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Student Activism in the 1930s
Florence Dubroff
I have often envied those of my friends who have come into the liberal movement in spite of their backgrounds and by virtue of their own intellectual integrity. I do not have any claim to having "thrown over the traces." My introduction to the student movement and my acceptance of a liberal pattern of thought and action came largely through the vital liberalism of my parents. Both my parents were in Russia during the Revolution of 1905. Both were taken to secret underground meetings by their older brothers and sisters; both were introduced to the revolutionary movement at a very early age. When they came to this country, they went to school for a while, and then were forced to work during the day so that they could attend school only at night. They tried to complete their preparatory work so that they could go to college. There were graduated from the University of Maryland in 1919. By this time they had witnessed enough of the American scene to make them realize that work with the old Socialist Party would bring them nearer to the American they had visualized before they came here as immigrants in 1910. When the split came in the Socialist Party, their sympathies went with the new Communist Party. I say sympathies advisedly; my father was a dentist, my mother trained as a pharmacist. Their contribution to the radical movement, after they began to practice their professions, came through their vote, and through their monetary contributions and presence at meetings. My father has always been active in the field of organized dentistry, in the fight for socialized medicine, and more recently in arousing approval for the Wagner Health Bill. Although my parents assumed a "comfortable" middle class position, economically, they resolved to keep me free from the hypocrisy and superficiality, and emply values of the existent "bourgeois" culture. I was not to be smug, or selfish and inconsiderate. Because I was a Jewish child living in a particularly unfriendly non-Jewish community, I was made aware of the attitude of some of my friends that Jews were apart from other Americans. At home I was taught the meaning of racial and religious tolerance, and was told stories of pogroms in Russia, of the persecution of the Negroes in the South, and was given a simplified explanation of the economic basis for such discrimination. I remember one incident particularly which placed me in school as the child of "terribly radical" parents. I spoke out one day in a history class in elementary school, insisting that the United States had not entered the World War to avenge the sinking of the Luisitania, that I was not old enough to understand all the causes of our entry into the war, but that I knew that it had something to do with munitions makers and raw materials. The teacher was aghast.......and furious. By my junior year in high school the nature of my liberal convictions had undergone considerable change. I had already read enough and learned enough to supplement my liberal background with some independent intellectual convictions. That was 1935. The second national peace strike was called. A call appeared on my desk one April morning asking the students to strike for peace. Later that day a teacher read a notice from the principal stating that he had agreed to hold a peace assembly at the 11 o'clock hour on the day of the strike at which three students and one outside speaker (chosen by him) would speak. The assembly was a tremendous success and the students of the high school were made aware, probably for the first time, of current world politics, of the catastrophe of war, etc. I became friends [illegible] movement work. During the year that followed, we organized a club outside of school called the Student Society for Peace and Democracy. We mimeographed a small magazine (circulation about 100) discussing teachers' oath bills, peace, and even attempted an analysis of the nature of the capitalist crisis! (copied directly from John Strachey) When the NSL and SLID were fused into the new ASU, I became a member of our "secret" high school branch. I was elected a leader of Arista, and managed to take that very elect society to a Theatre Union production for its term theatre party. I became editor of the high school newspaper and wrote editorials on peace, the Nunan bill, on student participation in the determination of a social studies curriculum. By the cooperation with an extremely liberal history department, several students were asked to participate in a faculty meeting discussing the curriculum of the department, methods of teaching, the nature of individual projects and so forth. When April came I petitioned for an assembly on the day of the national peace strike at which only students would speak. The petition was granted and an assembly was organized and carried through by five students, among whom were three ASU members and 2 other student leaders. When I entered Barnard, I joined the ASU immediately. I became secretary of its peace commission almost immediately and have held a position on the exec ever since. Through ASU I found most of my friends. Through the ASU I really began to understand the society in which we are living. My experiences during the last three years have been the experiences of the ASU. My work on the college newspaper and magazine, my work in our student government has been guided by the ASU program. I traveled through Europe last summer with Harvey O'Connor [illegible] with them at the International Congress for Aid to Spain and China in Paris. I heard La Pasionaria appeal to the workers of Paris to open the French frontier. We attended sessions of the World Writers' Congress in Paris. We worked with the Refugee Aid Committees in London. I came back resolved more than ever before that I must help make the students of America conscious of their responsibility to themselves and to the youth of the world. I came to the school this summer because I felt that a great deal of the failure of the Barnard ASU to click came from the lack of trained leadership, because I wanted to know the ASU in its broadest sense and perspectives, because I wanted to know more about the nation in which I am living and the ways in which I could help it to be what my parents had hoped it would be before they landed on Ellis Island. Home | Historical Essay | Documents | Credits |
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