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Table of Contents
Descriptive Summary
Historical/Biographical Note
Scope and Content Note and Arrangement
Access Points
Administrative Information
Container List
Series I: Biographical Files
Series II: Subject Files
Series III: Oversize Material
Series IV: Indices
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Guide to the Daily Worker and Daily World Photographs Collection PHOTOS.223
Elmer Holmes Bobst Library
70 Washington Square South
New York, NY, 10012
(212) 998-2630
tamiment.wagner@xxxxxxx
Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archive
Collection processed by Hillel Arnold. Finding aid by Hillel Arnold, Erika
Gottfried and Michael Nash.
This finding aid was produced using the Archivists' Toolkit on June 24, 2014
Finding aid is in English using Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Series IV added by Rachel Schimke , 5/22/2014
Historical/Biographical Note
The Daily Worker traces its origins to the Communist Labor Party, founded in
Chicago in 1919, and its newspaper the Toiler. When the Communist Labor Party
merged with the Workers Party in 1921 the Toiler became the weekly paper The
Worker. On January 13, 1924 it changed its name to the Daily Worker. It
continued to be published in Chicago until 1927, when the Communist Party moved
to New York City. As the official organ of the Communist Party, USA, the Daily
Worker's editorial positions reflected the policies of the Communist Party. At
the same time the paper also attempted to speak to the broad left-wing
community in the United States that included labor, civil rights, and peace
activists, with stories covering a wide range of events, organizations and
individuals in the United States and around the world. As a daily newspaper, it
covered the major stories of the twentieth century. However, there was always
an emphasis on radical social movements, social and economic conditions
particularly in working class and minority communities, poverty, labor
struggles, racial discrimination, right wing extremism with an emphasis on
fascist and Nazi movements, and of course the Soviet Union and the world-wide
Communist movement.
After the Communist Party moved its operations to New York City the Daily
Worker became one of the most influential papers on the American Left. In the
late 1920s its circulation was estimated at 17,000 and at its peak in the late
1930s it may have been as high as 35,000.
In October 1935 the Daily Worker began to publish a Sunday edition, later known
as the Sunday Worker. That same year, it also added comic strips such as Louis
Furstadt's Little Lefty, a countercultural retort to the mainstream press'
Little Orphan Annie. In 1938 it added a women's page edited by Elizabeth Gurley
Flynn. Over the years, the paper would publish the work of many notable graphic
artists and cartoonists, including prominent figures such as Fred Ellis, who
also contributed artwork The New Majority, The Liberator and The Labor
Herald; radical illustrator and muralist Hugo Gellert; painter, journalist and
cartoonist Robert Minor; and Ollie Harrington, an African American cartoonist
who lived in exile in East Germany for much of his life.
In the mid-1930s the Daily Worker established a sports page that combined
extensive sports coverage with incisive social criticism. Sports page editor
Lester Rodney led the campaign for the desegregation of professional sports in
the United States, particularly baseball. Featuring regular articles on the
accomplishments of African American athletes, such as Joe Louis and Jesse
Owens, the Daily Worker made the case that all sports would benefit from
integration. As part of this campaign it sponsored a basketball team made up of
Harlem's top high school players and persuaded a black professional football
team to play a benefit game to raise funds for the paper.
With their leadership role in the Southern Negro Youth Congress, the Communist
Party and the Daily Worker played a central role in the early civil rights
movement and the anti-lynching campaigns of the 1930s and 1940s, including the
campaign to free the Scottsboro Boys, the Angelo Herndon trial, and the work of
the International Labor Defense. The Daily Worker denounced the Jim Crow laws
of the Southern United States, focusing its coverage on violence directed
against the black community and on the emerging struggles to end segregation
and racial intimidation.
The Daily Worker's coverage of the unemployment marches in the early years of
the Great Depression and the fight for social security and unemployment
insurance made it one of the most influential papers on the American Left. Its
coverage of the labor battles of the 1930s shaped the way many Americans
thought about organized labor. Its reporters and photographers captured the
struggles textile workers in Gastonia, North Carolina in 1929; Illinois miners
in 1930; California lettuce workers and Flint, Michigan autoworkers in 1931;
coal miners in Harlan County, West Virginia ("Bloody Harlan") and teamsters in
Minneapolis in 1934. During these years, the paper also documented the impact
of the Great Depression on American working people, with stories on housing
conditions in Harlem, Hunger Marches and unemployed movement organizing across
the country, the campaign for social security, the "Don't Buy Where You Can't
Work Campaign," and mobilizations for improved housing. The paper was noted for
its investigative reporting about slum housing and block busting in Harlem.
Civil rights was an important part of the Daily Worker's agenda and the paper
covered most of the major lynching cases of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. The
campaign to free the Scottsboro Boys was on its front pages for nearly seven
years.
The news coverage in the Daily Worker almost always reflected Communist Party
policies. During the Trade Union Educational League years of the 1920s this
meant support for revolutionary unionism. During the Popular Front years the
paper was a leading voice for industrial unionism and the Congress for
Industrial Organizations.
As the organ for the Communist Party, USA the Daily Worker provided extensive
coverage about the international Communist movement. For the Communist Party
the Soviet Union was the center of the world's revolutionary movement. The
Daily Worker's coverage of Soviet life, foreign, and domestic policies
reflected an uncritical perspective on the Soviet system, as it celebrated life
in what it called the "Socialist" countries. These stories often highlighted
the miracles of Soviet economic development and ethnic harmony under Socialism.
This internationalist perspective often resulted in extensive coverage of the
struggles for declonialization in Asia, Africa, and Latin America which were
largely invisible in the mainstream press. The Daily Worker often focused on
revolutionary nationalism in its various forms from Pan Africanism to the self
determination struggles in the Middle East.
With the ascendancy of Adolph Hitler, the fight against Nazism and fascism
moved to the center of the Communist Party's agenda in the late 1930s. It
reported on Nazi atrocities, and the rising tide of anti-Semitism. In 1936
theDaily Worker sent teams of photographers and reporters to Spain, as it tried
to rally the American people to support the Spanish Republic in its brutal
civil war with the Falange of General Francisco Franco. These teams returned
with images and stories depicting the lives of ordinary Spanish people
resisting fascism, the relationship between the Republican army and the
International Brigades, and the impact of the fascist bombing in cities such as
Guernica.
With the fall of Spain and the signing of the 1939 Nazi-Soviet non-aggression
pact, the CPUSA aligned itself with the new course in Soviet foreign policy, as
World War II became an "imperialist war." Between September 1939 and June 1941,
the Daily Worker refocused on the domestic scene and the peace movement as a
way of trying to divert attention from the Soviet Union's pact with Germany.
The paper highlighted campaigns for union rights, job security, and civil
liberties.
When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June of 1941, the Daily Worker's
interpretation of the war changed dramatically. The message, as depicted in the
articles and photography of the Daily Worker, became World War II as an epic
struggle against the Nazis, the role of the Soviet Union as the major
battlefield of the war, and the impact of the German invasion on Russia's
civilian population. On the cultural front, the paper documented the
relationship between politics, folk music and folk dance, covering individuals
such as Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Leadbelly, Sophie Maslow and Martha Graham.
However, the post-war period saw the rise of McCarthyism and the Communist
Party under relentless attack. As a result, the Daily Worker experienced a
dramatic decrease in circulation and the paper's financial health, always
tenuous at best, took a decided turn for the worse. The daily paper closed in
January 1958 during the period when the Communist Party was forced to go
underground as a result of the repression of the Red Scare. In 1960 it resumed
publication as a weekly under the name of The Worker and, although it began
biweekly publication several years later, it never again achieved the level of
popularity or circulation it enjoyed in the 1930s and 1940s.
In 1967 the paper, now renamed the Daily World, resumed daily publication. It
reported on the rebirth of the civil rights movement, including sit-ins, voter
registration campaigns and the Freedom Rides, following figures including
Martin Luther King, Jr, Ralph Abernathy, Rosa Parks and Adam Clayton Powell,
Jr. In the late 1960s and 1970s, as the CPUSA aligned itself with the
anti-Vietnam War movement and Black Nationalist movements including the Black
Panthers, the paper covered important events of that period, including the
Soledad Brothers trial, the subsequent arrest and imprisonment of Angela Davis,
demonstrations against the war in Vietnam – including massive Moratorium Day
demonstrations – on college campuses in New York City and across the country,
and the Black Panther Breakfast Program in Harlem.
In 1986 the paper merged with the CPUSA's West Coast weekly, the People's
World. The newly formed People's Daily World was published from 1987 until
1991, when daily publication was abandoned in favor of a weekly edition,
renamed the People's Weekly World. During this period the paper focused
heavily on labor union activity, particularly in cities like Detroit and
Chicago, as well as the growing anti-globalization movement.
Shifting its operations back to Chicago between 2001 and 2002, the paper
changed its name to the People's Worldin 2009. In 2010, the paper ceased print
publication and became an electronic, online-only, publication.
