Timeline
1848: February, Communist Manifesto published by Karl Marx and Frederich Engels.
1881: March 13, Assassination of Tsar Alexander II by members of nihilist Narodnaya Volya followed by institution of repressive measures against Jews by his son Tsar Alexander III (May Laws of May 15, 1882).
1882: Chinese Exclusion Act: first U.S. federal legislation banning immigration due to nationality.
1885: November 16–19, Pittsburgh Platform. U.S. Reform movement adopted classic German Jewish Reform religious tenets.
1888: October 9, The United Hebrew Trades (UHT) founded in the Lower East Side, the world’s most densely settled urban area, for immigrant garment and textile workers.
1889: July 14, The First Congress of the Second International held in Paris, France.
1891: March, Jews expelled from Moscow (~5,000 merchants had received residency permits).
1892: September 4, Socialist Arbeter Ring (Workmen’s Circle, now Workers Circle) founded in New York becomes national organization.
1896: May 18, U.S. Supreme Court endorses Jim Crow segregationist policies in Plessy v. Ferguson.
1897: August 29–31, First Zionist World Congress held in Basel, Switzerland.
1897: April 22, Der Forverts (the Forward) newspaper is initially founded in New York by Abraham Cahan, Louis Miller, and Morris Winchevsky. After their expulsion from Daniel DeLeon’s Socialist Labor Party (SLP), they eventually migrate to what will become the Socialist Party of America (SPA) associated with Eugene V. Debs and Victor Berger.
1897: October 7, The Jewish Labor Bund in Russia, Poland and Lithuania Algemeyner Yidisher Arbeter Bund in Rusland, Poyln un Lite is founded in Vilnius.
1899: More DeLeon opponents (such as Morris Hillquit) left the SLP and consolidate with Debs’ Social Democratic Party (SDP) to create the future Socialist Party of America (SPA) by August 1901.
1900: Anti-colonialist Pan-African Conference founded by Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois and others.
1900: The Hungarian Workers’ Sick Benefit and Educational Federation is founded as a Socialist mutual-benefit fraternal society. Joined the International Workers Order in 1932.
1900: June 3, ILGWU (International Ladies Garments Workers Union) founded.
1902: Abraham Cahan returned to Der Forverts [the Forward] newspaper as editor until 1951.
1903: Following the September 1901 assassination of U.S. President William McKinley by anarchist Leon Czolgosz, anti-immigrant backlash grew. The Immigration Act of 1903 codified previous laws and added new inadmissible categories.
1903: April 19–20, Kishinev Pogroms. More than 600 pogroms swept the Russian Empire 1903-1906.
1903: June 30–August 30, Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) Menshevik and Bolshevik factions initially split Russia’s main Marxist party. The Bund, as the sole Jewish organization, unsuccessfully voiced its position advocating for autonomy.
1904: Dr. Chaim Zhitlowsky and “Babushka” (Granny) Breshkovskaya sent to New York to fundraise for Russian Socialist Revolutionary Party, Zhitlowsky in Yiddish and Russian.
1905: The Jewish Socialist Agitation Bureau founded in New York.
1905: July 11–14, Black-led Niagara Movement founded by W. E. B. Du Bois and others; conference held on Canadian side of border.
1905: January 22, failed Russian Revolution of 1905 started with the “Bloody Sunday” massacre, which led to mass incarceration, repression, and immigration culminating in December Moscow uprising.
1905: September 5, Treaty of Portsmouth signed, acknowledging Russian defeat in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905. October 30, Manifesto signed by Tsar Nicholas II in response to the failed 1905 Revolution to establish the Duma (Parliament).
1906: The Slovak Workers Society is founded as a Socialist mutual-benefit fraternal society. Joined the International Workers Order in 1932.
1906: September 22–24, Atlanta, Georgia, race riots and massacre; accounts by W. E. B. Du Bois, Walter White, and many others.
1907-1910: Dillingham U.S. Congressional hearings targeted urban “New Immigrants,” looking to curtail mass immigration of East European Jews, Southern Italians, and others; the 41 volumes published resulted in changes to census and immigration processing.
1908: August 14-16, Springfield, Illinois, race riots, massacre, and lynching. Reaction led to founding of the NAACP in 1909-1910.
1908: August 30-September 04; Czernowitz Conference with Y.L. Peretz, Zhitlowsky, and others. Yiddish declared “a national language of the Jewish people.”
1908: Dos Naye Leben [the New Life] publication founded in New York by Zhitlowsky, was published until 1913, merging progressive Yiddish diasporic nationalism with socialism. Briefly resumed publishing in 1922 with editor Shmuel Niger.
1909: May 31-June 1, The National Negro Committee, an outgrowth of the Niagara Conference, is founded. On May 12, 1910, it became the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); calling for full legal citizenship rights for Black people.
1909: November 22, “Uprising of Twenty Thousand” officially started with a vote at Cooper Union called by young immigrant Clara Lemlich. The rally led to a massive strike run by women shirtwaist makers from ILGWU Local 25. Unlike most shops, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory refused to settle by February 15, 1910.
1910: Major start of the Great Migration from the South due to the increase in violence and Jim Crow segregation and decrease in obtaining economic livelihoods. African American migration accelerated during World War I due to labor shortages in war industries.
1910: July 7–September 2, “The Great Revolt,” the Cloakmakers Strike mobilized 50,000 ILGWU garment workers. Protocols of Peace signed with manufacturers represented by Louis Brandeis and Louis Marshall; union workers by immigrant Meyer London.
1910: December 10, Zhitlowsky founded the first leftist secular Yiddish afterschool (Folkshul) for children in the Lower East Side at 143 Madison Street.
1910: September 29, Predecessor to National Urban League (NUL) founded in New York City as the “Committee on Urban Conditions Among Negroes.” Emphasized employment; merged with other organizations in 1911; 1920, changed name to the National Urban League.
1911: March 25, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire; 146 garment workers, mainly young female immigrants, died within minutes in an ostensibly fireproof building chiefly due to locked fire doors.
1911: Future IWO JPFO head Rubin Saltzman immigrated to the United States after Siberian exile.
1912: Di Yunge [The Young] writers in New York started publishing their magazine Shriftn.
1912: July 31, the Jewish Socialist Federation affiliated with the Socialist Party of America (Debs) as a language federation; presidential candidate Debs receives 6% of American votes on November 5.
1913: March—May, Joseph Stalin’s definition in Marxism and the National Question meant that Jews, who lacked a common territory, did not constitute a nation (Jews were a minority ethnic group, natsional’nost).
1913: April, Enforced segregation in federal employment by President Woodrow Wilson.
1914: August, Start of World War I (WWI) after the June 28 assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Allied powers “Triple Entente”: United Kingdom, France, Russia. Central Powers: Austro-Hungarian Empire, Germany, Ottoman Empire (Turkey), Bulgaria. The effective dissolution of the Socialist Second International in Europe ensued with support of national war efforts. U.S. Jewish Left mainly aligned with Debs’ neutral Socialist Party of America.
1914: July 20, Marcus Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in Kingston, Jamaica. By 1917, its Harlem headquarters advocated for Black nationalism, African pride, private enterprise, and aspects of back to Africa migration, reflected in the Black Star Line ship controversy.
1915: Banker Jacob Schiff refused to participate in WWI financing of Tsarist Russia’s war efforts against the Central Powers.
1915: 1915–1919 and 1921–1923, Socialist immigrant lawyer Meyer London served in Congress from the Lower East Side.
1917: February 5, Passage of the Immigration Act of 1917, which introduced restrictive measures including a literacy test for immigrants. President Wilson’s veto overridden by Congress.
1917: February Revolution (7 March, Julian calendar in the U.S.S.R.), Alexander Kerensky in charge. March 15, Tsar abdicated.
1917: April 6, U.S. entry into WWI with war declared on Germany. War on Austria-Hungary declared December 7, 1917.
1917: April 15, all anti-Jewish restrictions abolished in Russia.
1917: April 16, Bolshevik Vladimir Lenin arrived in Russia from exile in Switzerland (trip to Finland Station paid for by Germany).
1917: June 15, passage of U.S. Espionage Act limiting anti-war free speech.
1917: July 28, NAACP’s anti-lynching campaign started in response to the East Saint Louis race riot, massacre, and lynching, with holding of silent New York protest parade.
1917: October Revolution, with Bolsheviks in power in Russia. Civil war ensued.
1917: November 2, Balfour Declaration issued by Great Britain supporting “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”
1917: The Messenger, a pro-labor, anti-segregationist socialist magazine that attacked lynching is cofounded by A. Philip Randolph and Chandler Owen.
1917: November 7, Trotsky (Lev Bronstein) told Mensheviks “Go where you belong from now on—into the dustbin of history!” when departing the second All-Russian Congress of Soviets in St. Petersburg, leading to Bolshevik victory.
1918-19: Commonly ascribed as start of the Harlem Renaissance whose figures included IWO-connected figures such as Louise Thompson (Patterson), Paul Robeson, and Langston Hughes.
1918: January, Soviet Russia Proletkult (Organization of Representatives of Proletarian Organizations) founded.
1918: May 16, passage of U.S. Sedition Act (extended 1917 Espionage Act), allowing deportations. Repealed 1921.
1918: June 16, Debs’ speech in Canton, Ohio, urged resistance to WWI military draft. Arrested June 30 for violating the Espionage Act. Released from prison winter 1921 in broken health.
1918: Summer, Moscow Circle of Yiddish Writers and Artists founded; 1922 it became MAYWA, the Workers' Association of the Jewish People, advocating for Jewish culture and rights.
1918: Fall, Lenin agreed to the establishment of “Yevsektsiyas” [Yevsektsiia], Jewish sections of the Soviet Communist Party to transmit “communist revolution to the Jewish masses.”
1918: November 9, Start of Germany’s Revolution (November Revolution) just prior to German surrender in WWI.
1918: November 11, WWI Armistice signed (Armistice Day). WWI officially ended.
1918: December, German founding of the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands, KPD (German Communist Party), in contradistinction to the SPD (Social Democratic Party).
1919: January 4, Spartacist Revolt in Germany; January 15, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg killed, revolt squashed.
1919: March 2–6, Soviet Comintern (Communist International) founded; held seven International Congresses and thirteen “Enlarged Plenums” with the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI, or ИККИ) formed to deal with World Congresses and decisions between Congresses. Comintern dissolved in 1943.
1919: U.S. Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party emerged from the Socialist Propaganda League of America (SPLA).
1919: Red summer of 1919 in wake of WWI when Black citizens sometimes defended themselves in more than 20 race riots and massacres in Chicago, Washington, D.C., Knoxville, Tennessee, Indianapolis, Indiana, and elsewhere. Elaine, Arkansas, September 30, black sharecroppers targeted for organizing; the legal case against Black defendants resulted in death sentences on November 5, 1919, with legal fight until January 14, 1925.
1919: September, the beginnings of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). Members of the SPLA joined the new underground Communist Party of America, which merged with the Communist Labor Party (CLP).
1919: June 28, Treaty of Versailles signed at Paris Peace Conference; Treaty in force, January 10, 1920, with League of Nations established. The United States failed to ratify the treaty and never joined the League of Nations.
1919: September, The African Blood Brotherhood for African Liberation and Redemption (ABB) founded in Harlem by Cyril Briggs, a West Indian journalist and others, advocating for self-defense and self-determination in response to the Red summer.
1919: November–January 1920, Palmer Raids, coordinated by J. Edgar Hoover, started the First (Little) Red Scare targeting of leftists without due process; some such as Emma Goldman were denaturalized and deported from the U.S.
1920: Start of Jewish Socialist Federation (JSF) fights concerning Russia and socialist priorities.
1920: The American Russian Fraternal Society founded as a Communist mutual-benefit fraternal society. Joined the International Workers Order in 1932.
1920: April, Split of the Bund with Esther Frumkin the leader of the new “Kombund” (Communist Bund). By March 1921 at the Kombund’s dissolution conference in Moscow, Frumkin moved to the Jewish section [Yevsektsiia, Yevsektsiya] of the [Alfarbandishe komunistishe partey] (All-Union Communist Party), that is to say, Bolsheviks.
1920: July-August, Second Party Congress held in Moscow introduced Lenin’s 21 Conditions for International Groups. By 1921, CP break-off groups formed in France, Spain, Italy, and Belgium.
1920: July 10, Henry Ford published “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” in the Dearborn Independent in its “International Jew” series. Original Protocols published in Russia in 1903.
1920: December, Moscow State Yiddish Theater GOSET (MSYT) founded; by 1928 associated with Shloyme (Solomon) Mikhoels and others.
1921: March 1–18, Left-wing Kronstadt Rebellion in Soviet Union against the Bolsheviks.
1921: May 19, Emergency Quota Act passed restricting U.S. immigration, especially of “New Immigrants” from Southern and Eastern Europe.
1921: Spring, NEP (New Economic Policy) introduced in Soviet Russia.
1921: May 31–June 1, Tulsa, Oklahoma, race riots and massacre.
1921: June–July, Third Party Congress held in Moscow; international civil war and revolutionary uprising encouraged.
1921: September, A split-off of the left wing of the Jewish Socialist Federation (JSF) from the Socialist Party joined the Jewish Communist Federation of the Workers Party of America.
1921: December, Workers Party of America (WPA) established from SLPA and CLP as the above-ground party that eventually became the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) in 1929.
1922: February 6, The Cheka, the Russian secret police, transformed into the GPU in Soviet Russia. Became the OGPU, then the GUGB as part of the NKVD. In 1954, its leader Beria was purged and the KGB established.
1922: April 2, Freiheit [Frayhayt], the Yiddish communist-affiliated newspaper, began publication in New York. Editors former Bundists Moissaye (Moshe) Olgin and Shakne Epshtein.
1922: July 24, Draft of the [British] Mandate for Palestine confirmed by the Council of the League of Nations.
1922: November, Fourth Party Congress held in Moscow with Leon Trotsky, a prominent figure. Start of First Period, which stressed export of October Revolution.
1922: December 28, Approval of the Treaty on the Creation of the U.S.S.R. and the Declaration of the Creation of the U.S.S.R., forming the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics with Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Transcaucasia.
1923: Founding in New York of the Workers School by the Communist Party.
1923: May, Lenin’s stroke left the new Troika of Josef Stalin, Grigory Zinoviev, and Lev Kamenev in charge of the CPSU and Comintern decisions.
1923: September 29, British Mandate for Palestine started (prior League of Nations confirmation vote July 23, 1922).
1923: November 8–9, Adolph Hitler, staged his Munich failed coup known as the Beer Hall Putsch.
1924: January 13, first issue of the Daily Worker, English-language Communist Party newspaper. The paper was published until 1956.
1924: January 16–18, Eighth Party Conference secured Stalin’s power. The Conference, held immediately prior to Lenin's death, denounced Trotsky.
1924: January 21, Lenin died. Start of the Second Period and further implementation of NEP (New Economic Policy). Stalin eventually controlled Comintern and CPSU; promoted Soviet Union as “defense of socialism in one country.”
1924: May 26, Johnson-Reed Act (aka Immigration Act of 1924) used national quotas, which severely limited admission of “New Immigrants” from East Europe, Southern Italy, and Slavic countries, and created the “Asiatic barred zone,” permitting no East Asian immigration.
1924: Yunge Arbeter Shrayber Fareyn (Young Workers Writers Association) founded (Moshe Leib Halperin, Alexander Pomerantz) and Yunge Kuznye (Smithy) Journal (Alexander Pomerantz, Shlome Davidman, Khaim Pet). All were 1920s New York immigrants trained as teachers by the Workmen’s Circle Seminary. Issue 3 used Russian ideological Yiddish spelling. By 1929 Freiheit [Frayhayt] editor, M.J. (Moissaye) Olgin was dealing with them.
1924-1926; Forward and Yiddish Socialist Farband combined to fight Communist influence particularly in the ILGWU.
1924: December, ICOR or IKOR, the Organization for Jewish Colonization in Soviet Union or Yidishe Kolonizatsye Organizatsye in Ratn-Farband, founded in New York City.
1925: The International Labor Defense (ILD) founded as a U.S. legal advocacy organization, the American section connected to the Comintern’s International Red Aid network. Defended Scottsboro, Sacco and Vanzetti, and other famous cases; headed after December 1932 by lawyer William (Pat) Patterson, and subsequently future Congressman IWO VP Vito Marcantonio.
1925: ARTEF [Arbeiter Teater Farband] edgy theater company founded with actors from the Freiheit Studio by the end of the year, eventually including Jules Dassin. Modicut puppet company founded December 17, 1925, by Zuni Maud and Yosl Kotler (Cutler), lasted until 1933.
1925: August 25, Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, founded by A. Philip Randolph, became the first recognized Black trade union. By August 1937, it gained recognition from the Pullman Palace Car Company, the nation’s largest employer of blacks.
1925: October 25, The American Negro Labor Congress founded by the CPUSA.
1926: May, Publication of the Yiddish revolutionary journal Der Hamer (the Hammer) with Frayhayt editor M.J. Olgin as an editor, accompanied by launch of its English counterpart, New Masses.
1926: The Labor League of Canada, precursor to the United Jewish People’s Order, founded in Toronto.
1926: Jewish Workers University established in New York City by future IWO founders (Der idisher arbeter universitet) to educate working-class adults.
1928: February 28, Ninth Plenum of the [Soviet] Executive Committee at the Comintern’s Sixth World Congress initiated the “Third Period” fight against “social fascists” until 1934-35.
1928: Black Belt Comintern Resolution on the Black National Question in the United States, formally adopted by the CPUSA. Called for self-determination (“The Negro race everywhere is an oppressed race”) in tying the American South to anti-colonial movements worldwide.
1928: March, Establishment of Birobidzhan as a Jewish Autonomous Region in the U.S.S.R. for “working” Jews. ICOR starts working internationally with the Komzet, the Soviet agency facilitating Jewish settlement, and the OZET (Society for Settling Toiling Jews on the Land in the Soviet Union).
1929: February, Leon Trotsky fully banished from the U.S.S.R. after year-long internal exile.
1929: Winter, Freiheit Shrayber Fareyn founded (Olgin convenes writers from Union Square group and Yung Kuznye) to join.
1929: August, Riots in Hebron; defections from what is now the morning Morgn Freiheit [Frayhayt] and other CPUSA organs/groups in the “Great Break” 1929.
1929: October 11, Yung-Vilne writers group founded with Sutzkever, Grade, Kaczerginski, Kahn, Reyzen in Vilnius [Vilne].
1929: September 13, Proletpen, created in New York to “help boost the Linke’s literary output after the Hebron Riot defections” due to the Frayhayt’s position after deadly violence.
1929: October 29, Wall Street crash marked the start of the Great Depression.
1929: December-early 1930, the U.S.S.R. Jewish Section of the Communist Party [Yevsektsiia, Yevsektsiya], closed down by the CPSU.
1930: May 30, IWO (International Workers Order) founded at Cooper Union in New York as a fraternal order split-off from the socialist movement after a decade of Arbeter Ring and JSF fights. Preliminary charter issued April 3, 1930; permanent charter June 19. Inexpensive benefits included medical insurance for 35 cents a month per family. Officers: Harry Schiller (President); Rubin Saltzman (General Secretary), Joseph S. Brodsky (Treasurer), Kalman Marmor (Cultural Director). William Weiner is president by June 1931.
1930: July 16, IWO fully chartered and licensed by the State of New York as a fraternal society and insurance provider.
1930: Leftist Camp Kinderland, founded in 1923; Camp Kinder Ring across the lake founded in 1927 (Workmen's Circle, Arbeter Ring). Kinderland allied with the IWO in 1930 as did the Umpartayish (nonaffiliated) Yiddish schools that joined the IWO’s Jewish Section’s Yiddish Shule school system.
1930: Black Belt Resolution, CPUSA adopted the 1930 Comintern Resolution on the Black National Question in the United States, Sixth Party Congress: “the main Communist slogan must be: The right of self-determination of the Negroes in the Black Belt…, and only the fulfilment of their main slogan can assure them of true equality…” Used term “oppressed nation” (see 1928).
1932: July 31, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party (NSDAP) became the largest party in the Reichstag winning 37.3% of the vote.
1932: November 8, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) elected against Republican President Herbert Hoover; William Z. Foster is Communist Party presidential candidate.
1933: January 30, Hitler appointed German chancellor.
1933: March 5, Nazi Party elected in Germany; KPD (Communist Party of Germany) banned.
1933: July, IWO 2nd Convention held in Chicago. After Hungarian (1932), and then Slovak, and Russian language sections officially affiliated with IWO, Saltzman shifted from General Secretary of the IWO to head its Jewish Section, the predecessor to the IWO’s Jewish-American Section which then became the Jewish Peoples Fraternal Order (JPFO). Integrated general, English language lodges created, Black and Latino/a members recruited.
1933: November 16, U.S. establishes foreign relations with the Soviet Union.
1934: February 27, The American Committee for the Settlement of Jews in Birobidjan (Ambidjan) founded in New York City. May 7, Birobidzhan, located on the Trans-Siberian Railway as a separate economic unit in the far east, becomes an oblast (region) in the U.S.S.R. for Jews with Yiddish as its official language.
1934: Summer, IWO founded interracial Camp Wo-Chi-Ca (Workers’ Children’s Camp); Instructors and regular visitors included Paul Robeson, Pearl Primus, Woody Guthrie.
1934: November 6, Leftist Vito Marcantonio elected to Congress from East Harlem for first of seven terms. He simultaneously served as IWO vice president and officer of its Italian society while championing Italian, Puerto Rican, and Black rights in Congress, e.g., anti-lynching bills.
1934-5: Commonly ascribed as start of Popular Front broad-based coalitions to fight fascism.
1934: Professional football player and lawyer Paul Robeson became a theater and movie star with a new Popular Front bass baritone polyglot folk repertoire described as “fundamental to the transnational Black and working-class political cultures that by midcentury galvanized the rebellion of entire nations.”
1935: W. E. B. Du Bois published Black Reconstruction in America: An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860-1880.
1935: May 5-11, IWO Third Convention, held in New York City, with Louise Thompson as head of the English Section. By 1936, she was the IWO’s national recording secretary, spending five overlapping years as its secretary of general lodges. Founded Harlem Community Center of the IWO Solidarity Branch 691 and connected it with her participation in the Harlem Renaissance.
1935: May 22, United Council of Working Class Women (UCWCW) Jewish and Black women initiated successful meat boycott. Harlem was led by Bonita Williams and Brooklyn was as well by IWO leader Clara Lemlich Shavelson, who led The United City Action Committee Against the High Cost of Living. The boycott spread and prices went down. Founded in 1924, the UCWCW merged with the International Workers Order Jewish Section in 1939.
1935: July 25-August 20, Seventh (and last) World Party Congress of the Communist International (Comintern) in Moscow. Fourth Period. Endorsed the Popular (United) Front of 1934.
1935: August 14, Social Security Act, authored primarily by Frances Perkins. signed by FDR.
1935: September 15, Passage of Nazi Nuremberg Race Laws pertaining to Jews.
1935: October 3, Ethiopia invaded by Mussolini in an attack from Italian colonial Somalia and Eritrea. Anti-fascists and Black nationalists protested the invasion, supporting Ethiopian resistance.
1936: February, The National Negro Congress (NNC) first national convention; part of the Popular Front with A. Philip Randolph president. African Americans in the CPUSA and IWO participate along with non-radical union civil-rights activists.
1936: July 18-April 1, 1939, Spanish Civil War started with Franco’s (Fascist military) revolt.
1936-1939: In support of the Spanish Loyalist government, thousands of Americans joined the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and other contingents of the International Brigades. IWO members such as Harry Meloff and Walter Garland see combat in Spain, while other members aided the Loyalists through contributions of money and medical equipment.
1936: Summer, ALP (American Labor Party) founded as a New York “Third Party” by the Social Democratic Federation of America (as a split-off of the conservative wing of the Socialist Party) whose base was the Jewish labor unions. Intended to compete with the Democratic Party, ALP attracted Vito Marcantonio, CIO and CP-aligned unions, and organizations such as the IWO.
1936: October, First Soviet Purges, The Great Purge or the Great Terror (Russian: Большо́й терро́р) started: arguably more than 750,000 killed; far larger numbers exiled. Moscow Trials and other trials enforced the political repression of anyone connected to Trotsky or Nikolai Bukharin. Yezhovshchina (Purge) continued through 1938; only Trotsky (in exile) remained of “Old Leninists.”
1937: September 21, Writers invited by Chaim Slovès and others gather in Paris for the World Congress for Yiddish Culture found YKUF Yidisher Kultur Farband with support from the Jewish-American Section of the IWO. In the U.S., the founding of YKUF (aka YKuF, IKUF) meant Proletpen writers phased out in 1938.
1937: U.S.S.R. purge of more Jewish intellectuals (Max Erik, Izi Kharik). Great Purge targets included Esther (Maria) Frumkin, Osip Mandelstam, Isaac Babel, Moshe Kulbak, Yisroel Tsinberg. U.S. fellow travelers and Party members mainly support the Great Purge and trials.
1938: July 22, Attempt by the Massachusetts Department of Insurance to revoke the IWO’s insurance license ends in an IWO victory. The Massachusetts high court ruled political beliefs of the IWO’s officers are immaterial to the Order’s right to conduct business in the state.
1938: Winter, creation of the Harlem Suitcase Theatre, founded by Langston Hughes with Louise Thompson at the IWO Solidarity Branch 691. The Suitcase Theatre produced Don’t You Want to Be Free? The IWO published in 1938 Hughes’ poetry booklet A New Song and anthem “Let America Be America Again.”
1938: April 23–30, IWO, 4th Convention, Pittsburgh. Convention of Jewish Section of IWO held April 27–29.
1938: July 6–15, Évian-les-Bains Conference held in France to discuss the “refugee problem.”
1938: September 29, Signing of Munich Agreement ceding the Sudetenland to Nazi Germany by Britain, France, and Italy; Hitler attacked the rest of Czechoslovakia March 15, 1939.
1938: November 7, Herschel Feivel Grynszpan, a Polish-Jewish refugee born in Germany, assassinated German diplomat Ernst vom Rath in Paris. Used as official excuse for Kristallnacht.
1938: November 9-10, Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass), Nazi Germany antisemitic pogrom terrorized Jews through mobs, burning of homes and institutions, smashed windows, and expropriation of Jewish property.
1938: Yidishe Kultur (Jewish Culture) journal founded, edited by Nachman Meisel (Nakhmen Mayzil, Nakhmen Mayzel), with YKUF Farlag (Meisel and Marmor editors). Popular Front approach included writers Opatoshu, Leyvik, Korn, Molodovsky, Shumiatcher, and others.
1939: March 15, Czechoslovakia invaded by Nazi Germany.
1939: April 1, Spanish Civil War ended with the Republic defeated.
1939: August 23, Hitler and Stalin signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, aka the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact guaranteeing Russian neutrality and assigning spheres of influence allowing Germany to conquer most of Poland.
1939: September 1, Hitler invaded Poland. Start of World War II (WWII). September 3, Britain and France declared war on Germany.
1939: September 17, the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east. By October 6, 1939, there is a two-way division and annexation of the Second Polish Republic by Germany and the Soviet Union.
1939: September 28, the German-Soviet Boundary Treaty signed as a secret supplement to the Nonaggression Pact. Spheres of interest: Volksdeutch go into Polish new German territories; Lublin, Łódź and Warsaw assigned to Nazi regime; and Lithuania to the Soviet Union.
1939: Fall, dissident IWO members create the League Against Fascism and Dictatorship to protest IWO support for the Nonaggression Pact.
1939: September-October, House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) hearings held to question CPUSA leader Earl Browder and IWO General Secretary Max Bedacht.
1939: September, Polish Bundists Viktor Erlich and Henryk Alter arrested after fleeing to Soviet zone, temporarily freed in September 1941, rearrested.
1939: November 5, Earl Robinson’s “Ballad for Americans” premiers on CBS radio with Paul Robeson as orator representing different types of Americans. The Ballad became a sensation; the IWO-connected American People’s Chorus recorded with him for Victor Records.
1940: January 27, Writer Isaac Babel died in prison after being purged by Stalin.
1940: April-May, Katyn [Forest] Massacre of Polish AK officers (Home Army) and other Polish soldiers and civilians by Soviet forces.
1940: May 10-June 25, France, Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg attacked and defeated by German Nazi army.
1940: June 14, Eastern Poland annexed by the U.S.S.R, as are the Baltic countries, Bessarabia, and Northern Bukovina. The U.S.S.R. goes from 3 million to 5 million Soviet Jews overnight.
1940: June 29, The Smith Act, aka, Alien Registration Act, passed forcing registration of non-citizens. Used against a variety of leftists charged with ostensibly advocating the violent overthrow of the U.S. government.
1940: July, IWO Fifth National Convention, New York City.
1940: August 20, Trotsky (Lev Bronstein) assassinated in Mexico by Ramón Mercader on Stalin’s orders.
1940: September, Louise Thompson Patterson, married to ILD head William (Pat) Patterson, started organizing in Chicago and Midwest as an IWO Vice President and head of its Illinois Section. Founded the Du Sable Community Center in Chicago, worked with labor and arts movements.
1941: March 11, U.S. started Lend-Lease program for the U.K.
1941: June 22, The Soviet Union invaded by Hitler in Operation Barbarossa. Soviet foreign policy towards Nazi Germany changes immediately.
1941: July 10, Jedwabne pogrom in Poland; more than 300 Jews killed.
1941: August 21, the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC) founded in Moscow. August 24, two dozen Jewish cultural figures at a public rally led by Yiddish actor and theater director Solomon Mikhoels (1890–1948), issued an international radio appeal to Jews worldwide to unite in the struggle against Nazi Germany. An earlier 1941 meeting of “representatives of the Jewish people” held in Moscow addressed by Mikhoels, Ilya Ehrenburg, Dovid Bergelson, and others, called on “our Jewish brethren throughout the world” to aid the Soviet Union.
1941: October 30, Lend Lease extended to the U.S.S.R.
1941: November, IWO member Pater Cacchione of Brooklyn becomes the first CPUSA member elected to the New York City Council.
1941: December 7, Pearl Harbor bombing by Japan; U.S. enters WWII against the Axis Powers.
1941: December 8, First Nazi killing center started operation (Chełmno). Other concentration and death camps then rapidly established.
1942: The American Slav Congress (ASC) founded in Detroit as a pan-Slavic organization supporting the Soviet Union and the Allied war effort. Poles, Slovaks, Ukrainians, and others in the IWO join the ASC.
1942: January 1, Representatives of 26 nations at war with Axis powers signed the Declaration of the United Nations in Washington, D.C., endorsed the Atlantic Charter, pledged to use full resources against Axis forces, and not make a separate peace. 22 other nations signed the next day.
1942: January 20, Wannsee Conference planning of “final solution of the Jewish question” with SS and German government. Mass deportations to extermination camps including Chełmno, Bełżec, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Sobibór, Treblinka, and Majdanek.
1942: February 19, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 authorizing Japanese internment in the U.S.
1942: April 7, Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC, JAFC, or EKA) published appeal to “Jews throughout the world” signed by 47 people. May 24 meeting included international radio appeal to Jews to support buying tanks. June 7, 1942—November 20, 1948 JAC, published its journal Einikeyt (Aynikayt, Eynikayt) [Unity] primarily in Moscow.
1942: May, Polish-Jewish underground smuggled out a report estimating that Germans had killed 700,000 Polish Jews; broadcast on BBC, June 22.
1942: B.Z. Goldberg became the editor of the U.S. Einikeyt (Aynikayt) organ of the American Committee of Jewish Writers, Artists and Scientists (CAWS). October 26, 1941 CAWS organized a U.S. Jewish radio broadcast to the JAC working with the IWO and other organizations.
1942-1943: Polish Bundists Victor Alter and Henryk Erlich, died in Soviet prisons (Erlich committed suicide May 14, 1942, in Kuibishev (Kuibyshev) prison; Alter executed in Kuibishev February 17, 1943.
1942: August, Publication in New York City of The Ghetto Speaks about the Warsaw Ghetto and Chełmno.
1942: August 23, Battle of Stalingrad started as Nazi forces move on the Eastern Front.
1942: November, Soviet government established the “Extraordinary Commission for Investigation of Crimes Perpetrated by the German-Fascist Occupiers and Their Collaborators.”
1942: November 24, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise (World Jewish Congress) announced at a press conference that the U.S. State Department had confirmed earlier European reports that Nazi Germany intended to annihilate European Jewry, having already murdered 2 million. Wise’s conference was underplayed the next day in mainstream media.
1942: December 17, Joint Declaration by Members of the United Nations (led by the U.S. and U.K.) condemning Nazi Germany’s persecution of Jews. Read out loud in the British Parliament as a response to December 10 letter to Allies, titled “The Mass Extermination of Jews in German Occupied Poland” written by Count Raczynski of the Polish government-in-exile.
1943: January 23–24, American Jewish Conference (Assembly) convened in response to call from B’nai B’rith that asked 32 national Jewish organizations to meet in Pittsburgh. By June efforts to create a larger body commenced.
1943: February, Battle of Stalingrad won by U.S.S.R.; turning point on the Eastern Front (Battle started August 23, 1942).
1943: April 19–30, Anglo-American Bermuda Conference held without mention of rescue work or Jews.
1943: April 19, Beginning of Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which lasted until full annihilation of the Ghetto on May 16. On May 12, Szmul (Artur) Zygielbojm, the Bund’s representative to the Polish government-in-exile in London, committed suicide in response to the lack of response.
1943: May 6, Chaim Zhitlowsky died in Calgary, Canada, on a tour for the Jewish-American Section of the IWO to raise money to support WWII. Buried in IWO New York cemetery.
1943: May 15, Comintern Third International (1919-1943) dissolved by Stalin, officially announced May 22.
1943: June 11, Liquidation of all Polish Jewish ghettos ordered by SS Chief Heinrich Himmler.
1943: June 17, Itzik Fefer and Shloyme (Solomon) Mikhoels of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC) visited the U.S for 4.5 months. July 8, more than 50,000 people greeted them at the New York Polo Grounds. Official greeters included Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, Rabbi Stephen Wise, Albert Einstein, Sholem Asch, Eddie Cantor, and representatives from the Joint Distribution Committee, and World Jewish Congress. The U.S. tour, which the Jewish-American Section of the IWO helped arrange, raised $16 million.
1943: June 25, Mussolini dismissed by Italian King Victor Emmanuel III.
1943: August, Publication in New York City of “Lest We Forget: The Massacre of the Warsaw Ghetto, A Compilation of Reports” by World Jewish Congress.
1943: August 29-September 2, American Jewish Conference held Second Session. Officially established with delegates, the Conference would eventually include 65 organizations. The Jewish American Section of the IWO was admitted later after waging a nine-month campaign to be included as a national Jewish group.
1943: October 6, “Rabbis March” on Washington of orthodox rabbis demanded rescue intervention for European Jews and visas.
1943: October 30–November 1, Moscow Conference with the U.S.S.R., U.S., Great Britain, and China issues Declaration on German Atrocities without mention of systematic extermination of Jews. The Conference resolutions included references to what will become the United Nations.
1943: November, African-American activist Banjamin J. Davis Jr. became the second CPUSA member elected to the New York City Council.
1943: November 28-December 1, the Tehran Conference convened with agreement reached with the U.S.S.R., U.S., and Great Britain on opening a second front. The Curzon line secretly agreed to as the future border between U.S.S.R. and Poland.
1944: January 22, U.S. War Refugee Board established by executive order by FDR.
1944: January 7, The National Committee of the CPUSA voted to become the Communist Political Association at the initiative of Earl Browder, the CPUSA’s Chairman.
1944: February-March, Emma Lazarus Division founded as separate entity by the Women’s Division of the Jewish-American Section of the IWO four months before IWO convention.
1944: April, Third JAC meeting of “representatives of the Jewish people” held in U.S.S.R.
1944: May, the Liberal Party founded in New York by ILGWU head David Dubinsky and Alex Rose, as a response to Sidney Hillman as well as to the CP/IWO presence in the American Labor Party headed by Congressman Vito Marcantonio.
1944: June 6, D-Day invasion of Normandy, Second Front opened in Western Europe.
1944: July 2–7, JPFO Convention held after July 1, IWO Sixth National Convention in New York City. Official name change: the Jewish-American Section became the Jewish Peoples Fraternal Order (JPFO, or .א .פ .פ .א) on July 6.
1944: July 1–July 22, Bretton Woods Conference and Agreement, which set the postwar international political economic order.
1944: July 31, 60,000 attended American Jewish Conference New York City “rescue” demonstration for European Jews that drew JPFO and Agudath Israel (Orthodox) participation.
1944: August 1–October 2, Warsaw Uprising; more than 85% of Warsaw destroyed by Nazis by January 1945. August 1944: Red Army arrives on Polish border near Warsaw and Łódź.
1944: August 21–October 7, The Dumbarton Oaks Conference convened. Agreement reached among international leaders to determine the future United Nations.
1944: October 9, Fourth Moscow Conference, Percentages Agreement (spheres of influence) reached between Churchill and Stalin.
1944: October 10, “Miracle of the Warsaw Ghetto,” H. Leivick play performed by New Jewish Folk Theater.
1944: November 7, FDR re-elected president for fourth and last term.
1944: December 16-January 25, 1945, Battle of the Bulge fought as last German major Western Front campaign.
1945: January, The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) became a standing (permanent) committee.
1945: January 17, Soviet troops entered Warsaw.
1944-1945: The United Jewish People’s Order (UJPO) founded, a Canadian sister organization to the JPFO; superseded Toronto’s Labour League.
1945: February 4-11, Yalta Conference convened (Stalin, FDR, Churchill).
1945: February 25, American Jewish Conference’s Interim Committee officially included the JPFO into governing body.
1945: April 12, FDR died; Vice President Harry Truman becomes president.
1945: April 28, Mussolini shot and killed by Italian CP partisans while trying to escape Italy.
1945: April 25, United Nations (UN) convened for the first time, meeting through June in San Francisco.
1945: April 30, Hitler commits suicide.
1945: May 7, Surrender of Nazi Germany.
1945: Knowledge spread that 6 million Jews and 5 million non-Jews murdered in WWII, primarily but not exclusively by Nazis.
1945: May 8, VE (Victory in Europe) Day, or V Day, WWII.
1945: May, IWO 15th Anniversary celebration at Madison Square Garden.
1945: June, Earl Browder resigned as Chairman of the CPUSA; replaced July by William Z. Foster.
1945: July 17-August 2, Potsdam Conference on postwar boundaries attended by Stalin, Truman, Churchill/Atlee. July 26, demanded unconditional Japanese surrender.
1945: August 6, Hiroshima Atomic Bomb detonated; Nagasaki bomb detonated August 9.
1945: August 8, U.S.S.R. entered war against Japan, invading Manchuria, China. Japan announced its acceptance of Potsdam Declaration terms, V-J Day August 14 or 15 marking official surrender to Allies. Instrument of Surrender signed September 24, 1945.
1945: August-June 1946, Project Bricha figures showed 48,106 Jewish refugees going to Palestine, most had survived the War in the U.S.S.R. Repatriation of Polish Jews from the Soviet Union picked up again winter 1946; 200,000 Jews registered with Central Committee of Polish Jews by July 1, 1946. Estimates vary by end of 1948 as to how many reached Palestine; many in DP (Displaced Person) camps.
1945: August 16, pro-Soviet Polish Provisional Government installed with Soviet support 1945.
1945: September 30, Rally for a Jewish Palestine, organized by The American Zionist Emergency Council, Madison Square Garden (Rabbis Stephen Wise and Abba Hillel Silver).
1945: October 24, Founding of the United Nations (UN) in San Francisco.
1946: Winter, U.S. publication of the Black Book: The Nazi Crime against the Jewish People by the Jewish Black Book Committee (the Soviet edition by Grossman and Ehrenburg was ordered to be destroyed). The U.S. version of the Black Book was jointly sponsored by the American Committee of Jewish Artists; Writers and Scientists (CAWS); The World Jewish Congress; The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee of the U.S.S.R. (JAC); and the Vaad Leumi of Palestine.
1946: February 5, Earl Browder, its former leader, expelled from the CPUSA.
1946: March 5, Churchill “Iron Curtain” speech about the danger the U.S.S.R. posed to the West.
1946: March 16–17, Legal seriousness of warning concerning the Order’s fraternal activities conveyed to the Order’s General Counsel (Lee Pressman) at a two-day meeting with the New York State Insurance Department.
1946: March 21, Start of the Second Red Scare with “Loyalty Order” (Executive Order 9835). Truman required an oath for federal government employees, attesting that they did not belong to or had previously belonged to the CPUSA.
1946: March 27, Official publication launch of the Black Book held at Madison Square Garden.
1946: November, Jewish Life journal founded, connected to the JPFO and Morgn Freiheit. After a hiatus due to Khrushchev’s revelations on Stalin, in 1958 its name change to Jewish Currents.
1947: January 19, Parliamentary elections held in Poland; the Communist PPR (Polish Workers Party) under Wladyslaw Gomułka wins with Soviet support.
1947: March 12, Truman Doctrine announced.
1947: April 7, Concert “Chicago Salutes Paul Robeson” with Lena Horne arranged by Louise Thompson Patterson to support Robeson when he lacked income and was attacked politically.
1947: May 14, the U.S.S.R.’s UN Representative Andrei Gromyko advocated a one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, stipulating that a two-state solution was an option if “relations between the Jewish and Arab populations of Palestine ... proved to be so bad that it would be impossible to reconcile them.”
1947: June 12–19, IWO Seventh Convention, New York City and JPFO Convention.
1947: June 23, Taft-Hartley Act severely restricts the rights and activities of labor unions. Among other measures, it required union officers to attest that they were not members of the CPUSA.
1947: October 5, postwar creation of international “Cominform” (“Communist Information Bureau”).
1947: October 27–30, Hollywood Ten trials (HUAC) (5 of the 10 are Jewish); by November 24, all ten held to be in contempt of Congress.
1947: November 4, Georgia sharecropper Rosa Lee Ingram threatened by a white neighbor who hit her with a gun. Some of her sons defended her and were sentenced to death with their mother on murder charges on January 26, 1948. National protests erupted; the legal case, defended by the CRC and NAACP as self-defense, continued until August 26, 1959. The IWO “adopted” two younger children.
1947: November 15-16, first national convention of the Emma Lazarus Division (ELD).
1947: November 24, Red List created. Attorney General Tom Clark included the IWO as a “subversive organization” on the Attorney General’s List of Subversive Organizations, December 5, 1947. The list, created due to Federal Loyalty program (Truman Executive Order 9835), formally published March 1948 included all IWO affiliates and dozens of other organizations.
1947: November 29, UN voted for the partition of Palestine, authorizing the creation of a Jewish and an Arab state 1947: December 5, U.S. declared an arms embargo on the Middle East including Palestine.
1948: January 12–13, Assassination of Shloyme (Solomon) Mikhoels, Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC) leader.
1948: IWO lost its tax-exempt status as a fraternal organization due to the Red Scare.
1948: February 25, Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia.
1948: Douglass-Lincoln Society emerged from prior official groupings as the IWO’s Black section.
1948: March 18, Truman agreed to meet Chaim Weizmann at the White House and tentatively pledged support for partition of Palestine rather than trusteeship.
1948: April 3, Marshall Plan for Europe signed by Truman.
1948: May 14, Declaration of the founding of the State of Israel.
1948: June 24-May 12, 1949, Berlin Blockade.
1948: June 25, Congress passed the Displaced Persons Act, authorizing 200,000 visas for DPs. Congress amended the bill with the DP (Displaced Persons) Act of 1950. By 1952, more than 80,000 Jewish DPs had immigrated to the United States with the help of Jewish agencies.
1948: October 4, Golda Meir’s visit to Moscow drew 50,000 greeters at main synagogue.
1948: November 20, Liquidation of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC) in the Soviet Union; last issue of journal, Einikeyt (Aynikayt, Eynikayt) [Unity]) published: JAC arrests take place June 1948, December 1948, January 1948, June 1949.
1948: December 15, the Superintendent of New York State’s Department of Insurance authorized an investigation into the IWO’s fraternal (political) activities.
1949: January, Start of Stalin’s “rootless cosmopolitans” campaign in the Soviet Union.
1949: January 25, James Haley filed a clean financial report on the IWO for New York State Insurance Department’s Mutual and Fraternal Bureau showing that the insurance activities of the fiscally conservative fraternal organization were run appropriately.
1949: August 29, U.S.S.R. exploded atomic bomb.
1949: August 27, Paul Robeson and concert goers attacked by organized mob at a Civil Rights Congress (CRC) benefit concert in Peekskill, New York. Concert cancelled: he was threatened and lynched in effigy with crosses burned; anti-Black and antisemitic chants and violence ensued. Concert reconvened on September 4 included attacks and threats against local Jewish community. IWO members helped unionists “hold the line” to protect Robeson and concert goers.
1949: March 7, Smith Act trials started against CPUSA leadership. After lengthy trial, 11 convicted on October 14 in New York. Membership in the CPUSA judged tantamount to advocating violent overthrow of the U.S. government.
1949: November, American Jewish Congress under Executive Director David Petegorsky moved to expel the JPFO from the American Jewish Conference and other Jewish organizations.
1950: January 15, James Haley filed fraternal (political) report on the IWO for New York State Insurance Commissioner; the report verified (approved) on April 21 concluded that the IWO is a “recruiting and propaganda unit for the Communist Party” and that the IWO “constitutes a hazard to the public.”
1950: March 22, case decided against IWO, International Workers Order, Inc., et al. v. McGrath et al, 182 F.2d 368 (D.C. Cir. 1950). U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit - 182 F.2d 368 (D.C. Cir. 19).
1950: June 8, IWO filed with New York State Insurance Commissioner list of 23 exceptions to Haley Report.
1950: June 23, IWO General Council decided to convene Eight National Convention in early 1951, explicitly prohibited by Judge Henry Clay Greenberg’s June 25, 1951, insurance court ruling against the IWO.
1950: June 24, Korean War started; U.S. entered war against North Korea.
1950: July 17, IWO member Julius Rosenberg arrested; August 11, wife Ethel arrested; eventually both charged with conspiracy to commit espionage.
1950: August, Paul Robeson’s passport revoked by the U.S. State Department.
1950: Summer, INS presented deportation case against Andrew Dmytryshyn on the grounds that he was an IWO member; although he admitted to being a CPUSA member, that was not the charge.
1950: September 22, passage of McCarran Act, aka Subversive Activities Control Act of 1950 and Emergency Detention of 1950) requiring registration of U.S. Communist organizations. The act also provided for the denaturalization and deportation of foreign-born Americans deemed “subversive” by the U.S. attorney general. In addition, the act included an “emergency detention” provision for establishing “concentration camps” for those people the president thought would “probably” engage in espionage or sabotage in times of national emergency.
1950: October 16, Attorneys Donner and Kinoy filed their “Brief in Support of Motion to Strike the Examiner’s Report” addressed to hearing officer Manuel Lee Robbins, Deputy Superintendent of Insurance, with motion for dismissal.
1950: November, 7, W. E. B. Du Bois wins four percent of New York State vote for Senator running on the ALP line.
1950: December 14, Deputy Superintendent Robbins of the New York State Insurance Department issued his hearing report and moved to liquidate the Order (IWO) on the unique grounds that its significant cash reserves of $2 million could, in the event of war with the Soviet Union, be turned over to the enemy.
1951: January 10, IWO VP and head of its Garibaldi Society, Congressman Vito Marcantonio started successful defense of William Patterson, head of the Civil Rights Congress (CRC) from contempt of Congress charges brought by HUAC in 1950. Patterson served prison time for other contempt charges in 1954–1955. His passport was revoked in December 1951 as were those of Robeson (1950), artist and IWO President Rockwell Kent (1950), and W. E. B. Du Bois (1952).
1951: January 20-21, Emma Lazarus Division headed by June Gordon legally became the independent Emma Lazarus Federation of Jewish Women’s Clubs (ELF).
1951: January 22, Start of the New York State Supreme Court bench trial to liquidate the IWO on political grounds. Unique in the history of insurance law and regulations regarding a solvent insurance organization, the Cold War case raised numerous legal issues.
1951: March 6, Start of trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and Martin Sobell charged with conspiracy to commit espionage. March 29, Rosenbergs found guilty; April 5, sentenced to death; executed June 19, 1953.
1951: March 26-30, Rubin Saltzman’s and Louise Thompson Patterson’s five days of insurance court testimony as IWO officers on its activities included taking the Fifth Amendment.
1951: April 13, IWO insurance court bench trial under Judge Henry Clay Greenberg finished with his ruling against the IWO’s right to sell insurance as a fraternal order.
1951: April, “IWO Cemetery Department, Inc.” dissolved its administrative connection with the IWO upon advice of counsel and moved to a separate office.
1951: April 30, U.S. Supreme Court ruling resulted in the IWO being taken off the Attorney General’s subversive [Red] list.
1951: June 25, New York Supreme Court decision affirmed IWO liquidation order by Judge Henry Clay Greenberg.
1951: July 25, New York State Department of Insurance requested all records from JPFO and affiliated organizations.
1951: August 24, order issued for the New York State Department of Insurance to “take possession of the property and to liquidate the business and dissolve the corporate existence of the International Workers Order.”
1951: September, Black-led Sojourners for Truth and Justice (STJ) founded by Louise Thompson Patterson, Claudia Jones, Shirley Graham Du Bois, Eslanda Robeson, Charlotta Bass, and Beulah Richardson included members Lorraine Hansberry and Alice Childress.
1951: October 16, IWO lawyers Donner and Kinoy submit “Brief in Support of Motion to Dismiss Proceedings Before the New York State Department of Insurance in the Matter of International Workers Order.”
1951: November 20, Vito Marcantonio successfully defended W. E. B. Du Bois from charges of being a Soviet-controlled foreign agent on February 8 due to the support of his Peace Information Center for nuclear disarmament.
1951: November 24, the Slánský Affair unfolded with arrest of Rudolf Slánský, the highest-ranking Jew in the Czechoslovakian CP, arrested with 13 others Party and/or government officials, 11 of whom were Jewish. The Prague Trial held November 1952 resulted in the execution of 11 defendants including Slánský on December 3, 1952.
1951: December 17, “We Charge Genocide” petition presented to the UN by William Patterson (its author, Civil Rights Congress head) and Paul Robeson, with prominent Black signers such as W. E. B. Du Bois, Mary Church Terrell, Claudia Jones, Maude Katz White, Harry Haywood, Benjamin Davis Jr., Louise Thompson Patterson, and James Ford, as well as JPFO President Albert E Kahn.
1952: The Jewish Young Folksingers (JYF), founded as an offshoot of the JPFO’s Jewish Young Fraternalists. An interracial choral group, it continued performing Yiddish and African-American music, with Bob De Cormier, Pete Seeger, Leon Bibbs, Hazel Scott, Serge Hovey, Maddy Simon, Ethel Raim, Esther Silver, Herschl Bernardi, and other musicians after the IWO was legally dissolved.
1952: February, the State Department denied W. E. B. Du Bois’ request for a new passport.
1952: April 16 Jewish Life Program “A Tribute to the Warsaw Ghetto Fighters” featured W. E. B. Du Bois, JPFO head Albert E. Kahn, and JPFO affiliated Jewish Young Folksingers.
1952: June 27, Passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (The McCarran-Walter Act) to reinforce the 1924 immigration quotas.
1952: June 30, Case decided against IWO.
1952: Adult vacation Camp Nitgedaigit, No Worries, closed down and abandoned.
1952: August 12: Soviet trials held spring 1952 result in the Night of the Murdered Poets: Harugey malkhes funem Ratnfarband.
1952: November 1, United States tested first hydrogen bomb.
1952: November 4, Dwight D. Eisenhower elected president, beating Democrat Adlai Stevenson.
1952–3: Doctors Plot accusations of poisoning Stalin in the U.S.S.R., many of those accused were Jewish. Accusations accompanied a broader anti-Jewish campaign heralded in a Pravda January 13, 1953, article.
1953: January, publication of Louis Harap editorial, “Truth About the Prague Trial,” in Jewish Currents (then Jewish Life) in support of the Slánský Trial in Czechoslovakia.
1953: February, U.S.S.R. broke off relations with Israel.
1953: March 5, Stalin dies. Families then informed of the 1948 arrests of JAC members but not of their deaths. Doctors Plot trial “cancelled.”
1953: May, U.S. Attorney General Herbert Brownell notified the IWO that it must register with the Subversive Activities Control Board (SACB) as a “communist front,” a McCarran Act registration order action that would affect all past members.
1953: June 17, uprising in East Germany (GDR) resulted in stoppage of reparations to Poland.
1953: July 27, Korean War ended.
1953: October 19, Supreme Court upheld verdict against IWO on appeal. IWO and Intervenors filed Petitions for Granting the Writ of [Certiorari] on constitutional grounds, July 18, 1953; New York State filed a Brief for Respondent in Opposition, September 17, 1953.
1953: November 13, IWO and Intervenors filed Petitions for Rehearing with Supreme Court; denied December 7.
1953: December 15, IWO dissolved [liquidated], stopping prior joint control by the Department of Insurance and the IWO. New York State in charge of IWO assets including insurance cash reserves.
1954: Expulsion of the leftist Jewish Music Alliance from the Jewish Music Council.
1954: The JPFO legally spun off its Shule, Camp Kinderland and Cemetery Departments into independent organizations. Itche Goldberg pulled the Ordn Shule (Yiddish after-schools) out of the JPFO as the Independent Service Bureau for Jewish Education. Jewish Cultural Clubs obtained separate legal identities for Kinderland, the IWO Cemetery Department, Shules, and the journal Yidishe Kultur. The Jewish Peoples Fraternal Order reconstituted itself in a much-weakened form as the Jewish Cultural Clubs and Societies without the IWO JPFO mutual benefit insurance component.
1954: August 9, Former Congressman Vito Marcantonio died while campaigning for re-election; refused funeral Mass in East Harlem, and Catholic burial. Defended and mourned by Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker, and many others.
1954: August 24, The Communist Control Act enacted by Congress outlawed the Communist Party USA. It was declared “not entitled to any of the rights, privileges, and immunities attendant upon legal bodies” and made membership or support for the Party and its related organizations a crime.
1954: September, IWO fully legally disbanded; its confiscated organizational files given by New York State to Cornell University in 1961.
1954: November, U.S. Court of Appeals canceled the Subversive Activities Control Board (SACB) McCarran Act registration order against IWO that would affect all past members.
1956: Daily Worker ceases publication.
1956: February 25, 20th Party Congress revelations by Nikita Khrushchev about Stalin’s “cult of personality” included extent of 1937–39 and other purges. JAC relatives informed of the death of JAC leadership.
1956: June 12, Paul Robeson testified before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) concerning his revoked passport and connection to Communism, stating that he was not leaving for the U.S.S.R. “Because my father was a slave, and my people died to build this country, and I am going to stay here, and have a part of it just like you.”
1956: August 12, Yidishe Kultur publicly commemorated the Night of (Soviet) Murdered Poets.
1956: October, first wave of official antisemitism in Poland under Władysław Gomułka’s new leadership.
1956: November 4, Soviet Union invaded Hungary to quell revolt which started in October 1956.