Biography
Early years
Michael Harold Nash was born in 1946 in The Bronx area of New York City. Nash was raised as a red diaper baby as both his parents were school teachers with radical political views. [1] His father Julius Nash, a science teacher, suffered job discrimination during the Cold War of anti-communism, having been removed from his teaching job in 1955 as part of a far reaching purge and blacklist of Communist and former Communist teachers in the New York City School system. [2]
This purge, similar in form to policies implemented in other places in the United States presented their subjects with an irresolvable conflict: If one refused to sign a "loyalty oath" indicating that the signer had never been a communist, the individual was fired and blacklisted. If one signed such an oath and admitted that were or had been a member of the Communist Party USA, one was fired and blacklisted. If one signed such an oath and the "little McCarthys" administering the purge determined the signer had lied, the signer would be fired and blacklisted. Thus barred from the public schools, the elder Nash went on to manage a toy store, also teaching in a local yeshiva. [3] His mother, Ruth Nash, taught business and was a union activist. [3]
As a young boy Nash was not driven by scholarly pursuits, instead being more interested in collecting comic books, baseball cards, and following the exploits of the local baseball team, the New York Yankees. [3]
Nash attended Harpur College, today known as Binghamton University, in Vestal, New York, from which he graduated with a B.A. degree in History in 1968. [4] Nash then enrolled in Columbia University in New York City, earning a M.A. in American History in 1969. [4] Nash began work on a PhD in labor history, beginning a study of the political behavior of coal miners and steel workers during the progressive era. [5] Nash was discouraged both by the magnitude of the project he visualized and the job market for labor historians, however, so he took steps towards becoming a professional archivist, earning a Master of Library Science degree in 1974. [4]
Upon completion of his MLS, Nash returned to Binghamton University to complete his PhD in American Labor History under the tutelage of historian Melvyn Dubofsky, [3] earning the degree in 1975. [4] More years would pass before his dissertation subject, an attempt to demonstrate the emergence of American workers in heavy industry "into something resembling a class-conscious proletariat," would find print. [5] This work, Conflict and Accommodation: Coal Miners, Steel Workers, and Socialism, 1890-1920, was published by Greenwood Press in 1982. [5]
Career
With his scholarly writing occupying his free time, Nash began his career as an archival specialist at the New York Public Library in 1974, a position in which he remained for 6 years. [4] Nash subsequently moved to assume a position as Assistant Archivist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. [4] At Cornell Nash worked in the library of School of Industrial and Labor Relations, a position which lost its funding in 1982, forcing another change of employment. [1]
Unable to find a position as a labor historian or archivist, Nash spent the next two decades of his career at the Hagley Museum and Library in Wilmington, Delaware, a facility specializing in collections dealing with the history of business and technology. [4]
Nash came to New York University in the middle of 2002 to take a position as Director of the Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, a specialized labor history collection housed at the university. [6] Nash regarded this as "the dream job of his life" and remained in this position until the time of his death in 2012. [6]
Nash was instrumental in the organization and expansion of this collection, which had its roots in the collection of the Socialist Party's Rand School of Social Science until its acquisition by NYU in 1963. [7]
In March 2007 Nash was instrumental in arranging the transfer of the Reference Center for Marxist Studies (RCMS), the archive and library of the Communist Party USA, to NYU. [8] Included in this material were some 20,000 books, 5,000 magazines, a complete run of party newspaper The Daily Worker, every party pamphlet ever produced, and the 1 million image photo archive of The Daily Worker and its successor publications. [8]
Other collections garnered by Nash for Tamiment Library included the papers of Victor Navasky of The Nation magazine, Central Intelligence Agency defector and whistle blower Philip Agee, left wing civil rights and civil liberties attorney William Kunstler, and those of radical historian Howard Zinn. [3]
According to Michael Stoller, Director of Collections and Research Services at NYU, Nash was particularly effective in obtaining key collections for Tamiment Library due to his sincerity, optimism, and likability. [3] More importantly, Nash was also successful because of the respect that he earned by his achievements as a labor historian, his professionalism, and his knowledge of what was important and what was not important
In addition to his professional duties, Nash was the founder and co-director of the Center for the United States and the Cold War and the Frederic Ewen Center for Academic Freedom. [3] Nash was an expert on the Spanish Civil War who periodically taught undergraduate courses on that topic at NYU. [9] He was also a board member of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives, an organization whose holdings are also housed at Tamiment Library at NYU, [4] and a member of the Historians of American Communism.
Death and legacy
Michael Nash died on July 24, 2012, of a pulmonary embolism. [1] He was 66 years old at the time of his death. At the end of his life he was working with the Occupy Wall Street movement in both safeguarding their developing collections for history and encouraging and using his knowledge of peoples movements to advise them on strategy and tactics. His legacy lives on in his work, the ongoing work of the Tamiment Library, and the deep affection that so many people felt for him over the decades. Few individuals combined the personal and the political as positively as Michael Nash. Few have really been scholars, teachers and activists as he had been. [1]
The Daily Worker was a newspaper published in Chicago founded by communists, socialists, union members, and other activists. Publication began in 1924. It generally reflected the prevailing views of members of the CPUSA; it also reflected a broader spectrum of left-wing opinion. At its peak, the newspaper achieved a circulation of 35,000. Contributors to its pages included Robert Minor and Fred Ellis (cartoonists), Lester Rodney, David Karr, Richard Wright, John L. Spivak, Peter Fryer, Woody Guthrie and Louis F. Budenz.
Philip Sheldon Foner was an American labor historian and teacher. Foner was a prolific author and editor of more than 100 books. He is considered a pioneer in his extensive works on the role of radicals, Black Americans, and women in American labor and political history, which were generally neglected in mainstream academia at the time. A Marxist thinker, he influenced more than a generation of scholars, inspiring some of the work published by younger academics from the 1970s on. In 1941, Foner became a public figure as one among 26 persons fired from teaching and staff positions at City College of New York for political views, following an investigation of communist influence in education by a state legislative committee, known as the Rapp-Coudert Committee.
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was an American labor leader, activist, and feminist who played a leading role in the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Flynn was a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union and a visible proponent of women's rights, birth control, and women's suffrage. She joined the Communist Party USA in 1936 and late in life, in 1961, became its chairwoman. She died during a visit to the Soviet Union, where she was accorded a state funeral with processions in Red Square attended by over 25,000 people.
The Rand School of Social Science was formed in 1906 in New York City by adherents of the Socialist Party of America. 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 of a summer camp for socialist and trade union activists.
Simon W. Gerson was a top leader of the Communist Party USA. In particular, he was considered its leading expert on campaigns and election. He was perhaps most famous for being the party's appointee to fill the New York City Council vacancy left by the death of Peter Cacchione, but with the council refusing to seat him. He was also an editor for The Daily Worker.
The Tamiment Library is a research library at New York University that documents radical and left history, with strengths in the histories of communism, socialism, anarchism, the New Left, the Civil Rights Movement, and utopian experiments. The Robert F. Wagner Archives, which is also housed in Bobst Library at NYU, documents American labor history. Together the two units form an important center for scholarly research on labor and the left.
Paul Merlyn Buhle is a (retired) Senior Lecturer at Brown University, author or editor of 35 volumes including histories of radicalism in the United States and the Caribbean, studies of popular culture, and a series of nonfiction comic art volumes. He is the authorized biographer of C. L. R. James.
Gil Green was a leading figure in the Communist Party of the United States of America until 1991. He is best remembered as the leader of the party's youth section, the Young Communist League, during the tumultuous decade of the 1930s.
Historians of American Communism (HOAC) is a national academic association, established in 1982, bringing together historians, political scientists, and independent scholars interested in the study of the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) and other communist and anti-communist organizations in the United States. The society publishes a semi-annual journal, American Communist History, produced by the British academic publisher Routledge. The organization also maintains an internet newsgroup on H-Net.
Mark Starr was a British American labor historian and pedagogue. For 25 years he was educational director of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union.
Esther Victoria Cooper Jackson was an American civil rights activist, social worker, and communist activist. She worked with Shirley Graham Du Bois, W. E. B. Du Bois, Edward Strong, and Louis E. Burnham, and was one of the founding editors of the magazine Freedomways, a theoretical, political and literary journal published from 1961 to 1985. She also served as organizational and executive secretary at the Southern Negro Youth Congress.
James S. "Jim" Allen, born Sol Auerbach (1906–1986), was an American Marxist historian, journalist, editor, activist, and functionary of the Communist Party USA. Allen is best remembered as the author and editor of over two dozen books and pamphlets and as one of the party's leading experts on African-American history.
The New York Workers School, colloquially known as "Workers School", was an ideological training center of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) established in New York City for adult education in October 1923. For more than two decades the facility played an important role in the teaching of party doctrine to the organization's functionaries, as well as offering a more general educational program to trade union activists.
The Unemployed Councils of the USA (UC) was a mass organization of the Communist Party, USA established in 1930 in an effort to organize and mobilize unemployed workers to advance party policy goals in preparation for an anticipated final conflict to overthrow capitalism.
The Jefferson School of Social Science was an adult education institution of the Communist Party USA located in New York City. The so-called "Jeff School" was launched in 1944 as a successor to the party's New York Workers School, albeit skewed more towards community outreach and education rather than the training of party functionaries and activists, as had been the primary mission of its predecessor. Peaking in size in 1947 and 1948 with an attendance of about 5,000, the Jefferson School was embroiled in controversy during the McCarthy period including a 1954 legal battle with the Subversive Activities Control Board over the school's refusal to register as a so-called "Communist-controlled organization."
Samuel Adams Darcy was an American political activist who was a prominent Communist leader in both New York and California. While active in the organization of New York City's unemployment march in 1930, he was perhaps most famous for his role in the 1934 West Coast waterfront strike and support for Harry Bridges.
Albert Prago (1911–1993) was an American historian.
Henry Joseph Foner was a 20th-century Jewish-American social activist and president for more than two decades of the Joint Board, Fur, Leather and Machine Workers Union (FLM).
Daniel Joseph Leab was an American historian of 20th-century history. He made significant academic contributions to fields of American labor unions and anti-Communism. He was long-time editor of three journals and magazines.
Adelaide Bean was an actress, a journalist, and a member of the Communist Party of the United States of America.
