Student League for Industrial Democracy (1946-1959)
Encyclopedia
The Student League for Industrial Democracy of 1946 to 1959 was the second incarnation of the League for Industrial Democracy's
student group. It changed its name to the Students for a Democratic Society
on January 1, 1960, and severed its connection to the LID in 1965.
merged with other groups to form the American Student Union
in 1935, the League for Industrial Democracy still tried to keep a campus presence.In the late 1930s and early war years they organized summer institutes to educate students in union organizing and sponsored lecture tours by Joel Seidman and LeRoy Bower. After the war, with the campus population swelling with returning veterans on the GI Bill, renewed interest in the LID began to be felt at the grassroots. The first post-war campus chapter was founded by Frank Wallick at Antioch College
. The LID engaged Jesse Cavileer and Elizabeth Healy to begin an organizing tour of the country's colleges, setting up SLID chapters at City College of New York
, Brooklyn College
, Harvard
, and Cornell
. During the Christmas break of 1946-1947 a provisional conference was held at the Rand School
to reconstitute SLID. It was attended by representatives of 30 colleges and three high schools. Eric Hayden was elected temporary chairman and Gustav Papenek temporary vice-chairman. An executive committee was also elected.
The groups activities during this period included collecting funds to aid striking workers, walking on picket lines, toured Saskatchewan
(which had recently elected a social democratic government) successfully protesting against segregation at the University of Michigan, less successfully against censorship of student publications and organizing an annual leadership institute at Port Huron, Michigan at a facility jointly owned by the Michigan CIO and the UAW. Internationally the group led protests against the 1948 coup in Czechoslovakia and repression against student activists in East Germany.
The SLIDs second official post-war convention was held in December 1947 at Wayne State University in Detroit, in conjunction with a conference on "Community Sources of Prejudice". Fifty-one delegates from 16 colleges were present. The following year four regional committees: Ohio, Michigan, metropolitan New York and Up-state New York. Most of the organizers had no difficulty establishing SLID recognition on campus. The SLIDs final convention of the decade was held at Freedom House
in New York were some 20 chapters were represented.
at home, the SLID canceled its 1949 convention. Instead they met in April 1950, at the Rand School, where they approved more plans for summer institutes and student opinion surveys. They also began to co-sponsor a lecture series with the Young Peoples Socialist League and Students for Democratic Action called "Conflicting Ideologies of Our Time" which featured such speakers as Daniel Bell
, Aaron Levenstein and Ruth Fischer
. SLID also acquired one of their most famous leaders that year, James Farmer
, who became Student Field Organizer.
By the June 1951 convention in Detroit membership was down to 500. Farmer set out on an energetic organizing tour of the Midwest from October 1951 to October 1952, visiting 22 colleges and 10 high schools. The next spring he also toured the West Coast. In February 1953 Harry Lewak became an organizer in New York. Through these efforts the SLID was able to maintain an active presence on several important campuses, including Antioch, Oberlin, Harvard and Wayne, but the organization was still in decline. In reference to groups situation, its 1953 convention announced the beginning of "Operation Bootstrap", a series of initiatives to revive the group.
Factional problems also hindered the SLIDs progress. Bogdan Denitch
, a Shachtmanite member of YPSL, organized a "Red Caucus" within SLID and took control of the CCNY Evening Session chapter. This group tried to change the nature of SLID toward a more Leninist "disciplined" group. After a two year fight with the National executive Committee they were expelled.
By the mid to late 1950s SLID had about 100 members and possibly three active chapters, the most important one at Yale. The 1957 convention drew 39 delegates and the 1958 convention only 13. A report of an organizing tour of the mid-west in 1938 recorded on functioning chapter at Madison, Wisconsin, thre to eight members at Ann Arbor, and one member each at Oberlin, Ohio State, Indiana, Purdue and Minnesota.
The fortunes of the group began to turn around in the late 1950s when Al Haber joined the SLID chapter at Ann Arbor. He was able to launch a radical student political party VOICE. Haber was elected SLID vice-president in 1959, and became, successively, field organizer and president in 1960. At his suggestion the group changed its name to the Students for a Democratic Society.
at Madison, Wisconsin in September 1948, and remained affiliated through the 1950s. According Andre Schiffrin
, leader of the Yale chapter and later SLID president, none of the SLIDers were aware of that groups ties to the CIA. In early 1952 SLID became an associate (non-voting) member of the International Union of Socialist Youth
. It had to be an associate member because of its status as a tax exempt "educational" association, which allowed union subsidies to LID and SLID. In 1953 SLId affiliated to the Young Adult Council, the US division of the World Assembly of Youth
.
League for Industrial Democracy
The League for Industrial Democracy , from 1960-1965 known as the Students for a Democratic Society , was founded in 1905 by a group of notable socialists including Harry W. Laidler, Jack London, Norman Thomas, Upton Sinclair, and J.G. Phelps Stokes...
student group. It changed its name to the Students for a Democratic Society
Students for a Democratic Society
Students for a Democratic Society was a student activist movement in the United States that was one of the main iconic representations of the country's New Left. The organization developed and expanded rapidly in the mid-1960s before dissolving at its last convention in 1969...
on January 1, 1960, and severed its connection to the LID in 1965.
Origins
After the autonomous Student League for Industrial DemocracyStudent League for Industrial Democracy (1930s)
The Intercollegiate League for Industrial Democracy was the official youth section of the League for Industrial Democracy and a de facto junior section of the Socialist Party of America during the 1920s and the first half of the 1930s...
merged with other groups to form the American Student Union
American Student Union
The American Student Union was a national left-wing organization of college students of the 1930s, best remembered for its protest activities against militarism. Founded by a 1935 merger of Communist and Socialist student organizations, the ASU was affiliated with the American Youth Congress...
in 1935, the League for Industrial Democracy still tried to keep a campus presence.In the late 1930s and early war years they organized summer institutes to educate students in union organizing and sponsored lecture tours by Joel Seidman and LeRoy Bower. After the war, with the campus population swelling with returning veterans on the GI Bill, renewed interest in the LID began to be felt at the grassroots. The first post-war campus chapter was founded by Frank Wallick at Antioch College
Antioch University
Antioch University is an American university with five campuses located in four states. Campuses are located in Los Angeles, California; Santa Barbara, California; Keene, New Hampshire; Yellow Springs, Ohio; and Seattle, Washington. Additionally, Antioch University houses two institution-wide...
. The LID engaged Jesse Cavileer and Elizabeth Healy to begin an organizing tour of the country's colleges, setting up SLID chapters at City College of New York
City College of New York
The City College of the City University of New York is a senior college of the City University of New York , in New York City. It is also the oldest of the City University's twenty-three institutions of higher learning...
, Brooklyn College
Brooklyn College
Brooklyn College is a senior college of the City University of New York, located in Brooklyn, New York, United States.Established in 1930 by the New York City Board of Higher Education, the College had its beginnings as the Downtown Brooklyn branches of Hunter College and the City College of New...
, Harvard
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
, and Cornell
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
. During the Christmas break of 1946-1947 a provisional conference was held at the Rand School
Rand School of Social Science
The Rand School of Social Science was formed in New York City by adherents of the Socialist Party of America in 1906. The school aimed to provide a broad education to workers, imparting a politicizing class-consciousness, and additionally served as a research bureau, a publisher, and the operator...
to reconstitute SLID. It was attended by representatives of 30 colleges and three high schools. Eric Hayden was elected temporary chairman and Gustav Papenek temporary vice-chairman. An executive committee was also elected.
1940s
Forty delegates from twelve schools attended the SLIDS first official post-war convention in April 1947 at the Labor Temple in New York. Papanek was elected president, John Roche vice-president and Hannah Kaiser secretary. The convention passed a resolution banning all "totalitarians" from membership, a measure designed to keep out Communists and other infiltrators. The Cornell chapter was tasked with publishing a national organ, SLID Voice. SLID enjoyed popularity in the immediate post-war years, before the concept of the Cold War and McCarthyism had set in. By 1948 it had 700 members.The groups activities during this period included collecting funds to aid striking workers, walking on picket lines, toured Saskatchewan
Saskatchewan
Saskatchewan is a prairie province in Canada, which has an area of . Saskatchewan is bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, and on the south by the U.S. states of Montana and North Dakota....
(which had recently elected a social democratic government) successfully protesting against segregation at the University of Michigan, less successfully against censorship of student publications and organizing an annual leadership institute at Port Huron, Michigan at a facility jointly owned by the Michigan CIO and the UAW. Internationally the group led protests against the 1948 coup in Czechoslovakia and repression against student activists in East Germany.
The SLIDs second official post-war convention was held in December 1947 at Wayne State University in Detroit, in conjunction with a conference on "Community Sources of Prejudice". Fifty-one delegates from 16 colleges were present. The following year four regional committees: Ohio, Michigan, metropolitan New York and Up-state New York. Most of the organizers had no difficulty establishing SLID recognition on campus. The SLIDs final convention of the decade was held at Freedom House
Freedom House
Freedom House is an international non-governmental organization based in Washington, D.C. that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom and human rights...
in New York were some 20 chapters were represented.
1950s
The fortunes of the group declined sharply in the 1950s, and near the end of the decade it had under 100 active members. Because of the escalating Cold War abroad and the dramatic rise and decline of the Henry Wallace Progressive movementProgressive Party (United States, 1948)
The United States Progressive Party of 1948 was a left-wing political party that ran former Vice President Henry A. Wallace of Iowa for president and U.S. Senator Glen H. Taylor of Idaho for vice president in 1948.-Foundation:...
at home, the SLID canceled its 1949 convention. Instead they met in April 1950, at the Rand School, where they approved more plans for summer institutes and student opinion surveys. They also began to co-sponsor a lecture series with the Young Peoples Socialist League and Students for Democratic Action called "Conflicting Ideologies of Our Time" which featured such speakers as Daniel Bell
Daniel Bell
Daniel Bell was an American sociologist, writer, editor, and professor emeritus at Harvard University, best known for his seminal contributions to the study of post-industrialism...
, Aaron Levenstein and Ruth Fischer
Ruth Fischer
Ruth Fischer was a German Communist, a co-founder of the Austrian Communist Party in 1918. According to secret information declassified in 2010, she was a key agent of the American intelligence service known as "The Pond."-Life and work:Born in Leipzig, Ruth Fischer was the daughter of the...
. SLID also acquired one of their most famous leaders that year, James Farmer
James L. Farmer, Jr.
James Leonard Farmer, Jr. was a civil rights activist and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement. He was the initiator and organizer of the 1961 Freedom Ride, which eventually led to the desegregation of inter-state transportation in the United States.In 1942, Farmer co-founded the Committee...
, who became Student Field Organizer.
By the June 1951 convention in Detroit membership was down to 500. Farmer set out on an energetic organizing tour of the Midwest from October 1951 to October 1952, visiting 22 colleges and 10 high schools. The next spring he also toured the West Coast. In February 1953 Harry Lewak became an organizer in New York. Through these efforts the SLID was able to maintain an active presence on several important campuses, including Antioch, Oberlin, Harvard and Wayne, but the organization was still in decline. In reference to groups situation, its 1953 convention announced the beginning of "Operation Bootstrap", a series of initiatives to revive the group.
Factional problems also hindered the SLIDs progress. Bogdan Denitch
Bogdan Denitch
Bogdan Denitch is an American sociologist of Yugoslav origin who is an emeritus professor at the City University of New York . He is a leading authority on the political sociology of the former Yugoslavia...
, a Shachtmanite member of YPSL, organized a "Red Caucus" within SLID and took control of the CCNY Evening Session chapter. This group tried to change the nature of SLID toward a more Leninist "disciplined" group. After a two year fight with the National executive Committee they were expelled.
By the mid to late 1950s SLID had about 100 members and possibly three active chapters, the most important one at Yale. The 1957 convention drew 39 delegates and the 1958 convention only 13. A report of an organizing tour of the mid-west in 1938 recorded on functioning chapter at Madison, Wisconsin, thre to eight members at Ann Arbor, and one member each at Oberlin, Ohio State, Indiana, Purdue and Minnesota.
The fortunes of the group began to turn around in the late 1950s when Al Haber joined the SLID chapter at Ann Arbor. He was able to launch a radical student political party VOICE. Haber was elected SLID vice-president in 1959, and became, successively, field organizer and president in 1960. At his suggestion the group changed its name to the Students for a Democratic Society.
Affiliations
SLID was represented at the founding convention of the National Student AssociationNational Student Association
The United States National Student Association, a confederation of American college and university student governments, was founded in 1947 at a conference at the University of Wisconsin. It established its first headquarters in Madison, not far from the U. of Wisconsin campus...
at Madison, Wisconsin in September 1948, and remained affiliated through the 1950s. According Andre Schiffrin
André Schiffrin
André Schiffrin is a European-born American author, publisher and socialist.- Life :Schiffrin is the son of Jacques Schiffrin, a Russian Jew who emigrated to France and briefly enjoyed success there as publisher of the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, which he founded, and which was bought by...
, leader of the Yale chapter and later SLID president, none of the SLIDers were aware of that groups ties to the CIA. In early 1952 SLID became an associate (non-voting) member of the International Union of Socialist Youth
International Union of Socialist Youth
The International Union of Socialist Youth encompasses socialist, social democratic and Labour Party youth organizations from more than 100 states of the world...
. It had to be an associate member because of its status as a tax exempt "educational" association, which allowed union subsidies to LID and SLID. In 1953 SLId affiliated to the Young Adult Council, the US division of the World Assembly of Youth
World Assembly of Youth
The World Assembly of Youth is the coordinating body of national youth councils and organisations of over one-hundred national youth organizations from around the world. It was founded in 1949 in London, England....
.
Publications
- Once upon a time-- New York, N.Y. : The League, 1950
- Campus rebels; a brief history of the Student League for Industrial Democracy. by Harold Lewack New York, Student League for Industrial Democracy 1953
- S.L.I.D. organizers manual by Harold Lewack and Andre SchiffrinAndré SchiffrinAndré Schiffrin is a European-born American author, publisher and socialist.- Life :Schiffrin is the son of Jacques Schiffrin, a Russian Jew who emigrated to France and briefly enjoyed success there as publisher of the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, which he founded, and which was bought by...
New York, N.Y. : Student League for Industrial Democracy, 1955 - Subsidization of the arts : a survey of governmental aid to music, art and the theater in the free world by Emmett Groseclose New York, N.Y. : Student League for Industrial Democracy, 1955 (SLID Research tracts #1)
- Steward training in C.I.O. unions by Mildred Bersh New York, N.Y. : Student League for Industrial Democracy, 1955 (SLID Research tracts #2)
- The worker priests by Marie Therese Dubalen New York, N.Y. : Student League for Industrial Democracy, 1955 (SLID Research tracts #3)
- The quiet revolution, a study of the Antigonish Movement. by Harold Lewack New York, N.Y. : Student League for Industrial Democracy, 1955 (SLID Research tracts #4)
- Distribution of income in the United States by Gabriel KolkoGabriel KolkoGabriel Kolko is an American historian and author.Kolko was born in Paterson, New Jersey, attended Kent State University and the University of Wisconsin , married Joyce Manning in 1955, and received his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1962. Following graduation he taught at the University of Pennsylvania...
New York, N.Y. : Student League for Industrial Democracy, 1955 (SLID Research tracts #5) - Resolutions Approved by the 1957 National Convention of the Student League for Industrial Democracy, New York City. New York: Student League for Industrial Democracy, 1957
- Background papers # 1, 2 & 3, Summer Institute of the Student League for Industrial Democracy : University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisc., July 7-13, 1958. New York: Student League for Industrial Democracy, 1958