Socialist Party Harry Fleischman Hand Signed 5X7 Sepia Photo

  

"American Socialist Party" Harry Fleischman Hand Signed 5X7 Sepia Photo. Harry Fleischman, who has died of cancer aged. 90, was a link to the once-powerful American Socialist party. National secretary from 1942 to 1950, he was also the presidential campaign. Manager of its charismatic leader Norman Thomas in 1944 and 1948.

Thomas: A Biography, the definitive portrait of that major American figure, was. From 1979 he led the Workers Defense League (WDL), fighting against. Fleischman was born to Jewish immigrant, working-class. Parents in the Bronx, in New York. He lost his first job for attempting to.

Like so many others, he moved leftward at the onset of the. Depression, but was attracted not to the furious revolutionary impulses of the. Communist party of the United States (Cpusa), preferring moderate socialist.

Fleischman saw in Thomas, a former Presbyterian minister. The proper successor to the late Eugene V Debs, who had dominated American. Socialism in the first decades of the 20th century. Thomas's vote of nearly a. Million in the 1932 presidential election - won by Franklin D Roosevelt - was.

Heartening, if less than expected, but proved to be the apex of the socialist. The populist tilt of the New Deal in 1935 and Roosevelt's popularity. Within the growing industrial union movement eclipsed Thomas's following and.

Boosted a much-moderated Cpusa into the leading force on the left. Socialists, including some of the most prominent, abandoned Thomas, but. During the ensuing decade, he divided his time between.

Labour and socialist organising in New York, Illinois and Michigan. For the Young People's Socialist League and national secretary of the Young. Falcons - a socialistic alternative to the Boy Scouts - he graduated to being a.

Major figure in the socialists' diminished ranks. During the second world war. The WDL became more important in Fleischman's life. Founded by Thomas in 1936. It had heroically defended southern share-croppers, battled for the right to. Organise unions, and sometimes simply fought for Americans' right to speak in. In the 1940s, the WDL successfully fought for changes in.

Treatment of military personnel, including racial desegregation; defended. Japanese-Americans facing internment; and supported individual war resisters. With Thomas in the lead, socialists aspired, in the face of their own decline. To uphold the conscience of the nation. The cold war all but eliminated the.

Remaining few electoral strong points of socialists in Connecticut. Thomas abandoned his presidential candidacy after. Fleischman kept travelling, working among the party faithful and against.

The rightward-shift in the labour and political milieu, while turning out. Newspaper columns urging civil liberties and world peace. Voice of America and director of the American Jewish Committee's National Labour. Service from 1953 to 1979, Fleischman found himself during the 1950s trapped.

Labour leaders around him were embracing the politics. Of the cold war while adamantly resisting efforts to compel racial integration. Of union membership or high office.