Segments 2 & 4: "Sam Adams Darcy on the San Francisco Strike of 1934." [two part podcast 19 min 56 sec; 25 min 17 sec]
Here is an edited selection from talks delivered by former U.S. Communist Party activist and leader Samuel Adams Darcy (1905-2005) at Cornell University in November of 1975. The talks were delivered to students in Professors Roger Keeran's and Cletus Daniels' classes. The tapes of the talks are now part of a collection of scores of recordings that are currently being digitized and processed by the Sam Darcy Aural History Project (a project of Talking History/University at Albany). We thank the Darcy family, and particularly Jonetta ("Skip") Darcy, for making the recordings available to us.
DARCY BIOGRAPHY: Sam Adams Darcy was born in 1905 in the Ukraine. In 1908, he emigrated to the U.S. with his parents, and spent his youth in NYC. He attended De Witt Clinton High School and NYU -- all the while working at a variety of factory jobs. While still in high school, he immersed himself in the radical socialist subculture of the Jewish needle trade workers, and joined the Young People's Socialist League. After the Russian Revolution, he entered the newly established Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA).
Immediately taking an active role in the organization, Darcy helped found the Young Workers' League, a predecessor of the Young Communist League. In 1927, he was sent to Moscow, where he taught at the Lenin School and served on the Executive Committee of the Young Communist International. He also spent some time in China and the Philippines helping to organize radical working-class movements there. Returning to New York in 1929, he briefly served as editor of the Daily Worker, the Party's national organ, and led the International Labor Defense, a major left-wing civil and criminal rights defense organization. When the Great Depression hit, Darcy established his reputation as a superb public speaker and organizer by leading the largest protest of unemployed workers ever held in the U.S.
At the age of twenty-five, Darcy was appointed California District Organizer and sent to San Francisco. There, he was especially active in organizing seamen, longshoremen, and farmworkers, and was a major strategist behind the San Francisco general strike of 1934 and many of the farm labor organizing drives that swept the state in the early 1930s. Throughout his California tenure he worked hard to unite the disparate ethnic working-class populations of the state -- Filipinos, Japanese, Mexicans, and Anglos. In 1935, Darcy left for the Soviet Union as a representative of the CPUSA to the Communist International (Comintern); for the next 22 months he held several important positions in the Comintern, including the leadership of the South African secretariat.
Returning from the Soviet Union in 1938, Darcy continued to hold important posts in the CPUSA -- as Central Committee Representative to the Northwest District, and, during World War II, as District Organizer of the Eastern Pennsylvania District. In 1944, however, because of his active opposition to Party General Secretary Earl Browder, Darcy was expelled from the CPUSA. Although vindicated in 1945 when Browder was removed from office, Darcy did not rejoin the Party.
From the mid-1940s until his death on November 8, 2005, Darcy maintained his interest in domestic and international labor and economic policy issues. He also continued to be a political and civic activist and was a frequent speaker on college campuses. He wrote several books in his life, including Late Afternoon for the Nation State, Thomas Jefferson: The Second Revolution, and The Challenge of Youth.
Read entire article at Talking History
DARCY BIOGRAPHY: Sam Adams Darcy was born in 1905 in the Ukraine. In 1908, he emigrated to the U.S. with his parents, and spent his youth in NYC. He attended De Witt Clinton High School and NYU -- all the while working at a variety of factory jobs. While still in high school, he immersed himself in the radical socialist subculture of the Jewish needle trade workers, and joined the Young People's Socialist League. After the Russian Revolution, he entered the newly established Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA).
Immediately taking an active role in the organization, Darcy helped found the Young Workers' League, a predecessor of the Young Communist League. In 1927, he was sent to Moscow, where he taught at the Lenin School and served on the Executive Committee of the Young Communist International. He also spent some time in China and the Philippines helping to organize radical working-class movements there. Returning to New York in 1929, he briefly served as editor of the Daily Worker, the Party's national organ, and led the International Labor Defense, a major left-wing civil and criminal rights defense organization. When the Great Depression hit, Darcy established his reputation as a superb public speaker and organizer by leading the largest protest of unemployed workers ever held in the U.S.
At the age of twenty-five, Darcy was appointed California District Organizer and sent to San Francisco. There, he was especially active in organizing seamen, longshoremen, and farmworkers, and was a major strategist behind the San Francisco general strike of 1934 and many of the farm labor organizing drives that swept the state in the early 1930s. Throughout his California tenure he worked hard to unite the disparate ethnic working-class populations of the state -- Filipinos, Japanese, Mexicans, and Anglos. In 1935, Darcy left for the Soviet Union as a representative of the CPUSA to the Communist International (Comintern); for the next 22 months he held several important positions in the Comintern, including the leadership of the South African secretariat.
Returning from the Soviet Union in 1938, Darcy continued to hold important posts in the CPUSA -- as Central Committee Representative to the Northwest District, and, during World War II, as District Organizer of the Eastern Pennsylvania District. In 1944, however, because of his active opposition to Party General Secretary Earl Browder, Darcy was expelled from the CPUSA. Although vindicated in 1945 when Browder was removed from office, Darcy did not rejoin the Party.
From the mid-1940s until his death on November 8, 2005, Darcy maintained his interest in domestic and international labor and economic policy issues. He also continued to be a political and civic activist and was a frequent speaker on college campuses. He wrote several books in his life, including Late Afternoon for the Nation State, Thomas Jefferson: The Second Revolution, and The Challenge of Youth.