesota happened in 1935 and 1936, when he was sent by the YCL National Committee to work with Carl Ross, who was then the YCL districtorganizer in the Minnesota-Dakotas district. Returning briefly to Chicago, Mr. Fine worked and organized with merchandise workers until March 1937, when he replaced Carl Ross in Minnesota. (Mr. Ross became the national secretary of the YCL.) Mr. Fine remained in Minnesota until 1940 or 1941, when he was reassigned to the Michigan district before enlisting in the Army National Guard during World War II. As part of his service, Mr. Fine guarded German prisoners of war at Camp Ripley, Minnesota. After the war, Mr. Fine resumed his role as a Party functionary, eventually becoming the organizational secretary of the CP. At the Twentieth Party Congress in 1957, he argued strongly for reforming the Party and its strategy, in the wake of revelations about the true nature of the Stalin regime in the Soviet Union, and the Soviet invasion of Hungary. When this did not happen, he joined the mass exodus from the Party. Back in Chicago once more, Mr. Fine became a salesmanfor an automobile bumper replating business. Later he went to work for the Fruehauf Truck Corporation, but quit in protest of their contracts with the Department of Defense during the Vietnam War. Next he went into business with a friend, booking concerts for folk and rock musicians. When this business was sold to the Madison Square Garden Corporation, Mr. Fine once again worked in New York for a year. Returning to Chicago, he developed a program in the performing arts for Columbia College, which he directed until the mid-1980s. At that time he was appointed Commissioner of Cultural Affairs for the city of Chicago, and developed a long-term plan for the promotion of the arts in that city. At the time of the interview, Mr. Fine was once again working for Columbia College, as director of public affairs, and serving on the boards of numerous artistic organizations.

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OH 30.22

Oral history interview with Fred Fine, February 7, 1988. 2 master audiocassettes (1 hours, 42 minutes, 1 seconds), 4 submaster audio files: WAV, 4 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (25 pages).

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Relationship between the Communist Party and the Farmer-Labor Party in Minnesota, 1938-1940. Communist activity in the Congress of Industrial Organizations. Comparisons of Floyd B. Olson and Elmer A. Benson. Anti-Semitism in Minnesota prior to and during the 1938 gubernatorial campaign. Memories of Carl Winter and Nat Ross (CP district organizers in Minnesota, 1935-1942), and Samuel Darcy (National Committee representative, 1938). Effect of the Finnish-Soviet War on the Minnesota CP (1939-1940). Reflections on the Popular Front period, 1935-1940. Degree of independence of the CPUSA from Soviet control. Make-up of the leadership of the CP, and life among rank-and-file members. Degree of independence of CP leaders in mass movements from Party control. Regional differences in the CPUSA. Estimation of Earl Browder and his policies. Experiences in the labor movement.

Interviewed by: Carl Ross.

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Biographical Information:James Flower was born in 1906 on a farm near Sebeka, Minnesota, where he grew up. He soon decided that farming would not suit him for a lifetime, and began to travel. In 1933, he and his first wife and child came to Minneapolis looking for work. What greeted him were unemployment demonstrations, led by members of the Communist Party. It did not take Mr. Flower long to join. He became very active in the Unemployed Councils in Minneapolis; served briefly as national secretary of the United Farmers League; and finally became the business agent for the International Hod Carriers, Building, and Common Laborers' Union Local #563. He was also the secretary-treasurer of the Building Trades Council. During the Second World War Mr. Flower worked in the shipyards in Savage, and after it was over he became a cab driver. He quit the Communist Party in the early 1940s because he disagreed with the directions taken byGeneral Secretary Earl Browder, but rejoined it in the 1960s. In 1974 he was the Party candidate for lieutenant governor of Minnesota. Mr. Flower was a long-time resident of northeast Minneapolis, and was active in city council races and community issues there. In 1978 he retired to Eveleth, Minnesota, and died in Virginia, Minnesota on August 23, 1986.

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OH 30.23

Oral history interview with James H. Flower, February 19, 1977. 2 master audiocassettes (1 hours, 55 minutes, 33 seconds), 4 submaster audio files: WAV, 4 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (31 pages).

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Strike by Works Progress Administration workers, 1939. Medical care for working-class families, early 1930s. Unemployed Councils in Minneapolis, early 1930s. United Farmers League in Wisconsin, early 1930s, and conditions for farmers in the Midwest. Disagreements with the Communist Party line. Attempts by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to gain Mr. Flower's cooperation, 1960s. Assessments of Floyd B. Olson and Elmer Benson. Opinions about the labor movement in 1977. Opinions of Hubert Humphrey, 1940s, and Halter Mondale and Jimmy Carter, 1970s. Descriptions of penny auctions, 1930s. Unemployment demonstrations in Minneapolis, 1930s. Anecdotes about driving taxicabs. Opinions about Medicare and health insurance, 1970s.

Interviewed by: Tom O'Connell and Steve Trimble.

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Biographical Information:Alma Howe was born on a farm near Alden, Minnesota, on March 13, 1909. Her parents, Ebenezer K. Howe and Louise Drake Howe, were both born in Minnesota and of British decent. Alma was raised on the farm and graduated from Alden High School in 1927. She went to Minneapolis and enrolled at the University of Minnesota, but attended there for only a year before she met and married Thomas Foley, then organizational secretary for the Workers' (Communist) Party. From that time on, the bulk of her energies were directed into radical political work. After a brief time in Duluth, the couple settled in Minneapolis, where Ms. Foley worked primarily in defense of civil liberties. From1935 to 1940 she headed the state chapter of the International Labor Defense, while also raising four children. During the 1940s Ms. Foley was less politically active, but late in the decade she joined the Civil Rights Congress, and in 1950became the state organizer of the Committee for Protection of Foreign Born. For her participation in this organization, she was called to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, and watched by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Ms. Foley resigned from the CP around 1957. She worked part-time in book binderies and print shops. Tom Foley died suddenly in 1965, and Ms. Foley supported herself until her retirement in 1974. To fill her time after retirement, she volunteered with the Lowery East Hill Neighborhood Association, the citizens' advisory committee for the Community Development Block Grant Program, and The Bridge for Runaway Youth. In 1979 she resumed working part-time as a home health aide for the Ebenezer Society. At the time of the interview her main occupation was still caring for those more elderly than herself.

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OH 30.24

Oral history interview with Alma Howe Foley, March 29, 1988 and April 4, 1988. 3 master audiocassettes (2 hours, 43 minutes, 5 seconds), 6 submaster audio files: WAV, 6 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (39 pages).

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Activities in the Communist Party bookstore in Minneapolis, late 1920s. Jewish radical groups in Minneapolis, late 1920s. Hunger marches, early 1930s. "Free Tom Mooney" campaign. CP activity in Duluth, 1932-35, especially among the unemployed. Impressions of Henry and Irene Paull. Impressions of the farm movement around Duluth. Radical theater in Duluth, 1932-35. Activities of the International Labor Defense in Minneapolis: campaign for the Scottsboro Boys, defense of people arrested in demonstrations, effort to block the deportation of Charles Rowaldt Activities of the ILD in Duluth, especially deportation cases. Relationship of the ILD and the CP; opinions about changes in CP tactics and positions. Gubernatorial campaign of 1938. Red-baiting of the Foleys' children at school. Activities of the Civil Rights Congress in Minnesota, 1940s. Government surveillance of radical activity, 1950s.Activities of the Minnesota Committee for Protection of Foreign Born: defense of Knute Heikkinen, Norman Bernick, Charles Rowaldt, Harry Roast, and Vera Hathaway; public meetings. Appearance before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, 1956. Relations between Trotskyists and Communists in Minneapolis. Presidential campaign of 1948. Public reactions to the Korean War. Communist Party responses to government persecution; criticism of the vanguard approach.

Interviewed by: Carl Ross.

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Biographical Information:Clarence Forester was born in 1915 in Alfred, North Dakota, into a farming family. His father died when he was young, and he grew up in relative poverty. He left school after the seventh grade to help support the family. Discouraged by the long hours and low pay of arm work, Mr. Forester went to Superior, Wisconsin in 1931, looking for a job. There he reconnected with his half-brothers, Walter and Rudolph Harju, who were both members of the Communist Party. Rudolph edited the Finnish-language newspaper "Tyomies", and Walter was the secretary for the Workers and Farmers Cooperative Unity Alliance. Under their influence, Mr. Forester's political views began to develop, so that when the Spanish Civil War broke out in July 1936, he volunteered to fight in the International Brigade. He served in the Abraham Lincoln Battalion from February 1937 through November 1938. In the meantime, the focus of Walter Harju'sactivities had switched to Minneapolis. Mr. Forester lived with Mr. Harju and his wife upon his return from Spain, supporting himself as a laborer and factory worker. Soon after the US entry into the Second World War, he was drafted. He served in a field artillery corps which saw front-line duty in the European theater. After this war was over, Mr. Forester came back again to Minneapolis, married, and became a machinist. Although he remained connected to the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade organization, he was not politically active. At the time of the interview he was retired and living in Minneapolis.

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OH 30.25

Oral history interview with Clarence M. Forester, July 25, 1989. 2 master audiocassettes (1 hours, 48 minutes, 14 seconds), 4 submaster audio files: WAV, 4 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (26 pages).

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Memories of growing up in the depression. Impressions of Italian fascism. Opinions of U.S. neutrality in the Spanish Civil War, and the attempt to embargo arms shipments to Spain. Impressions of James Flower. Memories of the Finnish community on the north side of Minneapolis, 1930s. Legal actions resulting from the Works Progress Administration strike of 1939. Recruiting efforts for the Abraham Lincoln Battalion in Minneapolis, 1937-38. Experiences as a Lincoln Brigade volunteer: the trip to Spain, battles, reasons for leaving, conditions that led to the fighting. Reactions to the Finnish-Soviet War among Finnish Americans, 1939-40. Experiences in the Second World War: acceptance of Lincoln Brigade vets into the armed services; invasion of Europe; Battled of the Bulge; capture of Aachen, Germany; liberation of Buchenwald; reunion with the Russian army at the Elbe River. Reactions to the reformmovement in the Soviet Union, 1989. Impressions of the North Dakota National Guard in the Second World War. Treatment of radicals in the army during World War II. Historical treatment and evaluation of the Spanish Civil War; its place in U.S. folklore and literature. Activities of the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigades in support of the Nicaraguan government, late 1980s.

Interviewed by: Carl Ross.

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Biographical Information:Bunny Fossum was born in South Dakota. She graduated from Yankton College in 1930 and became a teacher. She briefly attended the University of Minnesota where she met and married her artist husband, Sid, in 1932. The two lived a colorful life in the Left's cultural activities. She was deeply involved in the Minneapolis Theater Union and her husband in the Artists' Union and WPA Artists' strike. She belonged to the Junior Farmer-Labor Association. For some time she was a member of the Communist Party and describes in some detail the activity of a unit in North Minneapolis with both worker and intellectual members. She participated in the Strutwear and Millers' strikes. As of 1989 she resided in San Francisco.

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OH 30.26

Oral history interview with Bernice Fossum, March 16, 1978. 2 master audiocassettes (2 hours, 22 minutes, 5 seconds), 4 submaster audio files: WAV, 4 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (29 pages).

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Early life; Mac and Meridel LeSueur; Arthur and Marian LeSueur; Minneapolis Theater Union; small town political division; CP unit: internal education, composition, women in; wartime; social work.

Interviewed by: Steve Trimble.

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OH 30.27

Oral history interview with Bernice Fossum, February 11, 1988 and February 21, 1988. 2 master audiocassettes (1 hours, 35 minutes, 24 seconds), 3 submaster audio files: WAV, 3 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (42 pages).

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Bunny Fossum gives a lively and amusing description of the circle of radical artists in which she moved. There is much anecdotal information about her first years in Minneapolis (1934-44), and the colorful people she knew. She touches on the Strutwear Knitting Company strike; the WPA strike of 1939; the Sears Roebuck strike; the Millers' Cafeteria strike; and support for the Spanish Loyalists in the Civil War. She talks about Syd's activity in the Artists' Union, the Minnesota Artists' Association, and Artists' Equity; the ways in which artists contributed to the radical labor movement; and her memories of the Communist Party. She recalls FBI surveillance; her husband's arrest in the 1939 WPA strike; and his trial on charges of falsifying his time cards while he worked for the WPA. She also gives a lot of information about the Minneapolis Theatre Union and its productions. The interview isrich in detail about the life-styles of struggling artists in the 1930s and 1940s.

Interviewed by: Salvatore Salerno.

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Biographical Information:Orville L. Freeman was born in 1918 in Minneapolis. He attended the university of Minnesota and graduated with a law degree in 1947, after serving overseas in the Marine Corps in the Second World War. Upon his return he became Mayor Hubert Humphrey's advisor on veterans' affairs, and was a founder of the American Veterans Committee. Because of his friendship with Humphrey, Mr. Freeman quickly was drawn into the new Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. In 1946 he was elected state secretary of the party, and two years later became its chair. In both positions he was key to organizing against the Communist Party members who were influential in the party, and eventually driving them out. Mr. Freeman devoted a good portion of his energy to organizing and building the party. In 1950 he ran unsuccessfully for attorney general, and in 1952 he ran unsuccessfully for governor. Two years later, however, he was elected to thefirst of three terms as governor of the state. Defeated in his re-election bid in 1960, he was appointed U.S. Secretary of Agriculture by President John F. Kennedy, and stayed in that position until 1969. As Secretary of Agriculture, he presided over the Food for Peace program and set U.S. farm policy for nearly a decade. With the election of Richard M. Nixon in 1968, Mr. Freeman went into the private sector, where he worked for EDP Technology International in Washington, D.C. He retired back to Minneapolis, where he was living at the time of the interview. Mr. Freeman was married to Jane Shields, and the couple had two children.

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OH 30.28

Oral history interview with Orville L. Freeman, August 5, 1988. 2 master audiocassettes (1 hours, 22 minutes, 51 seconds), 3 submaster audio files: WAV, 3 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (36 pages).

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party convention of 1946. Meetings of the DFL state executive committee, 1946-48. Election of William Kubicek as chairman of the Young DFL, 1947. DFL state convention of 1948. Struggles between Communists and anti-Communists in the American Veterans Committee. Presidential campaign of Henry Wallace, 1943. Recollections of James Shields. Building the DFL party structure, late 1940s and early 1950s. Relations between the DFL and organized labor, early 1950s. Impressions of Robert Wishart. Impressions of John A. Blatnik. Assessment of Steven Harrington's role in the DFL. Gubernatorial nomination and campaigns of 1950, 1952, and 1954. Memories of Hubert Humphrey. Impressions of Miles Lord. Freeman's three terms as governor: taxes; public welfare programs; reorganizing the state administrative structure; attacks from Republican legislators. Gubernatorial and presidentialcampaigns of 1960: anti-Catholic bias in Minnesota. Freeman's program as U.S. Secretary of Agriculture. Strike of packinghouse workers in Albert Lea, 1959.

Interviewed by: Hyman Berman and Carl Ross.

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Biographical Information:Newton Friedman was born in Minneapolis in 1911. His father, Samuel Friedman, was a leader in the Socialist Party. His mother participated in the Women's Socialist Club as well. Mr. Friedman, a lawyer, defended socialist draft resisters during the First World War. In 1919, when the Communist Party was formed, the Friedmans stayed with the Socialist Party, among bitter accusations back and forth. (Samuel Friedman was state secretary of the party around the time of the split.) The Friedman family lived in the Jewish neighborhoods of Minneapolis until 1931, when they moved to New York. Samuel F. Friedman died in New York at the age of fifty-three, and is therefore not to be confused with Samuel H. Friedman, a socialist newspaper man and publicist who also lived in New York until the 1990s. Mrs. Friedman remarried and moved to Detroit, and finally returned to Minneapolis, where she died in 1979. Newton Friedmanfollowed his father's lead and became a lawyer, too. During the Second World War he served in the army in the European theatre, and in the Occupation Forces in Germany following the war. When his enlistment was over, he settled in Duluth with his wife and two children. There he practiced law, with an emphasis on labor and civil liberties cases. At the time of the interview he was trying to retire.

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OH 30.29

Oral history interview with Newton Friedman, October 27, 1988. 2 master audiocassettes (1 hours, 13 minutes, 2 seconds), 3 submaster audio files: WAV, 3 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (20 pages).

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Workmen's Circle in Duluth. Jewish locals in the Socialist Party in Duluth and the Twin Cities, 1910s. Decline of the Socialist Party, 1916–1920. Jewish emigration from Minneapolis to the Soviet Union following the Russian Revolution. Description of Socialist Party picnics, 1910s. Prosecution of members of the Industrial workers of the world in northern Minnesota, late 1910s. Socialist opposition to World War I. Prosecution of the editors of "Industrialisti" for criminal syndicalism by the Commission on Public Safety. Struggle in the Socialist Party leading to the formation of the Communist Party, 1919 to 1920. Socialist Party activity on the Iron Range. Dissolution of the Workmen's Circle in Minnesota, 1980s. Jewish cemeteries in Minneapolis and Duluth, 1980s. Differences between secular and religious Jews, 1980s. Opinions about the loss of idealism among former Socialists and theirdecendants. Legal work on civil liberties issues. Documenting Jewish history, and transmitting stories from one generation to the next; Friedman family history. Anti-Semitism in the army during and after World War II; U.S. occupation of Germany. Awareness of the holocaust in the U.S., prior to Germany's surrender. Arab-Israeli tensions in the Middle East, 1940s to 1980s.

Interviewed by: Susanna Frenkel and Carl Ross.

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Biographical Information:Max Geldman was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1905, and immigrated to New York when he was eight. His father was a garment worker and a member of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union. Max's formal education ended after the eighth grade, when he started to work in the needle trades. Later on he attended the City College of New York for two years. Mr. Geldman became active in the labor movement during the 1926 strike of textile workers in Passaic, New Jersey, and the concurrent campaign to save the lives of anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. He joined the Young Communist League but soon was drawn out of it by the force of Leon Trotsky's criticisms. In 1930 he joined the Trotskyist Communist League of America, and remained in Trotskyist parties until 1983. He moved to Chicago just in time for the stock market crash of 1929, and began a decade of organizing activities among the unemployed. InChicago he met his first wife, Goldie Cooper, who came from Chaska, Minnesota. Through her, Mr. Geldman became acquainted with the Trotskyists in Minneapolis. The party reassigned Mr. Geldman to New York until 1934. As organizing efforts in Local #544 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in Minneapolis heated up, the Geldmans relocated to be part of this struggle. Mr. Geldman worked particularly with unemployed workers, to persuade them to support the teamsters' strikes rather than using them as opportunities to gain employment. From 1935 to 1939 he organized with the Federal Workers Section of Local #544, demanding better pay and working conditions for the unemployed who were in the Works Progress Administration program. In 1939 a cut-back in federal funding for the WPA set off a wave of strikes by WPA workers across the country. In Minneapolis the conflict was particularly intense, and one worker died in a clash with police. Mr. Geldman was arrestedfor his role in the strike, and convicted of conspiracy to violate the Woodrum Act. He served a year in the federal prison at Sandstone, Minnesota, for this offense. He was rearrested shortly after his release, under the Smith Act. He and seventeen other leaders of the Socialist Workers Party were found guilty of attempting to overthrow the government through force and violence in 1941. Mr. Geldman returned to Sandstone after appeals were exhausted, on the last day of 1943, and stayed there for thirteen months. Upon release, he moved to Philadelphia and became the SWP branch organizer there. In the 1950s, Mr. Geldman took party assignments in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Newark. In the early 1960s he moved to Los Angeles, where he lived the rest of his life. In 1983, organizational and political differences led him out of the SWP, and he became a founder of Socialist Action. Later he left that organization, too, and helped establish Solidarity. Goldie and MaxGeldman had two children before Goldie's death in 1952. Two years later Mr. Geldman remarried, and he and Mrs. Shevi Geldman had two more children. At the time of the interview Mr. Geldman was retired and living in Los Angeles. He died on December 2, 1989. (Information from obituaries in the Militant and Socialist Action.)

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OH 30.30

Oral history interview with Max Geldman, February 18, 1988. 1 master audiocassette (59 minutes, 33 seconds), 2 submaster audio files: WAV, 2 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (15 pages).

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Mr. Geldman's conversion from Stalinism to Trotskyism, late 1920s. New York hotel restaurant strike, 1934. Memories of the Minneapolis teamsters' strikes, 1934. Assessment of the Trotskyist contribution to those strikes. Support of the strikes and of Local #544 by the unemployed. Memories of Edward Palmquist. Formation and activities of Federal Workers section of Local #574/544. Opinions of the Farmer-Labor Party and of Floyd B Olson. Cooperation and tensions between the Communist and Socialist Workers Party on unemployed activities in Minneapolis, late 1930s. Works Progress Administration strike, 1939. Convention of the Workers' Alliance of Minnesota, 1936. Arrest and trials of the leaders of the WPA strike, 1939. Smith Act trial, 1941. Memories of Sandstone Federal Correctional Facility, 1943-1944. Tensions between Local #544 and the teamsters' international, late 1930s and 1940s. Trotskyistloss of influence on Local #544, 1940s.

Interviewed by: Carl Ross.

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OH 30.31

Oral history interview with Max and Shevi Geldman, 1977. 3 master audiocassettes (3 hours, 6 minutes, 27 seconds), 6 submaster audio files: WAV, 6 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (30 pages).

Use Restrictions:Interview may not be quoted directly for publication.

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include European emigration. Sacco and Vanzetti trials. Citizens' Military Training Corps. Language federations of the Communist Party. Communist League of America. Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union strike of 1934 (New York). Minneapolis truckers' strike of 1934. Unemployed Councils. Minneapolis Organizations of All Workers. Federal Workers Section of teamsters' Local 574/544. Works Progress Administration projects. Workers' Alliance. WPA strike of 1939. Workers' Education. Program of the WPA. Smith Act Trials of 1941.

Interviewed by: Steve Trimble.

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Biographical Information:Frank Green was born Maurice Greenberg in 1915 in Minneapolis. He grew up in a radical Jewish family on the north side of Minneapolis. His father belonged to the Workman's Circle, and his mother participated in the Rosa Luxemburg League. It was natural that Morrie joined the Young Communist League while he was still in high school. When he graduated from high school, Mr. Greenberg moved to Rochester, Minnesota, and got a job in the needle trades there. He participated in early efforts to organize hospital food workers, and came to the Twin Cities for hunger marches. Although he moved back to Minneapolis in 1936 or 1937, he kept up his ties with southern Minnesota, visiting Communist friends there and returning to Rochester briefly in connection with the southern Minnesota organizing drive of the Congress of Industrial Organizations. After the war, Mr. Greenberg moved to Los Angeles, California, and changed hisname to Frank Green. He began a long career as the business agent for the Amalgamated Watchmakers and Jewelers local there, affiliated with the Service Employees' International. At the time of the interview, he still had not retired.

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OH 30.32

Oral history interview with Frank Green, October 26, 1987. 2 master audiocassettes (59 minutes, 20 seconds), 2 submaster audio files: WAV, 2 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (20 pages).

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Evaluation of the Trotskyist leadership of the teamsters. Communist involvement in the Unemployed Councils, hunger marches, and unemployed demonstrations, 1930s. Student peace movement at the University of Minnesota, 1930s. Organizing among hospital and hotel workers in Rochester, 1937-39, and early 1940s. Communist presence in Rochester, Austin, and Faribault, Minnesota, 1930s. Description of a penny auction near Faribault. Impressions of Chester Watson. Memories of constructing sewers in Minneapolis under the Works Progress Administration, late 1930s. International Hod Carriers, Building, and Common Laborers' Union Local #563 (Minneapolis). Organized crime and organized labor in Minneapolis, late 1930s. State liquor dispensary bill, and organized labor's reactions to it, 1937. Communist Party's role in developing the unemployment insurance laws. Trotskyist influence among packinghouseworkers in Austin, 1930s.

Interviewed by: Carl Ross.

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Biographical Information:Victoria "Vicki" Lindesmith was born in 1919 and raised on a farm near Northfield, Minnesota. She attended Carleton College for two years, but had to drop out during the Great Depression. She moved to Minneapolis looking for work, and quickly became active in the radical movement there. She was a founder of the Minneapolis Theatre Union, which performed pieces by radical playwrights, and joined the Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union Local #665 through her job at the YMCA cafeteria. Douglas Hanson lived in Minneapolis already. He tried his hand at running a newsstand in the 1930s, and lost his contract with one of the city's daily papers because he sold the Communist Party's newspapers at his stand. After that, he got a job as a houseman at the Nicollet Hotel, and joined Local 665. He also participated in productions of the Minneapolis Theatre Union. The Hansons were married shortly before the U.S. entry intothe Second World War. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Mr. Hanson joined the army, and Ms. Hanson threw herself into defense and war relief work, in Minneapolis, Seattle, and finally New York. After Mr. Hanson was discharged, the couple moved back to Minneapolis, where Mr. Hanson worked for the Communist Party and both were active in the labor and civil rights movements. When the senior Lindesmiths became ill, the Hansons moved to Northfield to care for them. The Lindesmiths had established a nursing home there, which the Hansons took over after the Lindesmiths died and after the Hansons left the Communist Party in the mid-1950s. After about five years, though, the Hansons became partners in an auto bumper reconditioning business in Minneapolis, and this became their main source of income. In 1973 they sold the business and retired to Pequot Lakes, Minnesota. Ms. Hanson remained active in the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, the UnitarianSociety of Minneapolis, and Chrysalis - Center for Women, until her death in 1982. The couple had no children. For Ole Fagerhaugh's biography see his individual interview.

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OH 30.33

Oral history interview with Douglas and Victoria Hanson and Ole Fagerhaugh, July 17 and 19, 1981. 3 master audiocassettes (2 hours, 44 minutes, 55 seconds), 6 submaster audio files: WAV, 6 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (68 pages).

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Organizing drive for the Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union at Miller's Cafeteria, Minneapolis. Memories of the Miller's Cafeteria strike: picketing and other tactics; activities at the strike headquarters, including the strike kitchen; support from other unions and from farmers; demands of the workers; opposition from the Citizens Alliance; public opinion towards the strike; cultural work supporting the strike. Character of the workforce at Miller's, and conditions leading to the strike. Impressions of Albert J. Kilday, business agent for the bartenders' local. Impressions of the Strutwear Knitting Company and its labor-management relationships; memories of the 1935-36 strike. Incidents from the career of Peter Fagerhaugh as a union organizer for the American Federation of Hosiery Workers in Minneapolis and Kentucky. Opinions of Roy Wier. Character of the workforce in the Minneapolishotels, 1930s and 1940s: ethnic backgrounds and ages. Descriptions of union meetings and participation in the union. Impressions of Raymond Wright (Ryti) and Swan Assarson. Stories of surviving as a young, unemployed person during the depression. Relations between Communists and Trotskyists in Minneapolis, 1930s and 1940s. Memories of Dr. Aaron Friedell and his support for the labor movement. Opinion of the Northwestern Bible and Missionary Training Institute. Description of working at the Nicollet Hotel, 1930s, and conditions in the hotels generally. Union meetings and participation. Local 665's involvement in electoral campaigns. Attempts by the city government to clean up the liquor industry, 1940s, and labor reactions to that. Harassment of Local 665 officials by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Memories of Swan Assarson.

Interviewed by: Carl Ross.

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Biographical Information: Clarence Hemmingsen was born in Mason, Wisconsin in 1895. He went to Chicago after the First World War and became a steam pipe fitter. Already a member of the Socialist Party, he enrolled in the Proletarian University, where he was trained as a street speaker. In 1924 he made a national tour, speaking on behalf of the Socialist Party. His political views caused difficulty for his in the United Association of Plumbers and Steam Fitters, to which he belonged. At the very beginning of the Great Depression he was expelled from the union, and found himself unable to get work in his trade. For several years he organized resistance to evictions among the unemployed in Chicago. When he met his future wife, Edna, she persuaded him to move to Duluth, where he had a brother. Shortly thereafter, they moved even further north, joined the Farmer-Labor Party, and in 1937 raised money and built a cabin for Governor Elmer Benson. Atthe time of the interview, Mr. Hemmingsen was living in a nursing home in Grand Marais.

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OH 30.34

Oral history interview with Clarence Hemmingsen, 1978. 1 master audiocassette (1 hours, 54 seconds), 2 submaster audio files: WAV, 2 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (19 pages).

Use Restrictions: Interview may not be quoted directly for publication.

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Soap-box speaking for the Socialist Party. Scott Nearning. Pipefitters' union in Chicago, and his disagreements with it. Chicago city elections. Minnesota Farmer-Labor politics. Raising money for a cabin for Elmer Benson on the North Shore of Lake Superior. Conflicts between Elmer Benson and Hjalmar Petersen, 1936 and 1938. Proletarian University in Chicago. Chicago eviction protests.

Interviewed by: Tom O'Connell.

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OH 30.35

Oral history interview with Clarence Hemmingsen, 1980, 1989. 2 master audiocassettes (1 hours, 59 minutes, 46 seconds), 4 submaster audio files: WAV, 4 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (29 pages).

Use Restrictions:Interview may not be quoted directly for publication.

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Socialist Party activities in Detroit, Michigan, before World War I. Proletarian University in Chicago, 1920-24. Effect of the Russian Revolution on U.S. socialism. Soap-box speaking for the Socialist Party, 1924. Relations between the Communist and Socialist Parties, 1920s. Memories of George Heaney, 1930. Protests of evictions in Chicago, early 1930s. Attraction of the North Shore for the Hemmingsens. Memories of scraping out a living on the North Shore, 1930s. Incidents in the nursing home where Hr. Hemmingsen lived, 1970s(?). Views on religion and science and tobacco. Opinions of President Ronald Reagan, 1980s. Anecdotes about life on the North Shore. Relocation of Highway 61, late 1930s. Opinions of the Grand Portage band of Ojibwe, 1980s. Comparisons of the U.S. and USSR, 1980s. Socialist sympathies in Two Harbors, 1930s.

Interviewed by: William Kosiak and Carl Jarvi.

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Biographical Information:Irwin Herness was born in Ottertail County, Minnesota, about 1901. He lived there until he was eleven years old and his father died; then relatives in South Dakota offered him a home. There he was exposed to the Nonpartisan League, and formed his political ideas. In 1918 Irwin began studying at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, but finished his degree at the University of North Dakota at Ellendale. After graduating from college, Mr. Herness moved to Duluth, where he worked as a salesman. When the depression put him out of work, he found a job in the state department of agriculture in St. Paul. Eventually, he transferred to the cooperative division of the department, and helped to start rural electrical cooperatives. During this time he was quite active in the Farmer-Labor Party. When Harold Stassen was elected governor, Mr. Herness found a job with Midland Cooperatives. During the Second World War heworked at Northern Pump Company's ordnance plant. Following the merger of the Democratic and Farmer-Labor Parties in 1944, Mr. Herness became largely politically inactive, except for his involvement in the Henry Wallace campaign of 1948.

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OH 30.36

Oral history interview with Irwin Herness, January 20, 1977. 1 master audiocassette (1 hours, 42 seconds), 2 submaster audio files: WAV, 2 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (16 pages).

Use Restrictions:Interview may not be quoted directly for publication.

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Description of the meetings of a Farmer-Labor Party ward club. Marches of farmers and unemployed people to the state capitol, 1930s. Financial support of the Farmer-Labor Party by state employees, 1930s. Assessments of Floyd Olson and Elmer Benson. Attempt to establish a state liquor control board by Benson, 1938. Gubernatorial campaign of 1938: anti-Semitism, Red-baiting, effect of the split in organized labor upon Benson's support. Opinions about military spending, 1940s and 1970s. Formation of electrical co-ops under the Rural Electrification Act. Memories of the 1946 DFL convention. Assessment of the merger of the Democratic and Farmer-Labor Parties. Red-baiting at Midland Cooperatives, early 1940s.

Interviewed by: Tom O'Connell and Steve Trimble.

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Biographical Information:Nellie Allen was born on a farm in Pine County in 1904. Her father, William Allen, was active in local politics, always in the liberal wing. He helped to found the Finlayson Power cooperative and the Twin Cities Milk Producers Association, as well as serving on the school board, township board, and district board of the Rural Electrification Administration. He also participated in the Nonpartisan League, the Farm Holiday Association, and the Farmer-Labor Party. Nellie moved to Minneapolis in 1924 and finished her high school degree while working as a domestic servant and living with an aunt. She married Clyde Stone, though the marriage did not last. Ms. Stone supported herself by working in the Minneapolis Athletic Club, one of the few hotels which employed African Americans at the time. There she came in contact with the Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union and became one of the key organizers of Local #665, and sat on the Local Joint Executive Board of the HRE. Through the labor movement, Ms. stone got deeply involved in the Farmer-Labor Association and Party. She was a member of the committee which worked out a merger of the Farmer-Labor Party and the Democratic Party in 1944. The next year she ran for the Library Board of Minneapolis, on the new party's ticket and was elected - the first African American to hold elected office in the city. Her term lasted for six years, during which she pressed actively for fair employment practices legislation for the city and state. She decided against running for office again herself, preferring to sit in policy-making positions in the party itself. She had a brief rupture with the DFL in 1948, when she supported Progressive Party candidate Henry Wallace for president instead of Democrat Harry Truman. The breach was healed, however, by the mid-1950s. In 1980 and 1984 she was elected to the Democratic National committee. Inaddition to her electoral and union activities, Ms. Johnson sat on the boards of both the Minneapolis National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Urban League. (She remarried around 1949.) When she retired from the hotel industry (1963), she opened a tailoring business in downtown Minneapolis. She remained active in the HRE, and at the time of the interview was still involved in the reorganized Local #17. In 1986 she was appointed to the State University Board. Ms. Johnson had no children of her own.

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OH 30.37

Oral history interview with Nellie Stone Johnson, November 17, 1981. 2 master audiocassettes (2 hours, 33 minutes, 16 seconds), 4 submaster audio files: WAV, 4 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (16 pages).

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Organizing drive for HRE Local #665 at the Minneapolis Athletic Club. Employment of African Americans in the hotel and restaurant industry, 1920s and 1930s. Wage and benefit differences between female and male workers, and African and Euro American workers, 1930s and 1940s. Opinions about the involvement of African Americans in the labor movement in the 1980s, and the attitudes of black elected officials. Assessment of organized labor's influence on Hubert Humphrey, especially through the United Labor Committee. Role of Local #665 and Local #1145 of the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers Union in advocating for civil rights in Minneapolis. Establishment of the State Council of Culinary Workers and Minnesota Federation of Labor's outreach department, 1940s. Description of Local #665's membership meetings and estimation of the local's leadership. Impressions of Swan Assarson. Workingconditions at the Athletic Club which led to unionization. Support activities during the 1934 truck driver's strike, and assessment of the importance of that strike to the Minneapolis labor movement. Racial segregation within the workforce of the Athletic Club. Equalizing wages and benefits between African and Euro American workers under the union contracts. Strike at Miller's Cafeteria, 1941. Interracial dating in the 1940s and 1950s. Impressions of Hubert Humphrey, 1930s, 1940s, and 1960s.

Interviewed by: Carl Ross.

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OH 30.38

Oral history interview with Nellie Stone Johnson, March 1, 1988. 2 master audiocassettes (1 hours, 40 minutes, 9 seconds), 4 submaster audio files: WAV, 4 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (48 pages).

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Memories of growing up in a politically-active farm family in Pine County. African American community in the Twin Cities, 1920s and 1930s: economic conditions; participation in labor unions; Garveyism; relations with Jewish people; employment opportunities and discrimination; entertainment and nightlife; small business people. Impressions of Frank Boyd. Impressions of Roy Wier. African American support for and opinions of the Farmer-Labor Party. Conditions for African American workers at the Minneapolis Athletic Club, 1930s. Reaction to the Scottsboro case in the Twin cities, 1930s. Impressions of Cecil B. Newman and the Minneapolis Spokesman. Unemployed movement and unemployed demonstrations, 1930s. Efforts to secure civil rights legislation in Minneapolis and at the state level, 1940s and 1950s. Activities of Hotel and Restaurant Employees Local #665 on behalf of African American workers.Impressions of Ralph Helstein and Douglas Hall. Memories of the 1934 truck drivers' strike in Minneapolis. Conflicts between Trotskyists and Stalinists, 1930s. Passage of the Minneapolis Fair Employment Practices Act, 1945-1947. Meatpacking industry in St. Paul: African American workers; Frank Alsup; 1948 strike. Impressions of Hubert Humphrey, 1930s and 1940s, and Swan Assarson's influence on Humphrey. Estimation of Elmer Benson's administration, and the 1938 gubernatorial campaigns. Relationship between the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations in Minneapolis, 1930s and 1940s. Memories of the 1939 strike of workers on the Works Progress Administration. Economic impact of the Second World War on Twin Cities African Americans, and especially the Twin Cities Ordnance Plant of the Federal Cartridge Corporation. Discrimination against African American workers in the defense industry, 1940s. Merger of the Democratic andFarmer-Labor Parties, 1944, and the discussions that led up to it. Presidential election of 1944. Elections of 1948. Red-baiting in the DFL and in the country at large, 1950s. Opinions of the Americans for Democratic Action. Estimation of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s; ideas for the future of the black community.

Interviewed by: Hyman Berman, Rhoda R. Gilman, Deborah Miller L., Peter J. Rachleff, Carl Ross, and Salvatore Salerno.

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Biographical Information:Clara was born on a farm in Pine County in 1913, one of nine children. She completed only the eighth grade in school, before starting to work on the farm full-time. In 1934 she married John Jorgensen, and they started their own dairy farm. Peter and John Jorgensen left Denmark in 1919 and came to Minnesota. John and Clara and Pete were all active in the Farm Holiday Association and the Farmer-Labor Party. Clara and Pete actually joined the Communist Party, while John sympathized strongly with it. Pete Jorgensen left Pine County around 1936 to participate in some of the labor struggles in the Twin Cities. In 1937 he volunteered for the Abraham Lincoln Battalion, and fought in the Spanish Civil War, where he was wounded. When he returned from Spain, he continued to work and organize in the Twin Cities until after the Second World War. Then he came back to Pine County to help John and Clara on their farm. At thetime of the interview, all three were living in and around Askov, Minnesota.

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OH 30.39

Oral history interview with Clara, John and Peter Jorgensen, December 8, 1974. 1 master audiocassette (1 hours, 1 minutes, 29 seconds), 2 submaster audio files: WAV, 2 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (17 pages).

Use Restrictions:Interview may not be quoted directly for publication.

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Farm protests of the 1930s: United Farmers League, Farm Holiday Association, demonstrations at the state capitol, foreclosure actions. Farm prices and conditions, 1930s and 1970s. Organizing among dairy farmers in Pine County, 1930s. Senator Joseph McCarthy and the Red-baiting of the 1950s. Memories of Marian LeSueur, Suzie Stageberg, and Selma Seestrom. Opinion of the merger of the Democratic and Farmer-Labor Parties, 1944. Description of Farm Holiday meetings, 1930s. Commentary on unemployment levels, 1970s. People's Lobby, 1937. Assessment of John Bosch.

Interviewed by: Steve Trimble.

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OH 30.40

Oral history interview with Clara, John and Peter Jorgensen, November 1, 1976. 2 master audiocassettes (2 hours, 2 minutes, 59 seconds), 4 submaster audio files: WAV, 4 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (35 pages).

Use Restrictions:Interview may not be quoted directly for publication.

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Description of the Cloquet-Noose Lake fire of 1918. Farming on the cut-over land of Pine County, 1910s and 1920s. Comparisons of the United Farmers League and the Farm Holiday Association. Memories of Lement Harris and his daughter, Sally. Description of the second national farmers' relief conference in 1934. Traveling speakers for various Communist Party groups: Reino Tantilla, Ruth Shaw, James Flower. Memories of socialist activities in Denmark around the time of World War I. Commonwealth College in Mena, Arkansas. Organizing farmers for the United Farmers League and Farm Holiday Association. Red-baiting in the 1930s and 1950s. Pete Jorgensen's experiences in the Abraham Lincoln Battalion: deciding to enlist; the trip to Spain; battles; hospitalization; democratic decision-making in the Battalion. Pine County Farmer-Labor Party: Hjalmar Petersen and the Jorgensens. Harassment by theImmigration and Naturalization Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Memories of Senator Joseph McCarthy and the Red-baiting of the 1950s. Assessment of the Communist Party, and of its treatment of the Trotskyists. Efforts to deport Peter Warhol, 1940s.

Interviewed by: Tom O'Connell and Steve Trimble.

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Biographical Information:Charles Karson was born in 1913 and immigrated to the U.S. in 1924 with his father and several brothers. They settled in St. Paul. He joined the Young Communist League, and his older brothers Jack and Morris (Red) Karson also became Communists. All of them rose quickly in the Party. Charles was the YCL district organizer, and Jack served briefly as the adult party's district organizer in 1934. All three were active in the Unemployed Councils; Charlie was arrested in a demonstration at city hall in Minneapolis in 1932. Shortly after that he left Minnesota at the request of the Party to organize with steelworkers and miners near Pittsburgh. He never returned to Minnesota. At the time of the interview Mr. Karson was retired and living in California with his wife, the former Ethel Wodlinger of Minneapolis.

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OH 30.41

Oral history interview with Charles Karson, February 17, 1988. 1 master audiocassette (1 hours, 8 minutes, 56 seconds), 2 submaster audio files: WAV, 2 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (25 pages).

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Split in the Communist Party that led to the formation of the Trotskyist party, 1929. Leadership of the CP in the Twin Cities, 1920s. Activities of the Unemployed Councils in the Twin Cities: marches and demonstrations, anti-eviction actions. Impressions of the Finnish American Communists in northern Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Attitude of the Communist Party towards the Farmer-Labor Party, and assessment of Floyd B. Olson. Impressions of Harry Roast. Social and cultural life within the Party. Changing demographics of the Party in the 1920s and early 1930s; continuity with the Socialist Party and lack thereof. Impressions of organized labor in the Twin Cities prior to the teamsters' strike of 1934. Reflections on the importance of the Russian Revolution to US Socialists; the influence of the Communist International over the CPUSA. Description of a strike among steelworkers inPennsylvania in the Little Steel strike of 1937. Assessment of the successes and limitations of the CPUSA.

Interviewed by: Carl Ross.

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Biographical Information:John Kykyri was born in Sparta, Minnesota in 1898, to parents who had recently immigrated from Finland. He graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1923 with a degree in Journalism and General Arts. He wrote for the Minnesota Daily, Minneapolis News, Fergus Falls Journal, Duluth News Tribune, Milwaukee Journal, Guild Reporter, and the People's World, primarily as a political reporter. In Milwaukee he was deeply involved in union activities.

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OH 30.42

Oral history interview with John Kykyri, undated. 1 master audiocassette (1 hours, 30 minutes, 55 seconds), 2 submaster audio files: WAV, 2 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (23 pages).

Use Restrictions:Interview may not be quoted directly for publication.

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Northern Minnesota mines; immigrant racism; union strike: Minneapolis Teamsters (1934), Milwaukee Newspaper Guild; Communist Party, union, and newspaper relationships; DFL-CIO relationship; Humphrey and the Communist Party.

Interviewed by: Tom O'Connell and Steve Trimble.

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Biographical Information:Robert Latz was born in 1930, the youngest son of Reuben Latz, the business agent of Cleaners, Drivers, and Laundry Workers' Union Local #183 in Minneapolis. Bob grew up in the Jewish community on the north side of the city, graduated from the public schools, and attended the University of Minnesota. He became a lawyer, specializing in labor law. From 1955 to 1958 Mr. Latz was an assistant attorney general for the state of Minnesota. In 1958 he ran for the state legislature, and served four terms (until 1966) in the House of Representatives. In 1975 he was appointed to the Board of Regents of the University of Minnesota, and eventually became vice-chair of that board. His term ended in 1981. Mr. Latz was married and had two children.

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OH 30.43

Oral history interview with Robert Latz, November 2, 1988. 2 master audiocassettes (1 hours, 9 minutes, 53 seconds), 3 submaster audio files: WAV, 3 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (20 pages).

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include The interview focuses on Mr. Latz's memories of his father's career (Reuben Latz died in 1948), and of the Jewish community in the 1930s and 1940s. Immigration of the Latz family from Lithuania, early 1900s. Homesteading in North Dakota Dry cleaning and laundry business in Minneapolis, 1920s to 1940s. Labor-management relations in the dry cleaning industry. Farmer-Labor Party rallies; Floyd B. Olson's funeral. Workmen's Circle in Minneapolis, 1930s: cultural events and political conflicts, particularly Communists versus Socialists. Center-Left coalition in the Minneapolis Central Labor Union, 1930s and 1940s. Labor's programs supporting the World War II effort. Impressions of Hubert Humphrey, 1940s. Labor Zionists in Minneapolis. Democratic Party's National Convention, 1944. Assimilation of Jewish Socialists into the Farmer-Labor Party, 1920s. Anti-Semitism in Minneapolis, 1930s; gubernatorialcampaign of 1938; the Mayor's Council on Human Relations, 1945-46. Impressions of Samuel Scheiner. Memories of Nellie Stone Johnson. Differences between secular Jews and religious Jews. Activities at the Labor Lyceum: youth classes, Yiddish theater. Difficulties of documenting Jewish history.

Interviewed by: Carl Ross and Linda Mack Schloff.

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Biographical Information:Martin Lebedoff was born in 1911 to a Russian Jewish family which had immigrated to Minneapolis in 1907. His father, Saul Lebedoff, became the proprietor of a motion picture house. Martin Lebedoff followed this lead, and they formed the Bryn Mawr Amusement Company, which owned the Milo, Liberty, Homewood, and Brynwood theaters in Minneapolis. Mr. Lebedoff became quite active in the Jewish community, particularly in supporting the state of Israel. He and his wife Mary had three children: David, Jonathan, and Judith. At the time of the interview Mr. Lebedoff was retired and living in Minneapolis.

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OH 30.44

Oral history interview with Martin Lebedoff, June 22, 1988. 2 master audiocassettes (1 hours, 35 minutes, 9 seconds), 3 submaster audio files: WAV, 3 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (33 pages).

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Description of the Lebedoff family and their reasons for emigrating from Russia, early 1900s. Memories of growing up in the Jewish community of Minneapolis, 1910s and 1920s: Homewood neighborhood, anti-Semitism, secular and religious life. Opinions about the state of Israel, 1980s. Workmen's Circle (Arbeter ring) in Minneapolis. Labor Lyceum of Minneapolis. Assessment of David Shier. Jewish socialist movement in Minneapolis, 1920s. Impressions of Jack Jaffe. Emanuel Cohen Center in Minneapolis. Memories of Jacob Mirviss. Geographic locations of the Jewish communities, 1910s to 1940s, and descriptions of Jewish-owned businesses. Development of the Jewish middle and upper middle class in Minneapolis. Impressions of Arthur Jacobs and George Leonard; popularity of the Farmer-Labor Party among Jews. Memories of Reuben Latz, and impressions of labor-management relations in the dry cleaning industry.Wages in the garment industry, 1930s. Unionization in the movie theaters. Schisms in the Jewish labor movement, 1919 and 1929. Labor Zionism in Minneapolis, and emigration to Israel after 1948 by Minneapolis Jews. Description of the Battle of Bulls' Run during the 1934 general drivers' strike. Anti-Semitism in the Twin Cities, and evaluation of its erasure. Impressions of Hubert Humphrey. Reaction to the merger, of the Democratic and Farmer-Labor Parties in the Jewish community, 1944. Jewish feeling about Elmer Benson and Walter Mondale.

Interviewed by: Carl Ross and Linda Mack Schloff.

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Biographical Information:Yank Levine was born and raised in Duluth. His family was part of the Jewish community there. He is brother to radical writer and Communist Party member Irene Levine Paull. Yank left Duluth for New York in the early 1930s to pursue dramatic training and was active in the labor drama schools and theater community.

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OH 30.45

Oral history interview with Yank Levine, March 20, 1978. 2 master audiocassettes (2 hours, 1 minutes, 7 seconds), 4 submaster audio files: WAV, 4 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (30 pages).

Use Restrictions:Interview may not be quoted directly for publication.

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Finnish Hall: cultural activities; father; becoming politically aware; New York: workers' organizations' and activities, New Theater League, progressive theater community; Duluth labor activities; Theater and politics: awareness, education, techniques, blacklisting; CIO labor drama school; racism in military; Henry (Hank) Paull; Sam Paull.

Interviewed by: Steve Trimble.

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Biographical Information:Jack Maloney was born in Minneapolis in 1911 and raised there. His step-father was an unskilled laborer and team driver, and Maloney dropped out of school after the eighth grade to help support the family. He learned the truck driving trade, and joined the General Drivers Local 544 in the early 1930s. In the labor struggles of the 1934-1940 period, Maloney played a key organizing role for the Teamsters. He participated in the Minneapolis truck strikes, and then moved to Sioux Falls, Sioux City, and Omaha to help form Teamsters locals in those cities. Although not among the Minneapolis labor leaders tried under the Smith Act in 1941, Maloney served a term in federal prison on charges stemming from a bakers' strike in Sioux City in 1938. For part of this period, Maloney used his step-father's surname, Seaverson, and is referred to in this way in the Teamsters' newspaper and other sources.

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OH 30.46

Oral history interview with Jack Maloney, April 21 and 25, 1988. 9 master audiocassettes (8 hours, 51 minutes, 42 seconds), 18 submaster audio files: WAV, 18 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (127 pages).

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include The interview is wide-ranging, although it mainly covers the years 1920 to 1937. He describes in some detail working conditions for unskilled and semi-skilled laborers in the 1920s; harvest field work and farming practices; itinerant Wobblies and their life-styles; and conditions in the trucking industry which led to the 1934 strikes. With the help of his step-brother, Don Seaverson, he recalls unemployed and hunger marches of the early 1930s in Minneapolis, relief efforts for the unemployed, the Farm Holiday Association's protests, and the coal truck drivers' strike of 1934. There are extensive personal memories of Carl Skoglund, Ray (Vincent) Dunne, Mickey (Miles) Dunne, Grant Dunne, Bill Brown, and Floyd B. Olson. He gives a vivid and detailed account of the 1934 general drivers' strikes, and describes the daily work of coal haulers, transfer drivers, and the grocery wholesaling business.He shows a particular interest in machinery, and incidentally explains the workings of farm equipment, steam engines, and trucks. Maloney comments at length on the IWW, tensions between Trotskyites and Stalinists, the mainstream labor movement, and Floyd Olson. He recalls a number of strikes in which Local 544/574 assisted: Strutwear Knitting Company, Flour City Ornamental Iron Works, the auto mechanics strike of 1935, and the Works Progress Administration strike of 1939. He touches on the role of the Ladies Auxiliary of Local 544, and his later career in organizing over-the-road drivers for the North Central District Drivers' Council.

Interviewed by: Don Seaverson, Peter J. Rachleff, and Salvatore Salerno.

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Biographical Information:Jennifer Mayville moved to Minneapolis at age seven. She became politically active at age 16. Her father was a radical thinker, but not a joiner or leader. A friend of her father's influenced her to get involved organizationally She married Harry Mayville, a public speaker and recruiter, in 1938. He spent 6 months in jail following a 1937 demonstration in the Senate chambers. Jennifer put out papers, leaflets, organized auxiliary and volunteer events. She had five children but remained politically active. Harry had a heart attack in 1952 and had to lead quieter life afterward.

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OH 30.47

Oral history interview with Jennifer Mayville, April 2, 1977. 2 master audiocassettes (1 hours, 44 minutes, 6 seconds), 4 submaster audio files: WAV, 4 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (25 pages).

Use Restrictions:Interview may not be quoted directly for publication.

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Childhood on the Northside of Minneapolis; growing up in a Finnish neighborhood. Labor consciousness of parents. Reaction of family to labor activities. Organizing labor history classes and study groups. Unemployment issues, demonstrations for food in early 1930s. Employment insurance struggle, late 1930s. Various labor strikes: Flour City, Wisconsin mills. Importance of social activities. Criticism of Teamsters' strike. Unity and splintering of CP. Ends with personal philosophies and evaluation. Raising children with social consciousness.

Interviewed by: Steve Trimble.

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Biographical Information:Patrick McMillen was born in Ireland in 1895, and came to the U.S. when he was a boy. His father laid track for the Great Northern Railroad Company, working out of St. Paul, Duluth, Fargo, and Grand Forks. When he was thirteen, Pat began to work alongside his father, but soon grew tired of that and ran away. He traveled to Seattle, where he talked his way into a job as a galley boy on a cargo ship. The rest of his working life was spent at sea. From 1916 to 1920, and again during the Second World War, Mr. McMillen served in the U.S. Navy; during peacetime he sailed on merchant ships as a cook, from both the East and West Coasts. After the Second World War, he sailed on the Great Lakes, with Detroit as his home port. In 1956 he settled in Duluth and retired shortly thereafter. Mr. McMillen joined the Industrial Workers of the World on his first voyage, and remained a member for the rest of his life. He alsojoined the International Seaman's Union, a conservative American Federation of Labor union. In the ISU he was part of a Wobbly radical caucus of sorts until 1937, when he and most of the membership left as a result of the ISU's poor performance in the 1936 seamen's strike. Unlike the majority of ISU members, though, Mr. McMillen stayed with the West coast Marine Cooks and Stewards Local, which eventually affiliated with the Congress of Industrial Organizations, instead of joining the National Maritime Union of the CIO. When the Marine Cooks and Stewards were expelled from the CIO in the late 1940s for their communist sympathies, (an event which led to the demise of the union), Mr. McMillen apparently joined the International Longshoremen's Association. This union dominated the Great Lakes, where he was then sailing. At the time of the interview, Mr. McMillen was living in Duluth. He never married.

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OH 30.48

Oral history interview with Patrick McMillen, May 12, 1988. 1 master audiocassette (54 minutes, 32 seconds), 2 submaster audio files: WAV, 2 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (19 pages).

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Life onboard a merchant ship, 1910s. Obtaining U.S. citizenship. Seaman's strike of 1946. Opinions of the International Seaman's Union and Sailor's Union of the Pacific, 1930s. Direct action strategy of the Industrial Workers of the World. Waterfront strike in Duluth, 1911. Opinions of Hubert Humphrey and the Democratic Farmer-Labor Party. James J. Hill's recruitment of Irish immigrants as laborers, early 1900s. Labor-management relations on the Great Northern Railroad, early 1900s. Opinions of the International Longshoremen's Association, 1950s and 1960s. Memories of ILA activity in Duluth, 1950s. Service in the navy during World War I. IWW role and influence in the larger seafarers' unions, 1920s-1940s; attitudes towards signing labor contracts; relations with the CIO. Opinions of labor unions in 1988. Opinions of the IWW in 1988.

Interviewed by: Richard Blin, Virginia Hyvarinen, and Carl Ross.

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Biographical Information:George Naumoff was born in 1896 in Drenoveny, Macedonia, and came to the U.S. in 1910. He first worked on railroad extra gangs in the summer and in car shops during the winter, staying fairly close to other Macedonian-Bulgarian immigrants working out of the St. Louis area. In 1919 he came to Minneapolis for a few months, and after the next railroad season he returned, found a job, and two years later got married. Mr. Naumoff worked at the Minneapolis Athletic Club as a houseman through the 1920s, and then tired to start a Bulgarian-style coffeehouse. His timing was poor, however, since the country was on the edge of the Great Depression, and soon he was unemployed with a wife and three children depending on him. As his frustration grew, he joined the Unemployed Council, and eventually the Communist Party. The dream of a coffeehouse did not die, either, and he helped to set up the Bulgarian-Macedonian WorkersClub in Minneapolis in the early 1930s. This small gathering place attracted other radical workers. After a couple of years, Mr. Naumoff got a job running the freight elevator at the Minneapolis Athletic Club. He used this position to organize other workers into the Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union, and got a charter for Local 665 (Miscellaneous Workers) in 1935. The other members elected him president of the local, and he retained this post for almost forty years. Following an operation for a detached retina in 1942, Mr. Naumoff was advised to do no more heavy lifting. Since the Athletic Club wouldn't rehire him with this restriction, he became the assistant business agent for Local 665, as well as its president. During the purge of communists and their sympathizers from the American federation of Labor in the late 1940s, the local's board tried to ease him out of the job, but he survived the attempt, based largely on the board members' personal affectionsfor him. In 1958, a second eye operation forced him into retirement, as his vision was heavily impaired. He remained president of Local 665 until 1974, however. Mr. Naumoff had five daughters. At the time of the interview he lived with one of them in Minneapolis. He died in 1987 of leukemia.

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OH 30.49

Oral history interview with George Naumoff, August 8, 1981. 3 master audiocassettes (2 hours, 27 minutes, 37 seconds), 5 submaster audio files: WAV, 5 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (35 pages).

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Formation of Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union Local 665, and its first organizing drive. Educational work with the membership of Local 665. Handling of grievances, and labor-management relations. Merger of the Twin Cities locals of HRE into Local 17, 1974. Differences of opinion between Mr. Naumoff and Ray Wright, business agent of 665. Mr. Naumoff's efforts to recruit new leadership for the local before he retired. Descriptions of working conditions on the Great Northern and Northern Pacific Railroads, and in the car shops: duties of the workers; grievances and wildcat strikes; ethnic tensions among the workers. Conditions during the Great Depression for unskilled workers. Mr. Naumoff's struggle to get workers' compensation payment from the Athletic Club for an on-the-job injury. Treatment for detachment of the retina, 1940s. Struggles with the management of the Athletic Club during theorganizing drive there. Description of the workforce in the hotel and restaurant industry, 1930s and 1940s. Strike against Minneapolis hotels, 1953. Strike against Miller's Cafeteria, 1941 Efforts to organize the Forum Cafeteria of America, 1940-41. Local 665's disagreements with Albert J. Kilday, and the suspension of its charter, about 1937. Opinions of Robert Kelly and Ray Wright. American Slav Congress activities during World War II. Assessment of the importance of the truck drivers' strike, 1934. Importance of nationality federations to labor organizing, 1930s. Mr. Naumoff's opinions on the current (1981) political and international situations, and of the labor movement. Memories of the Socialist Labor Party, and the migration of Bulgarian and Macedonian Americans from it to the Industrial Workers of the World, 1910s and 1920s. Memories of author Stoyan Christowe, another Bulgarian American. Memories of Albert Allen, and his importance to the racialintegration of Local 665. African American employment in the hotels and restaurants, 1930s and 1940s.

Interviewed by: Carl Ross.

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Biographical Information:Eino Niemela came to Michigan from Finland at four years old, in 1913. His father was a lumberjack. 1933 Niemela moved to Gilbert, Minnesota. There were many Finns in Gilbert, and also Slavs and Croatians, who were mostly miners. He also lived in Crosby and Virginia, Minnesota. He worked at the International Work People's Coop in Crosby, which had 400 members of all heritages at the time. He also served in the DFL on the county level in Crosby in mid 1930s.

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OH 30.50

Oral history interview with Eino Niemela, undated. 1 master audiocassette (1 hours, 24 minutes, 49 seconds), 2 submaster audio files: WAV, 2 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (27 pages).

Use Restrictions:Interview may not be quoted directly for publication.

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Focus of the interview is on cooperative general stores, a movement of the time, and his activities as a manager of one. Disputes on how coops should work: informational or labor-supportive, how to share profit. Wholesalers in Superior: Coop Central Exchange (CCE). Purpose of Coops: cohesive force, participatory, learning place. Duties as manager of coop: education committee, meetings with other coops, recruitment of new members, discussion of legislation and policy. Unity Alliance: wholesale office that also taught classes in bookkeeping and held meetings that discussed class struggle, planned platform suggestions, tried to get social security and unemployment insurance passed, held rallies, formed unemployment councils. CP membership in Cook county. Desire to improve Farmer-Labor party. Foreclosures prior tol FDR's moratorium. Movement to stop private grocers. Social activities: plays,athletic clubs, orchestras, chorus, and women's club.

Interviewed by: Tom O'Connell and Steve Trimble.

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Biographical Information:Orville Olson was born in 1908. His father was a worker in the Minneapolis post office, and both parents were of Norwegian decent. Orville grew up in Minneapolis and started to study at the University of Minnesota, before the Great Depression forced him out of school. When the New Deal relief programs began, Mr. Olson applied for a job as a relief administrator. He worked in Pennington, Swift, Kandiyohi, and St. Louis counties under the State Emergency Relief Administration and Works Progress Administration. Here he gained first-hand knowledge of farm conditions and an acquaintance with labor leaders in Duluth and on the Iron Range. Ultimately, he was appointed director of the WPA for Hennepin County. Politically he found himself in an odd position. Although secretly a Socialist Party member, he had to be sensitive to the maneuverings of the fractured Democratic Party - which was the party of the president, and therefore in a position to hand out federal patronage jobs - and the directions of the stronger Farmer-Labor Party, which led the state government. In 1937 this position finally became untenable, and Mr. Olson threw in his lot with the Farmer-Laborites, becoming the director of personnel for the state highway department under Governor Elmer Benson. Because his job was a key patronage position, Mr. Olson became well-acquainted with Governor Benson, and their political lives intertwined for the next decade. After the defeat of the F-LP in 1938, Mr. Olson served for several years in the National Youth Administration in Washington, D.C., and then in the merchant marine during the war. He kept in close touch with Benson, however, and advised him in the merger of the Democratic and Farmer-Labor parties (1943-44). Shortly after that, Mr. Olson returned to Minnesota and helped to organize the Independent voters of Minnesota, which he headed until 1948. In that yearhe ran Henry A. Wallace's presidential campaign in Minnesota, while Benson chaired the national, effort. After Wallace's defeat, Mr. Olson effectively left the political field. Because of his radical associations, he had difficulty keeping a job in Minnesota, so he moved to Los Angeles. At the time of the interview he was still living there, in retirement. Mr. Olson was married and had five children. His marriage ended in divorce.

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OH 30.51

Oral history interview with Orville E. Olson, March 24, 1977. 2 master audiocassettes (2 hours, 1 seconds), 4 submaster audio files: WAV, 4 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (27 pages).

Use Restrictions:Interview may not be quoted directly for publication.

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Democracy within the Farmer-Labor Party. Farm Holiday activities in Kandiyohi and Swift Counties, 1934. Impressions of John Bosch. Memories of growing up in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis, 1910s. Experiences as a county relief administrator, 1930s. Evolution of his political views. Patronage in the Farmer-Labor administration. Rivalry between the Congress of Industrial Organizations and the American Federation of Labor. Assessment of Elmer Benson. Memories of Clarence Hathaway. Opinions of the A F of L leadership, 1930s. Differences between the labor movements in Minneapolis and St. Paul, 1930s. Assessment of Frank Starkey. Efforts to strengthen the Farmer-Labor Association clubs, 1930s; evaluations of F-LP platforms and positions; internal educational efforts. Gubernatorial campaign of 1938. Anti-Semitism in Minnesota, 1930s. Assessment of Roger Rutchick. Communist influenceon the Farmer-Labor governors, and failures of the CP in the Browder period. Split in the Farmer-Labor Party. Description of F-LP ward club meetings, Minneapolis. Charges of corruption in F-LP administrations. Assessment of the merger of the F-LP and the Democratic Party. Blacklisting in the 1950s. Opinions of the Left in the 1970s. Impressions of Vincent, Grant, Miles, and William Dunne, and of the effectiveness of the Trotskyist parties, 1930s to 1970s. Impressions of Floyd Olson.

Interviewed by: Tom O'Connell and Steve Trimble.

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OH 30.52

Oral history interview with Orville E. Olson, March 20, 1982. 2 master audiocassettes: (1 hours, 32 minutes, 8 seconds), 4 submaster audio files: WAV, 4 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (27 pages).

Use Restrictions:Interview may not be quoted directly for publication.

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Job-hunting during the depression. Administration of work relief programs in rural Minnesota, early 1930s. Impressions of Victor Christgau. Description of the factions within the Democratic Party, and the roots of the eventual split in the Farmer-Labor Party, 1930s. Impressions of Floyd B. Olson. Opinion of George Lawson. Patronage jobs in the highway department: pressures to hire and fire based on party affiliation; role of highway department employees in building the Farmer-Labor Association; division of patronage between the Democrats and Farmer-Laborites; bribery by contractors. Anti-Semitic climate in Minnesota, late 1930s. Elmer Benson's efforts to broaden the base of the F-LP and move away from the tripartisan appeal of Floyd Olson. Relations between Benson and leaders of organized labor. Extent of communist influence in the F-LP, and upon Benson. Assessment of Roger Rutchick's role inthe Benson administration. Relationship between the Benson and Roosevelt administrations, and between the Benson administration and the F-LP congressional delegation. Impressions of the Benson-Petersen feud in the F-LP, 1938. Factors contributing to Benson's defeat in the 1938 elections: his stand on the Spanish Civil War; failure to build a broad enough coalition with labor; maverick spokespeople for the F-LP; the recession that year; Benson's personality; newspaper opposition. Merger of the Democratic and Farmer-Labor parties. Make-up and goals of the Independent voters of Minnesota. Assessment of the Farmer-Labor Party's achievements. Impressions of Abraham Harris.

Interviewed by: Carl Ross.

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Biographical Information:Richard Parish was born in St. Louis County, Minnesota, in 1914, the son of a Methodist minister. He grew up on the Iron Range, and graduated from Hamline University (St. Paul) in 1935. He then served as supervisor of workers' education for the Works Progress Administration in Duluth from 1936-1939, before moving to Minneapolis to work for the Railroad Retirement Board. During the Second World War, Mr. Parish joined the U.S. Navy, and afterwards earned a law degree from the Minneapolis College of Law. Starting in 1949 he held a number of public offices: School Board of District #281, 1949-1958; Metropolitan Suburban School Board Association, 1956-1958; Metropolitan Planning Commission, 1957-1958. In 1958 he was elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives, and served two terms there before being elected to the state senate in 1962. He served one term in the senate. At the time of the interview, Mr. Parishhad retired to Pine City, Minnesota. He was married, with three daughters and one son.

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OH 30.53

Oral history interview with Richard J. Parish, March 8, 1989. 1 master audiocassette (52 minutes, 10 seconds), 2 submaster audio files: WAV, 2 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (11 pages).

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Development of the workers' education program in northern Minnesota. Differences between the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations, and their relative influences in northern Minnesota, 1930s. Political sympathies of the various ethnic groups on the Iron Range. Attitudes of the AF of L leaders towards worker education. Anecdotes about workers' education teachers and classes. Charges of radicalism leveled against the worker education project. Taconite amendment to the Minnesota constitution, 1964. Fraternity among state legislators from the Iron Range, 1960s. Anti-union tactics of the steel companies, 1910s and 1920s. On the untranscribed portion of the tapes, the subjects are as follows: Memories of the. Great Depression on the Iron Range and Duluth. Evaluations of the New Deal programs. Philosophy behind the worker education movement. Opinions of the futureof organized labor, 1989. Definitions of radicalism. Parish family background. General political commentary and opinions. Social gospel of the Methodist Church, and its influence on Mr. Parish.

Interviewed by: D. Alan Bruce.

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Biographical Information:Joseph Paszak's parents were Polish immigrants to Wisconsin, where Joe was born in 1908. They moved first to Virginia, Minnesota, and then to Duluth in 1918. Joe began working in the U.S. Steel Company mill in 1927, but was laid off during the depression. In 1935 he took a job at Universal Atlas Cement Company (a division of U.S. Steel), and remained there for the rest of his working life. He became immediately involved in the labor movement, and helped to organize a local which eventually affiliated with the united Steelworkers of America (CIO) as Local 1210. He also participated in strikes led by other CIO unions. When the CIO Council was formed in Duluth in 1936, Paszak became its chairman. Shortly after that, the steelworkers elected him to the Minnesota CIO Council as well. As part of that body, he served on the editorial board of the CIO's state newspapers, Midwest Labor and Minnesota Labor. During WorldWar II Paszak enlisted in the Army and served three years in the European theatre. After the war he returned to Duluth and resumed his duties on the state and local CIO councils. However, in 1948 he ran into opposition from the Steelworkers International because of his support for progressive Party presidential candidate Henry A. Wallace. He was removed from the Minnesota CIO Council, and the next year when his term as chairman of the Duluth CIO Council was up, he did not run for re-election. His local continued to send him to the council as their representative, but because of the ongoing purge of Communists and communist sympathizers from CIO unions, he found himself in a distinct minority there. Meanwhile, the FBI also investigated him on suspicion of being a Communist. Paszak married and had one daughter by adoption. At the time of the interview he was retired and living in Duluth.

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OH 30.54

Oral history interview with Joseph Paszak, April 16, 1988. 2 master audiocassettes (1 hours, 58 minutes, 22 seconds), 4 submaster audio files: WAV, 4 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (44 pages).

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Social conditions on Duluth's west end in the 1920s and 1930s; working conditions that led to the formation of unions; harassment from the FBI; participation of African Americans in the labor movement; racial relations in Duluth; the National Maritime Union strike of 1946; the American Newspaper Guild strike of 1937; Governor Elmer A. Benson; the administration of Duluth Mayor Rudolph Berghult (1930s). Communist purge of the CIO (1948); organized labor's stand on conservation and pollution; relations between steelworkers at the U.S. Steel plant and those at Universal Atlas Cement; the Glass Block strike of 1946; Jewish involvement in the labor movement and the Democratic Farmer-Labor Party; anti-Semitism in Duluth and in the U.S. Army; Congressional campaign of John A. Blatnik in 1946; opinions about the labor movement in the 1970s and 1980s; attempts to organize bartenders in Duluth (1930s);ethnic diversity and pressures towards Americanization in Duluth; visit of singer Paul Robeson to Duluth; experience of entering a concentration camp in Germany after World War II.

Interviewed by: Susanna Frenkel and Virginia Hyvarinen.

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Biographical Information:Glenn Pearson was born in Duluth in 1914. By age sixteen he was chairman of the Duluth Junior Farmer-Labor Party. After graduating from Denfeld High School he went straight to work at the Coolerator Company, making refrigerators. He led its organizing drive and was fired, only to be reinstated after their first successful strike. Through Local 1096 of the United Steelworkers of America, he helped organize other Duluth unions, notably other steelworkers, Diamond Caulk and Horseshoe Company, and newspaper workers. He was elected president of Local 1096 several times. Pearson served in the military from 1942-45, stationed in Texas. When the Coolelator plan closed in 1951, he went into business for himself cleaning curtains and blinds. Before retiring he also worked as a sales representative and an excavator. He was married to Leata Pearson, and had two sons and five daughters.

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OH 30.55

Oral history interview with Glenn Pearson, April 19, 1988. 1 master audiocassette (1 hours, 1 minutes, 52 seconds), 2 submaster audio files: WAV, 2 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (26 pages).

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Views of his parents, Ernest and Maney Pearson. Working conditions in the 1920s and 1930s. Strike at the Duluth Herald-News and Tribune led by the American Newspaper Guild (1938). Activities in the Farmer-Labor Party. Congressional campaigns of John T. Bernard. Impressions of John L. Lewis. Attempt by the united Steelworkers' International to dissolve Local 1096. Presidential campaign of Henry A. Wallace (1948). Closing of the Coolerator Company. Pearson's subsequent work at American Manufacturing and Cleaning, the unit Step Company, and as an excavator. Unrest on the Red Lake Reservation (1970s). Opinions and views on the labor movement since 1955. Memories of labor figures Pat McGraw, Glenn Peterson, and Herman Griffith. Wartime military service. Harassment from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Interviewed by: Susanna Frenkel and Virginia Hyvarinen.

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Biographical Information:Leata Wigg grew up in Duluth in the German American community. Her parents were Edward and Beata Wigg, and her father worked as a dispatcher for the Northern Pacific Railway. Leata attended the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, graduating in 1939. There she participated in the student movement for peace and justice. She belonged to both the campus chapter of the Young Communist League and the American Student Union. When she moved back to Duluth in 1939, she became involved in the American Youth Congress activities there. Through the Youth Congress she met and married Glenn Pearson, who was already active in the united Steelworkers of America Local 1096, in 1941. Together they raised five daughters and two sons. (Three of them, Patricia, Kathleen, and Marilyn, are mentioned in the interview.)

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OH 30.56

Oral history interview with Leata Wigg Pearson, April 19, 1988. 2 master audiocassettes (1 hours, 27 minutes, 33 seconds), 3 submaster audio files: WAV, 3 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (35 pages).

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Questioning by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1940s and 1950s, Labor union organizing among the steelworkers. Activities of the Duluth chapter of the American Youth Congress. Effects of the Second World War on U.S. society. Activities of progressive students on the University of Minnesota campus, 1930s. Leadership development in the Young Communist League. Support for the Loyalist cause during the Spanish Civil War. Life during the Great Depression. American Youth Congress pilgrimage to Washington, D.C., 1940. American Youth Congress national meeting in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, 1940. Presidential campaign of Progressive Party candidate Henry A. Wallace, 1948. Life, influence, and character of Ernie Pearson (her father-in-law). Life, influence, and impressions of Herman Griffiths. Labor union organizing in Duluth in the 1940s. Activities and character of Maney Pearson (her mother-in-law).Working-class life in West Duluth in the 1920s. Role of women's auxiliaries of the Farmer-Labor Party and Congress of Industrial Organizations. Purge of Communists from the CIO in the 1940s and 1950s. Opinions of Gerald Heaney. State senate campaign of 1964 in Duluth. Opinion about the merger between the Democratic and Farmer-Labor Parties, and of the merger between the American Federation of Labor and the CIO. Activities and characters of Pat McGraw and Signe Santabaka.

Interviewed by: Susanna Frenkel and Virginia Hyvarinen.

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Biographical Information:Veda Ponikvar was the long-time editor of the Chisholm Free Press.

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OH 30.57

Oral history interview with Veda Ponikvar, March 13, 1988. 1 master audiocassette (30 minutes, 57 seconds), 1 submaster audio files: WAV, 1 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (10 pages).

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Overview of the immigrant experience. Public education in Chisholm; influence and contributions of James P. Vaughan. Description of Slovene fraternal benefit societies in the early 1900s. Reactions to the 1907 and 1916 miners' strikes in the Slovene community on the ranges. Relations between ethnic groups in Chisholm, early 1900s. United Units in Chisholm, 1920s and 1930s. Growth of the Farmer-Labor Party on the range.

Interviewed by: Carl Ross.

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Biographical Information:Frank Puglisi was born in Switzerland of Italian parents. At age 14, in 1921, he came to U.S. He attended high school, then junior college in Duluth. He graduated from the University of Miami in Florida in 1933 with a B.A. in education. He taught French and English in Duluth, where his father and brothers were located. He served in the army from 1942 to 1944. He was secretary for the Farmer-Labor party in Duluth and was a delegate for south St. Louis county. He was never a member of the Communist Party.

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OH 30.58

Oral history interview with Frank Puglisi, undated. 1 master audiocassette (55 minutes, 25 seconds), 2 submaster audio files: WAV, 2 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (23 pages).

Use Restrictions:Interview may not be quoted directly for publication.

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Italian American life in Duluth: support of Mussolini, Italian American club support, difference between northern and southern Italians, leftist tradition in Italy. Political views of family members. Break from Catholic Church. DFL in Duluth: patronage for jobs, educational speakers, membership levels. Farmer-Labor Party under Benson, breakdown of F-L by 1938. Leaders and speakers in the DFL.

Interviewed by: Tom O'Connell.

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Biographical Information:Karl Fritjof Rolvaag was born in Northfield, Minnesota, in 1913. His father, Ole Rolvaag, was a Norwegian immigrant who taught at St. Olaf College and wrote several critically-acclaimed novels. Karl graduated from Northfield High School and started at St. Olaf College in 1931; however, he soon dropped out and headed west. For the next six years he rode the rails, working as an itinerant laborer in logging camps, mining camps, on the railroads, and in the harvest fields. He joined the Industrial Workers of the World, and his political views became quite radical. After several attempts, he finally completed his education at St. Olaf and married Florence Boedeker in 1941. The same year he was drafted, though, and he spent the next six years in the army. During World War II he served in the European theatre and received several medals. Returning to Minnesota, Rolvaag simultaneously entered graduate school at theUniversity of Minnesota and began his political career with an unsuccessful campaign for Congress in 1946. Following a year of study in Norway, he ran again for Congress in 1948 and 1952. In 1950 he was chosen chairman of the Democratic Farmer-Labor Party, and held this office until 1954, when he was elected lieutenant governor of the state. He ran for governor in 1963 and served a four-year term in this office. Rolvaag was deposed in a bitter contest for the Democratic Party's nomination in 1966, and challenged the party-endorsed candidate in the primary election. He won this battle, but lost the governorship to Republican Harold LeVander in the general election. In 1967, Rolvaag was appointed ambassador to Iceland, a position he held until 1969. Four years later he became a public service commissioner, and eventually chair of the Public Service Commission. His term lasted until 1979. At the time of the interview, Rolvaag was living in retirement in Northfield.He died the following year. He had two children, a son and a daughter.

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OH 30.59

Oral history interview with Karl F. Rolvaag, August 31, 1989. 2 master audiocassettes (1 hours, 27 minutes, 57 seconds), 3 submaster audio files: WAV, 3 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (21 pages).

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Ole Rolvaag's background and immigrant experience; his political views. Ku Klux Klan encampment in Northfield, 1910s. Rolvaag's life as a hobo; his membership in the IWW; the 1936 strike in the logging industry; the lasting effects of these experiences on his political outlook. Descriptions of the itinerant workers' life, 1930s. Opinions about the military and military spending in 1988. Memories of the Spanish Civil War, and student peace movement of the late 1930s; lingering regrets about U.S. involvement in World War II. Rolvaag's abortive attempt to run for Congress in 1946, and his difficulty in being discharged from the army. Studies in Norway, 1947. Opinions of Ole Rolvaag's book "Boat of Longing" and its translations. Meetings between Hubert Humphrey and heads of state of various countries, especially Scandinavian, 1950s and 1960s. Rolvaag's memories of his governorship: racial tensionsin Minneapolis in the 1960s; student unrest on the campuses; unemployment among African American youth. Reflections on the 1988 international scene.

Interviewed by: Carl Ross.

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Biographical Information:Carl Ross was born on July 22, 1913, in Hancock, Michigan, to Finnish immigrant parents. He grew up in Superior, Wisconsin, where his father was a typesetter for the Finnish-language communist newspaper "Tyomies". From early on, he was active in the communist youth movement. His interest and abilities in sports led him serve as secretary for the Midwest district of the Labor Sports Union, a communist youth organization, from 1930 to 1934. In 1934 Ross moved to St. Paul to expand Labor Sports Union activities and became deeply involved in the flowering youth and student movement there. He served as secretary of the Young Communist League (YCL) of Minnesota (1934-1937) and as the Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union Local #665 (Miscellaneous Workers) representative to the the Hennepin County Central Committee of the Farmer-Labor Party. In 1937, Ross was promoted to the national leadership of the YCL, and movedto New York. Ross remained in the leadership of the YCL until it was dissolved in 1943, when he became the national secretary of its successor organization, the American Youth for Democracy. At the age of thirty-three, Ross was reassigned from youth work to the Communist Party U.S.A. and returned to Minnesota in 1946 as the state secretary of the Party. In that position, he coordinated and oversaw Party work in the labor movement and in the Democratic Farmer-Labor Party (DFL) and participated in the Progressive Party effort to elect Henry Wallace as President in 1948. While in Minnesota, Ross remained on the National Committee and Board of the CPUSA, and when the Party decided to go underground in 1950, he became "unavailable." From 1950 to 1953 he lived incognito in New Haven, Connecticut, and San Jose, California. His time in the underground ended with his arrest for harboring a fugitive, fellow CPer Robert Thompson, and he served eighteen months in a federalprison for this offense, returning to Minnesota late in 1955. In the wake of the Progressive Party defeat of 1948, the expulsion of communist-led unions from the Congress of Industrial Organizations, and the purge of Communists from the DFL, Ross had begun to think that the CP needed to redefine its strategy, identity, and theory entirely. As a National Board member, he struggled with others in the Party leadership, and resigned from the Party in 1957 when it became clear that such a reorientation would not happen. Ross and two other former CP functionaries bought a plating shop in Minneapolis and set up business as auto body electroplaters. The business prospered, and in 1973 Ross and his partners sold it and retired. In retirement he pursued his interest in Finnish American history, with an emphasis on the radical community in which he grew up. This series of oral history interviews with him was recorded as part of the 20th Century Radicalism in MinnesotaProject of the Minnesota Historical Society, which Ross directed from 1987 to 1989.

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OH 30.60

Oral history interview with Carl E. Ross, 1986, 1987, and 1988. 25 master audiocassettes (26 hours, 56 minutes, 10 seconds), 48 submaster audio files: WAV, 48 user audio files: MP3, and 4 transcripts (378 pages).

Scope and Content: The interview has been divided into four parts because of its length. Part I covers Ross's childhood and young adulthood in Superior, and his early activities in the Twin Cities, roughly 1913-1936. As Ross himself says, much of this first part of the interview reflects his own later scholarship, as well as his personal memory. Part II of the interview covers the years 1934-48. During this time, Ross was secretary of the Young Communist League in Minnesota; national secretary of the YCL in New York; national secretary of the American Youth for Democracy; and secretary of the Minnesota Communist Party. He also served on the national board of the American Youth Congress. Part III of the interview covers the years 1949-1973, including Ross's underground activities; his imprisonment; the decline of the Communist Party; his departure from the CP; and his electroplating business. Part IV of the interview covers the years 1973-1988, in which Ross pursued his scholarly interests. Carl Ross reviewed the transcripts for accuracy in 1992, and made several lengthy additions. These have been marked with brackets and footnotes.

Interviewed by: Hyman Berman.

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Biographical Information:Clarence Sharp was born on July 26, 1891, near Bristol, South Dakota. From German immigrant farmers and migratory workers he learned socialist ideas, and joined the Socialist Party in 1910. He attended the South Dakota School of Agriculture at Brookings and persistently opposed U.S. involvement in World War I, true to the position taken by the Socialist Party. He worked a dairy and hog farm near Lily until 1921, when the collapse of farm prices drove him off the land. He became an organizer for A.C. Townley's National Producer Alliance, which later merged into the Farmers Union. He also joined the Communist Party. In 1923 he moved to Torrington, Wyoming, where he sold farm implements until the bottom dropped out of the wheat market in 1931. Bankrupt once again, he went to Chicago and became an organizer of the Unemployed Councils on the north side. He rose to be a district organizer rapidly. His heart remainedin the country, though, and in 1932 he returned to South Dakota as the state secretary of the Communist Party. As such, he led "penny sales" against farm foreclosures, organized branches of the United Farmers League, and led demonstrations which eventually resulted in passage of the Frazier-Lemke Debt Adjustment and Refinancing Act, the corn-hog program, rural electrification, and the Agriculture Stabilization Act. During the 1940s Mr. Sharp worked for the Minnesota-Dakota Communist Party as an itinerant organizer and farm representative. He participated in the 1944 senatorial campaign in North Dakota, helping to defeat Gerald P. Nye. In the Joseph McCarthy period, he continued to anchor the Minnesota-Dakotas CP while some of the other leaders went underground, and to defend the economic security and civil rights of those accused of communist sympathies. In his retirement, he wrote widely for the progressive press, and travelled to the USSR. He was among thefounders of the Minnesota Council of American-Soviet Friendship. Mr. Sharp married twice and had one daughter. At the time of the interview he was living in Minneapolis. He died on April 21, 1989.

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OH 30.61

Oral history interview with Clarence Sharp, February 24, 1977. 1 master audiocassette (1 hours, 1 minutes, 21 seconds), 2 submaster audio files: WAV, 2 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (14 pages).

Use Restrictions:Interview may not be quoted directly for publication.

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Farm Holiday Association in South Dakota, 1930s. Assessment of the mistakes of the Communist Party, and reasons for its decline. Harassment by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Commentary on the political scene and the situation of farmers, 1977. Expulsion from the CP. Memories of Samuel K. Davis. Assessment of the presidential campaign of Henry A. Wallace, 1948. Commentary on the situation in the Middle East, 1977. Description of an unemployed demonstration in Chicago, 1930s.

Interviewed by: Tom O'Connell and Steve Trimble.

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OH 30.62

Oral history interview with Clarence Sharp, December 9, 1987, December 16, 1987. 3 master audiocassettes (2 hours, 27 minutes, 50 seconds), 6 submaster audio files: WAV, 6 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (31 pages).

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Socialist Party activity in South Dakota, 1910s and 1920s. Organizing for the Nonpartisan League in South Dakota, 1910s. Red Scare during and after the First World War. Relationship between the Socialist Party and the Nonpartisan League. Relationship between the Socialist Party and the Communist Party. Drought conference for farmers at Pierre, South Dakota, 1933. Stories of organizing among farmers for the CP and the united Farmers League, 1930s. Reasons for the popularity of the CP in South Dakota. Descriptions of penny auctions, particularly one at Milbank, South Dakota. Assessment of CP activity in western Minnesota, 1930s. North Dakota senatorial campaign, 1944. Impressions of A.C. Townley. Drought conference in Sioux Falls, 1935. Impressions of Julius and Knute Walstad. South Dakota Farm Holiday Association. Reasons for the decline of the CP in South Dakota. Shift of radical activity fromthe united Farmers League into the National Farmers Union, 1940s. Congressional campaigns in Minnesota's ninth district, 1948 and 1958.

Interviewed by: Carl Ross.

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Biographical Information:Ruth Siegler was very active in the Farmer-Labor Party in Duluth in the Twenties and Thirties. She and her husband married in 1915 and moved to Duluth in 1918. Her husband was quite active in the labor movement and participated in the 1922 carmen's strike. He ran for several public offices, including lieutenant governor.

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OH 30.63

Oral history interview with Ruth Siegler, February 2, 1977. 1 master audiocassette (1 hours, 1 minutes, 53 seconds), 2 submaster audio files: WAV, 2 user audio files: MP3, and d 1 transcript (20 pages).

Use Restrictions:Interview may not be quoted directly for publication.

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Farmer-Labor Party; DFL merger; Farmer-Labor Women's Club; Duluth: 1930s protests, strikes and co-ops; Benson defeat.

Interviewed by: Tom O'Connell and Steve Trimble.

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Biographical Information:Carl Skoglund was born in Sweden in 1884. He immigrated to the U.S. in 1911 after being blacklisted for strike activities. He moved to Minnesota where he was a railway worker but was blacklisted after the 1922-23 Pullman strike. He was a founding member of the U.S. Communist Party, but was expelled by the Party in 1928 for Trotskyism. He and other Trotskyites led the 1934 Teamsters coalyard strikes. He helped found the Socialist Workers Party in 1938. In 1941 he was convicted under the Smith Act and served his sentence in Sandstone federal penitentiary. He died in 1960.

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OH 30.64

Oral history interview with Carl Skoglund, 1955, 1959. 2 master audiocassettes (2 hours, 8 minutes, 27 seconds), 4 submaster audio files: WAV, 4 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (27 pages).

Use Restrictions:Interview may not be quoted directly for publication.

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Sweden: living conditions, childhood, religion, social life, medicine, education; immigration; employment: Pullman Company, coalyard driver; organizer of Local 544; imprisonment; family.

Interviewed by: George Weissman.

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Biographical Information:Joe Swan was born at the family homestead near Galva, North Dakota, in 1914. He spent part of his childhood in Freeborn, Minnesota, but graduated from high school in Madison, South Dakota. He went to college at the University of Iowa and studied art. In 1937 he moved to Minneapolis (without having earned his degree) to further his study of art. Having been radicalized by the Spanish Civil War, Swan joined the Communist Party in Minneapolis. He worked for the Works Progress Administration's Federal Art Project, and was a member of the Artists' Union. When the United States entered the Second World War, he enlisted in the Air Force in order to learn how to fly airplanes. He left Minnesota at that point (1942) and did not return.

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OH 30.65

Oral history interview with Joseph Swan and Bernice Fossum, February 16, 1988. 1 master audiocassette (1 hours, 28 minutes, 17 seconds), 2 submaster audio files: WAV, 2 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (31 pages).

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Swan tells of his activities in support of labor union struggles through benefits, free artwork, and strike support. He discusses the grievances which led to the formation of the Artists' Union; his participation in the Minneapolis Theatre Union's productions; tension with the Socialist Workers' Party; and the personalities and politics of various artists he knew. Fossum and Swan reminisce about their lives as struggling artists in Minneapolis in the 1930s, and reflect on some of the Communist Party lines and activities. The interview is rich in personal information about many artists in the leftist/WPA circle.

Interviewed by: Salvatore Salerno.

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Biographical Information:James Thomblison was born in 1892 in Canada, to parents of Irish extraction. At the age of fifteen or sixteen, he became an itinerant worker, logging in the winters and working in the harvest fields in the summers. In this way he met organizers for the Industrial Workers of the World and Canada's One Big Union, both of which he joined. By the end of World War I, he had settled in Winnipeg, and started a family. In the anti-union campaigns that followed the war, Mr, Thomblison found himself blacklisted in Winnipeg, and took his young family to Minneapolis. There he went to work for the Twn Cities Rapid Transit Company as a streetcar mechanic. In the early 1930s he was a founding member of Local 1005 of the Amalgamated Association of Street Electric Railway and Motor Coach Employees of America. Mr. Thomblison served on the executive board of his local for many years.

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OH 30.66

Oral history interview with James Thomblison, 1972. 1 master audiocassette (1 hours, 1 minutes, 12 seconds), 2 submaster audio files: WAV, 2 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (32 pages).

Use Restrictions:Interview may not be quoted directly for publication.

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Anti-union campaign in Winnipeg following the First World War. Company unions at the Twin Cities Rapid Transit Company, 1920s. Formation of Local 1005, and company opposition to it. Impressions of Fay Rice. Negotiations with the company. Relations with the Teamsters, and organizing assistance from the Central Labor Union. Wildcat streetcar strikes. Working conditions that led to unionization. Effects of the transition from streetcars to buses on the workers, 1950s. Stories of the 1922 streetcar strike in Minneapolis. Memories of IWW organizers in Canadian lumber camps, 1910s. Stories of the logging camps.

Interviewed by: D. Alan Bruce.

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Biographical Information:Leo Turner was of Finnish ancestry, although born in the United States. His parents divorced when he was five or six years old, and his mother died five years later. After that he lived with his grandparents on the Minnesota Iron Range. Turner joined the Young Communist League at age seventeen, and eventually became the state secretary of the YCL. He moved to Duluth and then to Minneapolis in the early 1930s, where he worked with the Unemployed Councils and the labor movement. He left the Twin Cities in the mid-1930s, and made his way to Chicago. For many years he was an organizer for the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers Union there. At the time of the interview he was retired and living in Oakland, California.

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OH 30.67

Oral history interview with Leo Turner, February 15, 1988. 1 master audiocassette (1 hours, 15 minutes, 8 seconds), 2 submaster audio files: WAV, 2 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (17 pages).

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Turner discusses his work with the Unemployed Councils, particularly his arrest at a demonstration of the unemployed at city Hall in Minneapolis. He tells of a similar arrest in Butte, Montana, at a march against fascism. (He went to Butte as a representative of the YCL.) He describes how he survived as a young, single, marginally employed man in the Depression years, and remembers the labor struggles in which he took part (the Strutwear Knitting Mill strike, the ornamental iron workers' strike, the Albert Lea meat packers' strike). He reflects on the Minnesota Finnish community, and talks about his mother's involvement in the Finnish-language political theater. There is a little information about members of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, and some anecdotal information about James Bartlett, one-time business agent of Warehouse Workers Local 359 and an FBI informant.

Interviewed by: Salvatore Salerno.

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Biographical Information:Elizabeth Watson was the widow of activist Chester Watson. She was born in New York. She met and married Watson and moved to Minnesota at age twenty-two. Chester Watson organized the League Against War and Fascism in Rochester and later became president of the Workers' Alliance. Her formal education was in art and she comments on her experiences in the WPA Art and Handicraft projects. The couple had one child. They moved to San Francisco; Mrs. Watson was living in California at the time of the interview.

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OH 30.68

Oral history interview with Elizabeth Watson, 1977. 1 master audiocassette (42 minutes, 9 seconds), 2 submaster audio files: WAV, 2 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (15 pages).

Use Restrictions:Interview may not be quoted directly for publication.

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include WPA Art Project; Handicraft Project; Chester Watson: background and career.

Interviewed by: Tom O'Connell and Steve Trimble.

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Biographical Information:Bertha Weiss was born in 1907 in Poland. She came to the U.S. with her family, who were Jewish political refugees, in 1914. They settled in Minneapolis. While she was growing up, her father worked as a book binder, though after she graduated from North High School (1925), Frank and Rose Weiss opened up a grocery store. Bertha helped them in the grocery business as well as working in the needle trades. Ms. Weiss joined the Young Communist League while she was still in high school, and then the Communist Party. As a member of the united Garment Workers, she was a delegate to the Minneapolis Central Labor Union in the late 1920s, and later joined the International Workers Defense. In 1933 or 1934 she was expelled from the CP. About three years later she married, and she and her husband bought their own grocery store. Since her husband was African American, Ms. Weiss occupied a unique social niche between theJewish and black communities. In 1946 the couple purchased land outside Crosby, Minnesota, and over the next few years built a resort there. During the winters they lived in Minneapolis, where Ms. Weiss worked as a tailor and then as an assistant to the editor of the Twin Cities Observer. Her husband ran his own construction business, later in partnership with their only son. The resort, Patton's, became a vacation spot for Twin Cities African Americans. At the time of the interview, Ms. Weiss was retired and living in Minneapolis.

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OH 30.69

Oral history interview with Bertha Weiss, December 14, 1988. 2 master audiocassettes (1 hours, 40 minutes, 26 seconds), 3 submaster audio files: WAV, 3 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (32 pages).

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Jewish radicals associated with the Morgen Freiheit in Minneapolis, and Jewish sympathizers with the Communist Party. Split in the CP which led to the formation of a Trotskyist group in Minneapolis, 1928-1929. Succession of CP district organizers for Minnesota, 1920s and 1930s. Activities of the International Labor Defense in Minneapolis, especially on behalf of the Scottsboro Boys. Memories of the radical Jewish community on the north side of Minneapolis, 1920s. Discrimination against African Americans in Minneapolis, 1930s. African Americans in the CP. Activities at the Phyllis Wheatley Settlement House, 1930s. Employment opportunities for African Americans during the Second World War; efforts of the Urban League to find jobs; Federal Cartridge Corporation; activities of African American newspaper editors to find jobs for black workers. Memories of the Sumner Field Home Project. Relationsbetween Jewish and African Americans on the north side, 1930s and 1940s. Activities of the Unemployed Councils: hunger marches, advocacy for people getting welfare. Expulsion from the Communist Party. Fears about the possible repercussions of her political activities on her son. Organizing for the Workers and Farmers Cooperative Unity Alliance on the Iron Range, 1930s. African Americans living in rural Minnesota, 1930s and 1940s. Resorts in the Crosby area, especially those run by African Americans, 1920s-1950s. Racism in rural Minnesota, 1940s.

Interviewed by: Carl Ross.

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Biographical Information:Raymond Wright was born in Painesdale, Michigan, in 1906. His father, Charles Ryti or Rytilati, had immigrated from Finland in 1898, and was a copper miner in the Upper Peninsula until 1909, when he was blacklisted for belonging to the Western Federation of Miners. The family moved temporarily to North Dakota, where Ray's maternal grandparents lived on a farm. The elder Wright went to work mining gold in Lead, South Dakota, until the blacklist caught up with him. He saved enough money, however, to purchase a stump farm in the Upper Peninsula, and the Wrights returned there in 1910 or 1911. Ray finished his schooling in 1922, and went to work as a lumberjack in the winter and on section and extra crews on the railroads in the summer. Like many young people at that time, he traveled extensively looking for employment and adventure. From 1929 to 1931 he mined copper on the Upper Peninsula. When the mines closed, and the Great Depression deepened, he moved to Wisconsin for a couple of years, and worked with farmers resisting foreclosures in the united Farmers League. By 1936 he found himself in Minneapolis, and stayed. The Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union Local #665 needed an organizer, and Mr. Wright became the business agent. He held this position until he retired in 1971. He became an influential person in the Minneapolis Central Labor Union, on the Local Joint Executive Board of the HRE (which he headed for twenty-eight years), and on the State Council of Culinary Workers. Additionally, he served as commissioner Of the Glen Lake Sanatorium for fifteen years. During the 1960s, Mr. Wright was on the executive board of the Minneapolis Urban League, and on the Mayor's Commission on Human Relations. Mr. Wright was married and had two sons, Caleb and Douglas. Caleb succeeded him as business agent for the hotel and restaurant workers (reorganized into Local 17 in 1974).At the time of the interview Mr. Wright still lived in the Twin Cities area.

Location

OH 30.70

Oral history interview with Raymond R. Wright, November 1, 1981 and February 18, 1982. 8 master audiocassettes (7 hours, 2 minutes, 30 seconds), 14 submaster audio files: WAV, 14 user audio files: MP3, and 1 transcript (89 pages).

Scope and Content: Topics discussed include Origins of Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union Local #665. Description of the meetings and operations of the local. Assessment of the communist influence on Local 665. Improvements in wages and benefits in the hotel and restaurant industry as a result of unionization. Impressions of Swan Assarson and George Naumoff. Opinions of the airline employees unions and the strike of Professional Association of Air Traffic Controllers, 1981. Terms of the early contracts with the hotels, and memories of the 1939 contract negotiations. Mr. Wright's childhood and family history. Company opposition to union organizing in the copper mines of the Upper Peninsula, 1910s to 1930s. Descriptions of copper mining, late 1920s and early 1930s. Mr. Wright's memories of his father. Opinion of the Stassen labor law of 1940 and assessment of the favorable conditions for labor unions in Minnesota generally, 1930s to1950s. Labor-management relations in the hotel industry. Character of the workforce in the hotels: education, nationalities, skills; changes over time; race relations. Working conditions in the hotels; description of the unskilled work. Strike against Miller's Cafeteria, 1941. Strike against the Minneapolis hotels, 1953. Description of life on a stump farm in Michigan, 1910s; education in rural Michigan; formation of consumer cooperatives and other community improvement efforts. Political and religious beliefs of his parents. Organizing Wisconsin farmers during the depression. Description of working on the railroad section and extra gangs, 1920s: ethnic backgrounds of the workers; working and living conditions; duties; racial and cultural tensions among workers. Copper mining on the Upper Peninsula, late 1920s and early 1930s: ethnic backgrounds of the worker; tensions among them; working and living conditions; social and political life among the Finnish miners;mining company paternalism. Description of working as a lumberjack, 1920s: getting logs out of the woods; living and working conditions; ethnic backgrounds of the workers; kinds of trees cut and their uses; views on unionization. Explanation of the jurisdictions of the various HRE locals in Minneapolis, late 1930s and early 1940s. Estimations of Leslie Sinton and Albert Kilday. Formation of the Minneapolis Hotel Association. Improvements in working conditions: reducing the length of the workweek and the amount of work demanded; achieving. union shops; receiving overtime and holiday pay; increasing wages in general; adding sick leave and medical care. Settling of grievances. Racial integration of employee facilities in the hotels and clubs; discrimination against African American workers by employers. Effect of World War II upon Local 665 and the industry in general; increase in the number of African American and Euro American female workers. Walk-out at severalMinneapolis liquor bars, 1937. Strike against the Minneapolis hotels, 1953. Assessment of the union's record on women's issues: pay equity, leadership in the union itself, employment of women organizers by the local and the Joint Board. Impressions of Lloyd MacAloon and his role in contract negotiations.

Interviewed by: Carl Ross.

Transcript - Digital version

Digital version

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Radicalism project records are available in the Minnesota Historical Society manuscripts collection.

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This collection is indexed under the following headings in the catalog of the Minnesota Historical Society. Researchers desiring materials about related topics, persons or places should search the catalog using these headings.

Topics:

Communism -- Minnesota.

Labor -- Minnesota -- History -- 20th century.

Labor unions -- Minnesota.

Labor unions and communism.

Radicalism -- Minnesota -- History -- 20th century.

Radicals -- Minnesota.

Strikes and lockouts -- Minnesota.

Unemployment -- Minnesota.

Persons:

Allen, Albert V., Jr., interviewee.

Anderson, Jacob, interviewee.

Arnio, Arnold F., interviewee.

Belmont, Rosalind Matusow, interviewee.

Benson, Steven, interviewee

Berman, Hyman, 1925-2015, interviewer.

Bester, Earl T., interviewee.

Blatnik, Frank Paul, interviewee.

Blin, Richard, interviewer.

Boratko, Andre, interviewee.

Borchardt, Arthur, interviewee.

Brawthen, Elwin, interviewee.

Brawthen, Marjorie J., interviewee.

Bruce, Douglas Alan, interviewee.

Bruce, Elizabeth Hoff, interviewee.

Buhle, Paul, 1944- interviewee.

Carlson, Grace, 1906- interviewee.

Cassius, Anthony Brutus, interviewee.

Cooper, Jake, interviewee.

DeBoer, Harry, interviewee.

DeBoer, Pauline, interviewee.

DeMaio, Ernest, interviewee.

Dizard, George E. (George Emil), 1917- interviewee.

Drill, Edwin G., interviewee.

Enestvedt, John, interviewee.

Engdahl, Walfrid, interviewee.

Fagerhaugh, Ole, interviewee.

Fine, Fred M., interviewee.

First, Randy, interviewer.

Flower, James H., interviewee.

Foley, Alma, 1909- interviewee.

Forester, Clarence M., interviewee.

Fossum, Bernice, interviewee.

Freeman, Orville L., interviewee.

Frenkel, Susanna, interviewer.

Friedman, Newton, interviewee.

Geldman, Max, interviewee.

Geldman, Shevi, interviewee.

Gilman, Rhoda R., interviewer.

Green, Frank 1915- interviewee.

Hanson, Douglas, interviewee.

Hanson, Victoria Lindesmith, interviewee.

Hemmingsen, Clarence, interviewee.

Herness, Irwin, interviewee.

Hyvarinen, Virginia, interviewer.

Jarvi, Carl, interviewee.

Johnson, Jean, interviewer.

Johnson, Nellie Stone, 1905-2002, interviewee.

Jorgensen, Clara, interviewee.

Jørgensen, John J., interviewee.

Jørgensen, Peter, interviewee.

Karson, Charles, interviewee.

Kykyri, John, interviewee.

Latz, Robert, interviewee.

Lebedoff, Martin, interviewee.

Levine, Yank, interviewee.

Maloney, Jack, interviewee.

Mayville, Jennifer, interviewee.

McMillen, Patrick J., interviewee.

Miller, Deborah L., 1948- interviewer.

Naumoff, George, interviewee.

Niemelä, Eino, interviewee.

O'Connell, Tom, 1947- interviewer.

Olson, Orville E., interviewee.

Parish, Richard J., interviewee.

Paszak, Joseph, interviewee.

Pearson, Glenn, interviewee.

Pearson, Leata Wigg, interviewee.

Ponikvar, Veda F., interviewee.

Puglisi, Frank, interviewee.

Rolvaag, Karl F., 1913-1990, interviewee.

Ross, Carl, 1913- interviewer and interviewee.

Salerno, Salvatore, 1949- interviewer.

Schloff, Linda Mack, interviewer.

Seaverson, Don, interviewee.

Sharp, Clarence, 1891- interviewee.

Siegler, Ruth E., interviewee.

Skoglund, Carl, 1884- , interviewee.

Swan, Joseph, interviewee.

Thomblison, James C., interviewee.

Trimble, Steve, interviewer.

Turner, Leo, interviewee.

Watson, Elizabeth, interviewee.

Weiss, Bertha, interviewee.

Weissman, George, 1918- interviewer.

Wright, Raymond R., interviewee.

Organizations:

Industrial Workers of the World.

Twentieth Century Radicalism in Minnesota Oral History Project.

United States. Works Progress Administration.

Document Types:

Interviews.

Oral histories (document genres)

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