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Fellow Travelers From Popular Front to Cold War

Selections from the Kheel Center Archive of the Yiddish Immigrant Left

Black Leadership in a Fraternal World

An IWO slogan was “There’s no Jim Crow in the IWO:” a third of its 80 Fifth Avenue headquarters office staff were African American and Hispanic (mainly Puerto Rican). During World War II, the IWO focused on the employment of black workers in unions and munitions factories and pushed for full integration into the armed forces. Its intense civil rights work included the Ingram case, the Scottsboro Defendants, with campaigns for integrating housing, and picketing the Brooklyn Dodgers prior to the admission of African-Americans into major league baseball. The IWO promoted Negro History Week; led by its national office, these efforts involved IWO VP Thompson Patterson, and brought in its various national sections as stakeholders in promoting the understanding that racial hatred was a blot on America.

$5000 Certificate of Deposit from R. Saltzman

Louise Thompson Patterson ―a CPUSA member― was critical to its organizing efforts for African-American “concentration” lodges in Harlem and Chicago, working with Walter Garland, a World War I and Spanish Civil War veteran, to organize Douglass-Lincoln, the IWO’s last section which she described as “the Negro-white society of the International Workers Order in which the Negro people have the greatest opportunity for leadership.” She also organized immigrant and native-born workers in steel mill and mining towns as well as worked earlier in Alabama with sharecroppers. Active in the Harlem Renaissance, she worked in her lodge with Langston Hughes on theater and poetry as well as with Paul Robeson. As a member, Robeson strongly advocated for the IWO, which later defended him during the Cold War at concerts and riots including arranging for Lena Horne to sing at a benefit. Thompson Patterson also worked with churches, and the National Council for Negro Women.

Negro History Week

The Jewish People’s Fraternal Order was the largest ‘national’ section of the International Workers Order (IWO) which focused on cultural awareness and celebration, mutual support especially in health insurance coverage, and anti-fascist activities. The IWO also gave particular emphasis to supporting the rights and interests of African Americans.

Brochure focusing on IWO activities such as reading, lectures, and political campaigns for lodges for Negro History Week
Negro History Week Bulletin: Discussion Outline on Negro History
"In Appreciation of Negro History Week." "The IWO Presents its Annual Bulletin." "Read and Distribute it." "Order Now" costs three cents. Translated Summary: "NEGRO HISTORY WEEK provides the opportunity to emphasize the achievements of the Negro people in terms of the basic issues of these times: the fight for equality and for Negro rights as part of the tasks and struggles for the wellbeing of the American people....THE NEGRO PEOPLE, allies of labor, have been and are a powerful bulwark of progress and democracy. Their historic achievements in art, industry, culture and social advance have strengthened the march of progressive America.... THE UNBREAKABLE UNITY of Negro and white is the burning need of these decisive days when the peoples’ ranks must be solidly formed for the winning of democracy, security and lasting peace, and for the defeat of Jim Crow and anti-Semitism, to end lynching and all forms of discrimination."
In Appreciation of Negro History Week: "Democracy and the Negro People"
1948 Printed supplement to Fraternal Outlook for Negro History Week by historian Herb Aptheker "The Meaning of Negro History: fully illustrated with charts and graphics detailing Black racial oppression and accomplishments." A piece by Aptheker called "The Facts of Negro Life in the United States" details "hush lynching." Another piece by Aptheker is "The Causes of Negro Oppression." Aptheker is already working with W.E. B. Du Bois on editing and publishing Du Bois' extensive oeuvre and the IWO editorial calls for backing the 1947 NAACP petition to the U.N. on human rights abuses against the Black community (Du Bois was its editor). A short piece about the IWO notes that it is the only interracial fraternal benefits society, explaining that "the International Workers Order is a federation of national group societies and General Lodges embracing Negro and white members." Albert E Kahn (JPFO President) and Vito Magli (Garibaldi Society) briefly extend greetings in an article titled "The National Groups and the Negro People" and Jesus Colon, head of the Cervantes Society briefly writes about Yankee Imperialism uniting Latin Americans, including those who are Black, with those in the U.S. This text uses the term ‘Negro’ and/or 'Negro Labor' to refer to the concerted efforts made primarily in the 1920s-1940s to fight racial discrimination so as to ensure the fair employment of Black people, in union and other jobs including those in the private sector, civil service, as well as advocacy for the full integration of Black people into the armed services. Black unemployment and under employment were extremely high due to racial barriers. While the term ‘Negro’ might be read as pejorative today, the term was then used in a positive regard, including by Black leftists.
1948 "The Meaning of Negro History" for Negro History Week, graphic folded insert for IWO Fraternal Outlook magazine by Herb Aptheker
Invitation to a showing of the movie "The Negro Soldier"produced by the U.S. Army with director Frank Capra. The Bensonhurst, Brooklyn Lodge 817, which is mainly Jewish, is holding a program co-sponsored with the Mt. Zion Baptist Church.
Invitation to Film "The Negro Soldier"

Documents include language and representations which comprise the historical record and should not be interpreted to mean that Cornell University or its staff endorse or approve of negative representations or stereotypes presented.

National Committee to Free the Ingram Family appeal to potential supporters asking if they will become a member of "the national sponsoring committee." Terrell is Chariman of the National Committee to Free the Ingram Family which is supported by the IWO which also worked with the Civl Rights Congress (CRC) and others to raise support for the Ingram case, a cause celebre in its day in regard to Southern juries, Jim Crow, violence, [perhaps] attempted rape, and sharecropping.
National Committee To Free the Ingram Family
Fundraising brochure about the Ingram case, and the Ingram boys, Charles and James. "the IWO has established the Ingram Children's Education and Welfare Fund." Brochure calls for Christmas fundraising for the fund whose trustees are Walter B. Garland, June Gordon, Rockwell Kent, Edward Nelson, Louise Thompson Patterson, Eslande Goode Robeson, Estelle Massey Osborne, the Hon. Joseph H. Raisey, Benjamin J. Spaulding, and Pauline Taylor.
Suppose they were YOURS...

About 10,000 pages of documents from the Kheel Center’s collection of International Workers’ Order records have been digitized. You can find more of these documents here along with the full version of documents provided here.