Benjamin Stolberg (1891–1951) was an American journalist and labor activist.
Stolberg worked as associate editor of The Bookman , as well as a columnist for leading US newspapers, such as The New York Times and the New York Herald Tribune'.
Stolberg was a member of the American Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky and served on the Dewey Commission investigating the Moscow Trials.
Stolberg wrote for the Saturday Evening Post – and from 1939 to 1945 he and its publisher, the Curtis Publishing, defended themselves from a libel suit brought against them by Jerome Davis for the September 2, 1939, article "Communist Wreckers in American Labor." Stolberg had called Davis a "Communist and Stalinist." Davis brought on ACLU co-founder Arthur Garfield Hays as his lawyer. Stolberg hired Louis Waldman, an "Old Guard" Socialist and anti-communist labor lawyer. The case went before the New York Supreme Court, with Justice John F. Carew presiding. [1] [2] [3]
On December 4, 1939, Davis brought a $150,000 libel suit in Manhattan against Curtis Publishing and Stolberg. [4] The trial included testimony from American Federation of Labor president William Green, [5] former YMCA president Sherwood Eddy, [3] Reverend Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick and Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise of the American Jewish Congress, [6] former CPUSA head Earl Browder, [7] former Saturday Evening Post editor William W. Stout and American Federation of Teachers vice president John D. Connors, [7] AFL vice president Matthew Woll, [8] American Mercury editor Eugene Lyons, [9] and Georgetown University president Dr. Edmund A. Walsh. [10] Davis' attorney Hays added $100,000 to the suit. [11] On June 9, 1943, a New York Supreme Court discharged the jury for failing to reach a verdict, and Justice Carew ordered the jury not discuss their deliberations. [12] On June 14, 1943, New York Supreme Court Justice Louis A. Valente denied a second motion for immediate retrial and set October 1, 1943, as date to assign retrial action. [13] Finally, on January 18, 1945, Davis settled with Curtis Publishing and Stolberg in court for $11,000 of his $250,000 libel suit before Supreme Court Justice Ferdinand Pecora. [14]
Benjamin Stolberg's papers are housed at Columbia University in New York City. [15]
Stolberg wrote histories of the labor movement, including:
Max Shachtman was an American Marxist theorist. He went from being an associate of Leon Trotsky to a social democrat and mentor of senior assistants to AFL–CIO President George Meany.
Jay Lovestone was an American activist. He was at various times a member of the Socialist Party of America, a leader of the Communist Party USA, leader of a small oppositionist party, an anti-Communist and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) helper, and foreign policy advisor to the leadership of the AFL–CIO and various unions within it.
Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U.S. 323 (1974), was a landmark decision of the US Supreme Court establishing the standard of First Amendment protection against defamation claims brought by private individuals. The Court held that, so long as they do not impose liability without fault, states are free to establish their own standards of liability for defamatory statements made about private individuals. However, the Court also ruled that if the state standard is lower than actual malice, the standard applying to public figures, then only actual damages may be awarded.
Hague v. Committee for Industrial Organization, 307 U.S. 496 (1939), is a US labor law case decided by the United States Supreme Court.
Arthur Garfield Hays was an American lawyer and champion of civil liberties issues, best known as a co-founder and general counsel of the American Civil Liberties Union and for participating in notable cases including the Sacco and Vanzetti trial. He was a member of the Committee of 48 and a contributor to The New Republic. In 1937, he headed an independent investigation of an incident in which 19 people were killed and more than 200 wounded in Ponce, Puerto Rico, when police fired at them. His commission concluded the police had behaved as a mob and committed a massacre.
Jerome Dwight Davis, was an American activist for international peace and social reform, a labor organizer, and a sociologist who founded the organization Promoting Enduring Peace. Early in his life, he campaigned to reduce the workweek and as an advocate of organized labor.
Elizabeth Terrill Bentley was an American spy and member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). She served the Soviet Union from 1938 to 1945 until she defected from the Communist Party and Soviet intelligence by contacting the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and admitting her own activities.
Lee Pressman was a labor attorney and earlier a US government functionary, publicly alleged in 1948 to have been a spy for Soviet intelligence during the mid-1930s, following his recent departure from Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) as a result of its purge of Communist Party members and fellow travelers. From 1936 to 1948, he represented the CIO and member unions in landmark collective bargaining deals with major corporations including General Motors and U.S. Steel. According to journalist Murray Kempton, anti-communists referred to him as "Comrade Big."
John Jacob Abt was an American lawyer and politician, who spent most of his career as chief counsel to the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and was a member of the Communist Party and the Soviet spy network "Ware Group" as alleged by Whittaker Chambers.
Donald Hiss, also known as "Donie" and "Donnie", was the younger brother of Alger Hiss. Donald Hiss's name was mentioned during the 1948 hearings wherein his more famous and older brother, Alger, was accused of spying for the Soviet Union, and two years later convicted of perjury before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).
Angelo Braxton Herndon was an African-American labor organizer arrested and convicted of insurrection after attempting to organize black and white industrial workers in 1932 in Atlanta, Georgia. The prosecution case rested heavily on Herndon's possession of "communist literature", which police found in his hotel room.
Benjamin Gold (1898–1985) was an American labor leader and Communist Party member who was president of the International Fur and Leather Workers Union (IFLWU) from 1937 to 1955.
The 1946 New York state election was held on November 5, 1946, to elect the governor, the lieutenant governor, the state comptroller, the attorney general, a U.S. Senator, the chief judge and an associate judge of the New York Court of Appeals, as well as all members of the New York State Assembly and the New York State Senate.
The United Public Workers of America (1946–1952) was an American labor union representing federal, state, county, and local government employees. The union challenged the constitutionality of the Hatch Act of 1939, which prohibited federal executive branch employees from engaging in politics. In United Public Workers of America v. Mitchell, 330 U.S. 75 (1947), the Supreme Court of the United States upheld the Hatch Act, finding that its infringement on the Constitutional rights was outweighed by the need to end political corruption. The union's leadership was Communist, and in a famous purge the union was ejected from its parent trade union federation, the Congress of Industrial Organizations, in 1950.
American Communications Association v. Douds, 339 U.S. 382 (1950), is a 5-to-1 ruling by the United States Supreme Court which held that the Taft–Hartley Act's imposition of an anti-communist oath on labor union leaders does not violate the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, is not an ex post facto law or bill of attainder in violation of Article One, Section 10 of the United States Constitution, and is not a "test oath" in violation of Article Six of the Constitution.
Harold I. Cammer was an American lawyer who co-founded the National Lawyers Guild. He was known for his participation in labor law, civil rights, peace and justice issues, and freedom of speech cases; in particular, defending those accused of communist leanings.
Harte-Hanks Communications Inc. v. Connaughton, 491 U.S. 657 (1989), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States supplied an additional journalistic behavior that constitutes actual malice as first discussed in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964). In the case, the Court held that departure from responsible reporting and unreasonable reporting conduct alone were not sufficient to award a public figure damages in a libel case. However, the Court also ruled that if reporters wrote with reckless disregard for the truth, which included ignoring obvious sources for their report, plaintiffs could be awarded compensatory damages on the grounds of actual malice.
The International Juridical Association was an association of socially minded American lawyers, established by Carol Weiss King and considered by the U.S. federal government as "another early (communist) front for lawyers. The principal concern about the IJA was that it "constituted itself an agent of a foreign principal hostile to the interests of the United States."
Richard G. Green was a 20th-century American lawyer who championed civil rights and free speech, including defense of William Remington in the late 1940s and Stephen Radich in the 1960s.
The New York City Teachers Union or "TU" (1916–1964) was the first New York labor union for teachers, formed as "AFT Local 5" of the American Federation of Teachers, which found itself hounded throughout its history due largely to co-membership of many of its members in the Communist Party USA (CPUSA).
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