June Croll | |
---|---|
Born | Sonia Croll 1901 |
Died | 1967 (aged 65–66) |
Other names | June Croll Gordon; June Gordon; Mrs. Langston Hughes (alias) |
Political party | Communist USA |
Spouse |
June Croll (1901-1967) was a U.S. labor organizer most active during the interwar years.
June Croll was born Sonia Croll in 1901 in Odessa in Ukraine, at the time part of the Russian Empire. [1] During her girlhood, she emigrated illegally to Canada and then to the United States, where by the age of 12 she was working in the garment industry in New York City. [1] [2] It is not certain when she changed her name from Sonia to June.
Croll became involved in trade unionism, organizing textile and millinery workers and leading strikes. [1] She joined the Communist Party and by 1935 was secretary of the Anti-Nazi Federation. [1] She later became the executive director of the Emma Lazarus Federation of Jewish Women's Clubs (ELF). [3] The ELF was a progressive organization formed by Clara Lemlich and others to provide relief to victims of World War 2, to combat antisemitism, and to provide educational programs on Jewish identity and women's rights. [4] Croll still held this job at the time of her death in 1967. [3]
Her communist beliefs and labor activism made her a target of McCarthyism. An attempt was made to deport her, and she was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. [1]
She died in 1967.
Croll married Carl Reeve, the executive chairman of the Communist Party of Pennsylvania and Delaware. Reeve was the son of labor organizer Ella Reeve Bloor. Croll later divorced him and had a long relationship with African-American journalist Eugene Gordon, starting in the 1930s. She traveled to the Soviet Union with Gordon in 1937-38. [2] She married Gordon after he divorced his first wife in 1942. At times she used the alias "Mrs. Langston Hughes", possibly to confuse U.S. immigration authorities. [2]
Emma Lazarus was an American author of poetry, prose, and translations, as well as an activist for Jewish and Georgist causes. She is remembered for writing the sonnet "The New Colossus", which was inspired by the Statue of Liberty, in 1883. Its lines appear inscribed on a bronze plaque, installed in 1903, on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. Lazarus was involved in aiding refugees to New York who had fled antisemitic pogroms in eastern Europe, and she saw a way to express her empathy for these refugees in terms of the statue. The last lines of the sonnet were set to music by Irving Berlin as the song "Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor" for the 1949 musical Miss Liberty, which was based on the sculpting of the Statue of Liberty. The latter part of the sonnet was also set by Lee Hoiby in his song "The Lady of the Harbor" written in 1985 as part of his song cycle "Three Women".
Clara Lemlich Shavelson was a leader of the Uprising of 20,000, the massive strike of shirtwaist workers in New York's garment industry in 1909, where she spoke in Yiddish and called for action. Later blacklisted from the industry for her labor union work, she became a member of the Communist Party USA and a consumer activist. In her last years as a nursing home resident she helped to organize the staff.
Ella Reev "Mother" Bloor was an American labor organizer and long-time activist in the socialist and communist movements. Bloor is best remembered as one of the top-ranking female functionaries in the Communist Party USA.
Carrie Katherine "Kate" Richards O'Hare was an American Socialist Party activist, editor, and orator best known for her controversial imprisonment during World War I.
Rose Harriet Pastor Stokes was an American socialist activist, writer, birth control advocate, and feminist. She was a figure of some public notoriety after her 1905 marriage to Episcopalian millionaire J. G. Phelps Stokes, a member of elite New York society, who supported the settlements in New York. Together they joined the Socialist Party. Pastor Stokes continued to be active in labor politics and women's issues, including promoting access to birth control, which was highly controversial at the time.
Emma Beatrice Tenayuca was an American labor leader, union organizer, civil rights activist, and educator. She is best known for her work organizing Mexican workers in Texas during the 1930s, particularly for leading the 1938 San Antonio pecan shellers strike. She was also known for her involvement with the U.S. Communist Party to advocate for Mexicans and Mexican Americans.
Maud Nathan was an American social worker, labor activist and women’s suffragist.
Vilma Lucila Espín Guillois was a Cuban revolutionary, feminist, and chemical engineer. She helped supply and organize the 26th of July Movement as an underground spy, and took an active role in many branches of the Cuban government from the conclusion of the revolution to her death. Espín helped found the Federation of Cuban Women and promoted equal rights for Cuban women in all spheres of life.
Antoinette F. Buchholz Konikow was an American physician, Marxist, and radical political activist. Konikow is best remembered as one of the pioneers of the American birth control movement and as a founding member of the Communist Party of America, forerunner of the Communist Party, USA. Expelled from the Communist Party as a supporter of Leon Trotsky in the fall of 1928, Konikow went on to become a founder of the Communist League of America, the main Trotskyist organization in the United States. Konikow's 1923 book, Voluntary Motherhood, is regarded as a seminal work in the history of 20th Century American feminism.
Martha Neumark (1904–1981) was a notable early figure in the history of women's ordination as rabbis. Neumark was widely reported to be the first Jewish woman to be accepted into a rabbinical school.
Joyce Hannah Dannen Miller was an advocate for women in the labor movement, and a founding member of the Coalition of Labor Union Women. A vice-president of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, she was the first woman elected to the executive board of the American Federation of Labor – Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO).
Martha Lena Morrow Lewis (1868–1950) was an American orator, political organizer, journalist, and newspaper editor. An activist in the prohibition, women's suffrage, and socialist movements, Lewis is best remembered as a top female leader of the Socialist Party of America during that organization's heyday in the first two decades of the 20th century and as the first woman to serve on that organization's governing National Executive Committee.
Daniel De Leon, alternatively spelt Daniel de León, was a Curaçaoan-American socialist newspaper editor, politician, Marxist theoretician, and trade union organizer. He is regarded as the forefather of the idea of revolutionary industrial unionism and was the leading figure in the Socialist Labor Party of America from 1890 until the time of his death. De Leon was a co-founder of the Industrial Workers of the World and much of his ideas and philosophy contributed to the creations of Socialist Labor parties across the world, including: Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance.
Katherine Mary Isabel "Kath" Williams, néeChambers and formerly Clarey was an Australian trade unionist and campaigner for equal pay.
Anne Burlak Timpson was an early twentieth-century leader in labor organizing and leftist political movements. A member of the National Textile Workers Union and Communist Party, Burlak was jailed numerous times for sedition. Based in New England for much of her adult life, Burlak was a candidate for local and state offices in Rhode Island and played a major role in crafting the National Recovery Administration's workplace standards for textile unions during the New Deal era.
Eugene Gordon was a journalist, editor, fiction writer, World War I officer, and social activist. He cofounded and edited the Harlem Renaissance literary magazine Saturday Evening Quill and edited a magazine put out by the Boston John Reed Club. He wrote primarily on subjects related to racial discrimination and social justice. He published some fiction under pseudonyms, using Egor Don and Clark Hall and Frank Lynn.
Lucy Fox Robins Lang was an American activist involved with the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the fight for amnesty for political prisoners. She is best known for her work with Emma Goldman and Samuel Gompers. Lang advocated for many political prisoners who had been charged under Wartime Emergency Laws. She was also a Zionist who helped raise money for settlements for Jewish refugees. Lang wrote about her life in an autobiography, Tomorrow is Beautiful (1948).
Mollie Lieber West was a labor activist and leader. Born in Sokolow, Poland, she emigrated with her parents to the United States at the age of 13 and settled in Chicago, where she faced challenges adapting due to the language barrier and a physical disability. After organizing a strike against Depression-era cuts to the arts at her high school, West graduated and became involved in labor organizing.
Georgina Schuyler was an American composer and article writer. She was a member of multiple societies. From 1901 to 1903, Schuyler led the campaign to have Emma Lazarus's poem "The New Colossus" placed in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. The plaque was placed inside the statue's pedestal in 1903.
The Emma Lazarus Federation of Jewish Women's Clubs (ELF) was a progressive secular Jewish women's organization dedicated to advancing the interests of Jewish women, civil rights, opposing antisemitism and racism, and supporting the State of Israel.