From Popular Front to Cold War: The Interracial Left and the International Workers Order, 1930-1954.

inside flap of film taken by anton schlussel of iwo dinner honoring kalman marki. april 16, 1947.

sander feinberg collection.

Cover design by Ben Katchor

From Popular Front to Cold War: The Interracial Left and the International Workers Order, 1930-1954. Edited by Elissa Sampson and Robert M. Zecker

In the fall of 2012, I digitized some old 8mm movies my father had taken. Much to my surprise it included a color movie of my grandparents at a large group dinner in a restaurant. Seated at the table were Bela Lugosi of Dracula (1931) fame and his wife Lillian.

The inside flap of the box of film had an inscription in Hungarian which translates to “April 26, 1947, Kálman Márki honored at a party by the IWO with Bela Lugosi attending.” Kálman Márki is my grandfather.

This was my first encounter with the International Workers Order (IWO) and was a catalyst for the next decade of my research on my grandfather and his friends who were all affiliated with the IWO.

I was not able to find much online about the IWO in 2012. The vast collection of 10,000 records at the Cornell University Kheel Center did not appear online until four years later when a newly curated Kheel IWO / JPFO digital repository composed primarily of confiscated organizational records appeared. Read more details in the note below. (1)

The little I could find told me that the IWO was a left-wing immigrant fraternal order that provided health and life insurance for its members. I gradually found more information via newspaper clippings and occasional journal articles. Then in 2018, historian Robert M. Zecker published A Road to Peace and Freedom: The International Workers Order and the Struggle for Economic Justice and Civil Rights, 1930-1954 which was the first comprehensive history of the IWO. I thank him for his meticulous research which gave me the background on why the four main subjects (2) of my forthcoming book Hungarian-American Heroes were so deeply involved in the IWO.

Being somewhat familiar with the broad outlines of the history of the IWO, I was delighted to learn that Robert M. Zecker and Elissa Sampson had edited a collection of articles on the IWO titled From Popular Front to Cold War: The Interracial Left and the International Workers Order, 1930–1954.

My personal connection to IWO members and my extensive research on Hungarian-Americans on the left in the United States made this book even more important to me.

The book contains 12 articles and an afterword by historian Paul Buhle. The editors created the collection to present a view of the intersectionality of the IWO “seeing the battle against racism, antisemitism, and anti-immigrant xenophobia as all of a piece and campaigning to ameliorate the class-based hurdles that working people, especially women, faced in an unregulated, capitalist America.” (3)

I do not know of any similar organization in the United States which included members from 16 sections composed of different national, ethnic and language groups. (4), all cooperating in its aims. Many had newspapers, choirs, dramatic societies, orchestras, sports clubs, youth groups, schools, libraries, and summer camps and some published newsletters in their native languages. Their labor activism and defense of victims of racism was unique among cultural or ethnic groups of the period. When the fight against fascism began in the 1930s, they joined forces with a wide range of people representing the Popular Front coalition of Communists, socialists, and liberals. Although the IWO membership included about 10% Communists, this was enough to draw the attention of the government and lead to its eventual dissolution.

I appreciate the focus on the stories of the IWO leaders who have been forgotten from popular history.

Jennifer Young writes about June Gordon, president of the Emma Lazarus Clubs which fought antisemitism and racism.
Matthew Calihman describes the cultural and political work of the great poet and author Langston Hughes including his work leading a Harlem theater company.
Felicia Bevel reports on the powerful influence of Paul Robeson, both within the IWO and in the public arena. Robeson was a celebrated singer, stage and film actor and fluent in 20 languages. Through his IWO performances and huge repertoire of songs from all over the world, he fearlessly worked to defeat racism and antisemitism.
Elissa Sampson and Robert M. Zecker tell the story of Louise Thompson Patterson, UC Berkeley graduate, teacher and consummate organizer who served as IWO vice president and was the force behind “incorporation of female and Black members as organizers, staffers, and officers.” (5)

Throughout its life the IWO mobilized its resources “for a variety of progressive causes — for example, the Scottsboro defense, fighting Jim Crow, social security legislation, the Congress of Industrial Organizations, the Spanish republic, and decolonization in Africa and Asia.” (6)

The racial and religious integration of the organization, together with its focus on progressive causes, along with senior leaders who were members of the CPUSA, drew the attention of rightwing politicians. Several were investigated by the “Dies Committee” which we know as the House Special Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC).

By 1947, the IWO had 188,000 members of all political beliefs. But their diversity itself was threatening to a society becoming more rigid during the Cold War. The IWO was added to a list of subversive organizations by Attorney General Tom Clark. Several IWO leaders were deported. Local school boards blocked IWO events.

Eventually the New York State Insurance Board ordered liquidation of IWO assets in 1954.

Some researchers have drawn connections between the children and grandchildren of the members and leaders of the IWO and later progressive causes. Perhaps more research will be done in the future to validate this. For me personally, there is great value in reading this history of perhaps the most important multi-cultural organization in U.S. history and considering how local-based action to help families can be connected to national and international action for human rights.

I have no doubt my grandfather and his IWO friends at the 1947 dinner would have embraced this book — and appreciated its honest assessment of their accomplishments and challenges.

Notes

Its myriad treasures included autographed letters from Marc Chagall, a 1939 poster of Paul Robeson singing for IWO Day, and documents in English and Yiddish showing that the IWO had been founded by Yiddish-speaking garment workers associated with Di Linke (the Yiddish Left affected by the Bolshevik Revolution). These 1,700+ documents offered insight into the IWO’s organizational life, daily activities, educational and cultural programs, conventions and resolutions, and its “amalgamated” Sections –each with its own language and activities– who shared an overriding commitment to mutual aid, non-discrimination in admitting members, and racial equality. Elissa Sampson of Cornell Jewish Studies wrote digitization grants to ensure that controversial voices who had been officially shut down in the Cold War such as those of Clara Lemlich [Shavelson], (1909 Uprising of the 20,000) and Louise Thompson [Patterson] could be heard in their own words.

She wrote: “This collection addresses issues and responses arising from the transformations of Jewish and other identities in the middle of the twentieth century under the pressures of immigration, revolutionism, World War II, and the Cold War. The creative cultural and political responses of IWO Black organizers, allies and members to fighting segregation and violence are integral to the IWO’s understanding of class, race and ethnicity. The IWO tied together the fight against ‘Jim Crow,’ antisemitism and anti-immigrant sentiment. Its culture work prioritized the participation of musicians and other artists in radical politics. Overt ideological answers are seen throughout, not least in the history of splits and reconfigurations in United States radical politics during the first half of the twentieth century.”
The four subjects of my forthcoming book Kalman Marki (my grandfather, who was a clothing designer), actor Bela Lugosi, labor leader Louis Weinstock and artist Hugo Gellert were all affiliated with the IWO and supported its activities. Gellert was the head of the IWO Hungarian Section for several years.
Elissa Sampson and Robert M. Zecker, eds., From Popular Front to Cold War: The Interracial Left and the International Workers Order, 1930–1954 (Ithaca, NY: ILR Press, an imprint of Cornell University Press, 2026), 1.,/div>
The 16 sections included: Jewish (JPFO), English, African-American, Hungarian, Ukrainian, Carpatho-Russian, Spanish, Italian, Greek, Serbian, Russian, Slovak, Polish, Romanian, Czech, Finnish members.
From Popular Front to Cold War, 182.
From Popular Front to Cold War, 129.