Student Activism in the 1930s
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ASU Memoirs

American Student Union Memoirs


50th and 25 National Reunion--ASU and SDS--1986

Henry Foner

1. I entered the Uptown Building of the City College in New York in September, 1935, and I had barely learned the route between the Main Building and Townsend Harris Hall when I was thrust into the midst of student political activity. Morris U. Schappes, a faculty activist who was then a tutor in the English Department, was unceremoniously informed that he would not be reappointed for the following year. The students responded with a sit-down on the first floor of the Main Building. The floor was packed with students, and the demonstration had its effect. Days later, the decision was reversed and Shappes continued to teach.

2. My tenure uptown came to an end in mid-1936. I had decided upon entering college that I would like to teach English in high school, but I soon learned that the Board of Education's appointment list of English teachers had not moved since the passage of Prohibition so I transferred to the School of Business & Civic Administration on 23rd Street and Lexington Avenue.

3. The Business School (later named after Bernard Baruch) was supposed to have a more conservative student body than the Uptown Branch, but you couldn't tell it from the student activities. When the American Student Union was formed in 1936, the 23rd Street Chapter was among the largest and most active. This was the period of annual student peace strikes, and I remember being in charge of speakers for one such demonstration in Madison Square Park. Norman Thomas, head of the Socialist Party and its quadrennial candidate for president, lived just a block from the college, and I was assigned to ask him to speak. I still blush when I recall my arrogance in informing him curtly that he would have just 5 minutes. After all, this was a time when, in some circles, Socialists like Thomas were considered "Social Fascists."

4. Years later, at the first Labor Assembly for Peace, held in Chicago in December 1967—the first nationwide labor gathering that challenged the U.S. government's escalation of the war against Vietnam—I had an opportunity to apologize. Thomas had just concluded a heartwarming reunion with Warren Billings, Tom Mooney's co-defendant in one of the most outrageous labor frame-ups in our history, when I went up to him (he was by them almost completely blind, but had lost none of his oratorical skill). I reminded him of our 1938 encounter and sought to make amends. He both remembered and forgave me.

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