Samuel Adams Darcy

{{Short description|American unionist and member of the Communist Party USA}} {{redirect|Sam Darcy|the footballer|Sam Darcy (footballer)}} {{Use mdy dates|date=October 2021}} {{Infobox person | honorific_prefix = | name = Samuel Adams Darcy | honorific_suffix = | image = Samuel Dardeck AKA Sam Darcy AKA Samuel Adams Darcy 1941 Edit Crop.jpg | caption = Portland Police mugshot, 1941 | birth_name = Samuel Dardeck | birth_date = 1905 | birth_place = Ukraine, Russian Empire | death_date = November 8, {{death year and age|2005|1905}} | death_place = | death_cause = | other_names = | citizenship = | education = New York University | alma_mater = | occupation = | years_active = | era = | employer = | organization = | known_for = Albion Hall Group of 1934 West Coast waterfront strike with Harry Bridges | notable_works =  | political_party = Socialist {{small|(1917–1921)}}<br />Communist {{small|(1921–1944) ''expelled''}} | other_party = Workers {{small|(1921–1929)}} | movement = | opponents = Earl Browder | boards = | criminal_charge =  | criminal_penalty = | criminal_status = | spouse = {{marriage|Emma Blechschmidt|1926}} | partner =  | children = | parents =  | mother = Fagella Weissbly  | father = Isidor Dardeck  | relatives = | family = | website =  | signature = Sam Darcy Signature.jpg | signature_size = | signature_alt = | footnotes = }} '''Samuel Adams Darcy''' (born '''Samuel Dardeck'''; 1905 – November 8, 2005) was an American political activist who was a prominent Communist leader in New York and California. He was active in the organization of New York City's unemployment march in 1930, as well as the 1934 West Coast waterfront strike. He was a supporter of Harry Bridges.<ref name=tamiment> {{cite web | title = Historical/Biographical Note: Guide to the Sam Adams Darcy Papers TAM.124 | publisher = Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archive | url = http://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/tamwag/tam_124/bioghist.html | date = June 5, 2014 | accessdate = July 11, 2016}}</ref>

==Background== "Samuel Adams Darcy" was born Samuel Dardeck in the Russian Empire in 1905, the son of Ukrainian Jews<ref name=tamiment/> Fagella Weissbly and Isidor Dardeck.<ref> {{cite web | title = Samuel Adams Darcy | publisher = Ancestry.com | url = http://www.ancestry.com/genealogy/records/samuel-adams-darcy_138572685 | date = | accessdate = July 13, 2016}}</ref> In 1908 he and his family immigrated to New York. He spent his early years growing up in New York City, attending DeWitt Clinton High School in Midtown, and eventually New York University.<ref name="albany"> {{cite web | title = Sam Darcy Oral History Project: U.S. Labor and Industrial History – World Wide Web Audio Archive | publisher = University at Albany, State University of New York | url = http://www.albany.edu/history/LaborAudio/ | date = June 5, 2014 | accessdate = July 11, 2016}}</ref> At an early age Darcy witnessed his father, an ardent union member, severely beaten by police at a garment workers picket line. According to Darcy that was a defining moment in the development of his own political beliefs.<ref name="Nelson1990"> {{cite book |last=Nelson |first=Bruce | authorlink = Bruce Nelson (historian) |title=Workers on the Waterfront: Seamen, Longshoremen, and Unionism in the 1930s |year=1990 | accessdate = July 13, 2016 | url = http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/85yha5cb9780252061448.html |publisher=University of Illinois Press}}</ref> During a 1998 radio interview, he recalled:

{{blockquote|My father was a worker in American factories until his 79th year. He was a member of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, and I was about ten years old when he started taking me to union meetings. He was in Local 35. It ignited an interest in American workers' welfare that has stayed for me to this day, in fact... We tried to organize child laborers. When I was twelve and a half years old, I worked for the O'Sullivan Rubber Heel Company in Lower Manhattan about 1917 ... From my previous couple of years in my father's union, I became interested in organizing young child laborers, who were employed illegally, against laws which prohibited children [from] working in factories below the age of sixteen. We organized something called the Young Workers League. In the YWL, we looked around for help, working out a program for improvement ... I read the findings of Darwin ... and the ''Communist Manifesto''.<ref name="albany" />}}

==Career==

===Communist years=== [[File:Samuel Darcy 1929.jpg|thumb|left|Darcy as a candidate for the New York City Board of Aldermen, 1929]] In 1917, while still in high school, Darcy joined the Young People's Socialist League. In December 1921, following the Russian Revolution, Darcy joined the Communist Party USA (CPUSA—then the Workers Party of America), using his affinity for public speaking and organizing to rise in the organization's ranks.

In 1927, the Party sent a 22-year-old Darcy to Moscow. He taught American History at the Lenin School.<ref name="albany" /> During 1927–1928, he joined the Communist International, where he served on the executive committee of the Young Communist International (YCI), served as chair of International Children's Committee of the YCI, and traveled to China and Philippines to organize working-class movements.<ref name=tamiment /><ref name="albany" />

[[File:Sam Darcy Mama Mooney 1932 Trim.jpg|thumb|right|upright=1.2|Darcy and Mary "Mother Mooney" at a May Day rally in the San Francisco Embarcadero, 1932]]

Darcy returned to the United States in 1929 and quickly rose to prominence within the CPUSA. When Earl Browder emerged from the Party's fighting among American factions (followers of Jay Lovestone, James P. Cannon, and William Z. Foster) in the late 1920s, Browder moved Darcy over as editor of the ''Daily Worker'' – according to Darcy, Browder hoped responsibilities at the ''Daily Worker'' would consume him and take him out of Party politics.<ref name="albany" /> Darcy also headed the New York Workers School (following the departure of Jay Lovestone from the Party and of Bertram Wolfe and other co-founders from the school). In 1930, he also became the head of the Party's International Labor Defense group, which (Darcy later claimed) helped make him de facto chairman of the CPUSA.<ref name=tamiment /><ref name="albany" />

==== 1930: March 6 Protest ====

Darcy was one of the main organizers of the New York unemployment march, which took place on March 6, 1930 as part of International Unemployment Day.

Even with the massive turnout, however, internal criticism arose that the CPUSA did not reap the benefits by failing to sufficiently increase their membership. Party General Secretary Earl Browder made Darcy a scapegoat for these perceived failures by "exiling" him to San Francisco, far from the CPUSA national headquarters to a multi-state district where Party affairs were in shambles.<ref name="Nelson1990" /> While many in the Party anticipated Darcy would fade into oblivion, the shifting political climate put more organizing emphasis on the West Coast, essentially giving Darcy the platform he needed to do some of his most famous and influential work.

==== 1934: San Francisco Waterfront Strike ==== thumb|left|Darcy {{circa}} 1934 From 1931 to 1935, Darcy headed the CPUSA's California district (including Nevada and Arizona), then the Party's second largest district. He helped organize agricultural workers and helped fight California's criminal syndicalism law.<ref name=tamiment />

Darcy became involved with strategies to organize San Francisco longshoremen. In the early 1930s the Communist Party had pursued the strategy of infiltrating existing unions to elect rank and file workers to take control from what the CPUSA thought of as corrupt and conservative union officials. The CPUSA attempted to organize a separate union, the Marine Workers Industrial Union (MWIU).<ref name="userwww.sfsu"> {{cite book |last=Chretien |first=Todd |title=Dual Unionism or "Boring from Within": The Communist Party and the San Francisco General Strike |url=http://userwww.sfsu.edu/epf/journal_archive/volume_VI,_1997/chretien_t.pdf |accessdate=June 7, 2013}}</ref> Darcy and the MWIU organizer, Harry Hynes, disagreed on tactics, and eventually Hynes was recalled from San Francisco. Once the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) granted a charter to San Francisco, Darcy came to see the MWIU as an impediment to organizing longshoremen.

Darcy was supportive of Henry Schmidt and Harry Bridges who formed the Albion Hall Group as a caucus within the new ILA local.<ref name="userwww.sfsu" /> While supporters of the MWIU condemned Darcy and his "boring from within" approach, evidence suggests that the strategy was both beneficial for the Communist Party and the militants within the ILA.<ref name="userwww.sfsu" /> On the eve of the 1934 West Coast waterfront strike, ILA national President Joseph P. Ryan and Senator Robert F. Wagner, Chairman of the National Labor Board, urged the Longshoremen not to strike.<ref name="userwww.sfsu" /> The ILA Pacific Coast District leaders, who were not influenced by Darcy, ignored their requests. On May 9, 1934, some 14,000 Longshoremen went on strike throughout the West Coast.<ref name="userwww.sfsu" />

In 1934, Darcy (who had once headed the New York Workers School) helped establish the San Francisco Workers' School (later the California Labor School), where he also served as both advisor and instructor.<ref name=tamiment />

thumb|right|"Darcy for Governor" campaign poster, 1934

Also in 1934, Darcy argued within the Party's central committee to unite in a common front with Upton Sinclair's "End Poverty in California" (EPIC) movement. The Party refused and instead directed Darcy to run for governor of California as the Party's candidate.<ref name=tamiment /> His wishes would later be realized with the foundation of the United Labor Party in the 1935 San Francisco mayoral election.<ref>{{cite news |title=Anti-War League Asks Boycott Of Germans |url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/678433167/ |access-date=5 May 2026 |work=United Press |date=29 April 1935}}</ref>

==== Further Party years ====

From 1935 to 1938, he traveled to Moscow, where he took part in the 7th congress Communist International then became the US party's representative on the Anglo-American Secretariat.<ref name=tamiment />

In 1938, he became the Party's National Education Director as well as committee representative for the Party's Minnesota-Wisconsin-Dakotas district.<ref name=tamiment />

In 1938–39, the Party demoted him from full Central Committee member to alternate.<ref name=tamiment />

From 1939 to 1944, he served as head of Eastern Pennsylvania, the Party's fourth largest district. Involved heavily in electoral work, he supported Party efforts to defeat the 1943 Democratic nominee for mayor of Philadelphia, William Christian Bullitt Jr. (Bullitt had been Roosevelt's first ambassador to the USSR, 1933–1936, by the end of which time he had become anti-communist.)<ref name=tamiment />

====People vs. Darcy==== thumb|left|Poster issued by the "Committee for People's Rights" celebrating Darcy's release, 1941 In September 1940, Darcy was indicted on charges of perjury for (allegedly) having misstated his name and birthplace when registering to vote in California back in 1934. He spent six weeks in jail and was released in September 1941.<ref name=tamiment /><ref> {{cite web | title = Appeal ... United States Ex Rel. Darcy | publisher = Find A Case | url = http://nj.findacase.com/research/wfrmDocViewer.aspx/xq/fac.19400415_0040127.C03.htm/qx | date = April 15, 1940 | accessdate = July 13, 2016}}</ref><ref> {{cite web | title = Appeal... People v. Darcy, 59 Cal. App. 2d 342 (Cal. Ct. App. 1943) | publisher = Court Listener | url = https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/1178564/people-v-darcy/ | date = June 25, 1943 | accessdate = July 13, 2016}}</ref><ref> {{cite web | title = People v. Darcy | publisher = Justia | url = http://law.justia.com/cases/california/court-of-appeal/2d/59/342.html | date = June 25, 1943 | accessdate = July 13, 2016}}</ref>

==== Party expulsion ====

In 1944, Darcy and William Z. Foster openly opposed Earl Browder's "estimation of the prospects for post-war American-Soviet harmony." Foster backed down, but Darcy escalated his protest by resigning from Party offices. Shortly thereafter, CPUSA leadership expelled Darcy.<ref name=tamiment /><ref name="albany" />

===Rest of life===

In 1945, the Party removed Browder from leadership, but Darcy did not rejoin.<ref name=tamiment />

Later, he sold furniture. He partook in Democratic Party and labor issues until his death.<ref name=tamiment />

During a 1998 radio interview, Darcy characterized Earl Browder as the root of problems in the CPUSA in the 1930s: "Browder was really a corrupt man. Everything evil in Communism, he championed."<ref name="albany" />

==Personal and death==

Darcy was acquainted with many important non-communist progressives, including Lincoln Steffens, Yip Harburg, and Otto Nathan (of the estate of Albert Einstein). He also remained in touch with several ex-communists such as William Dunne and Charles Keith.<ref name=tamiment />

In 1926, Darcy married Emma Blechschmidt.<ref name=tamiment />

He died on November 8, 2005.<ref name=tamiment />

==Legacy==

The Sam Darcy Papers at Tamiment Library show principal correspondents as: William F. Dunne, William Z. Foster, Israel Amter, Roger Baldwin, Max Bedacht, Cedric Belfrage, Earl Browder, Eugene Dennis, Leo Gallagher, Yip Harburg, Roy Hudson, Robert Minor, Tom Mooney, Otto Nathan, Scott Nearing, Mike Quin, Nat Ross, William Schneiderman, Jack Stachel, Lincoln Steffens, Peter Steffens, and Ella Winter.<ref> {{cite web | title = Scope and Content: Guide to the Sam Adams Darcy Papers TAM.124 | publisher = Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archive | url = http://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/tamwag/tam_124/scopecontent.html | date = June 5, 2014 | accessdate = July 11, 2016}}</ref>

His papers also include many ''Daily Worker'' cartoons by Jacob Burck (Furiers' Strike, Gastonia Strike, Organizing Workers, Peace) and a portrait of his friend William Z. Foster.<ref> {{cite web | title = Series VII Photographs and Graphics: Guide to the Sam Adams Darcy Papers TAM.124 | publisher = Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archive | url = http://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/tamwag/tam_124/dscref229.html | date = June 5, 2014 | accessdate = July 11, 2016}}</ref>

==Works== * [https://www.marxists.org/archive/darcy-sam/index.htm Sam Darcy Archive] at marxists.org '''Books:''' * ''Late Afternoon for the Nation State'' * ''Thomas Jefferson: The Second Revolution'' * ''The Challenge of Youth'' * [https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=umn.319510020679365&seq=3&view=1up ''The Battle for Production'']

'''Articles:''' * "New Documents on the Bolshevik Revolution," ''New Masses'' (1935)<ref> {{cite journal | first = Sam | last = Darcy | authorlink = Samuel Adams Darcy | title = New Documents on the Bolshevik Revolution | journal = New Masses | url = https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/new-masses/1935/0-contents-1935-Jan-Dec-NM.pdf | date = January 1935 | pages = 40–41 | accessdate = May 13, 2020}}</ref>

'''Unpublished:''' The Sam Darcy Papers contain three unpublished works:<ref> {{cite web | title = Series VI Biographical and other manuscripts, circa 1945–1971: Guide to the Sam Adams Darcy Papers TAM.124 | publisher = Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archive | url = http://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/tamwag/tam_124/dscref139.html | date = June 5, 2014 | accessdate = July 11, 2016}}</ref> * ''The Storm Must Be Ridden'' (ca 1945) * ''Tales of Three Worlds'' (ca 1960–63) * ''The Second Revolution'' (play) (1974)

== References == {{Reflist}}

==External links== * {{cite web | title = Guide to the Sam Adams Darcy Papers TAM.124 | publisher = Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archive | url = http://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/tamwag/tam_124/ | date = June 5, 2014 | accessdate = July 11, 2016}} * {{cite web | title = Sam Darcy Oral History Project: U.S. Labor and Industrial History – World Wide Web Audio Archive | publisher = University at Albany, State University of New York | url = http://www.albany.edu/history/LaborAudio/ | date = June 5, 2014 | accessdate = July 11, 2016}} * {{cite web | title = Sam Adams Darcy on the San Francisco Strike of 1934, Parts 1 and 2 (MP3) | publisher = Talking History, University at Albany, State University of New York | url = http://www.albany.edu/talkinghistory/arch2009july-december.html | date = November 19, 1975 | accessdate = July 13, 2016}} * {{cite book |last=Nelson |first=Bruce | authorlink = Bruce Nelson (historian) |title=Workers on the Waterfront: Seamen, Longshoremen, and Unionism in the 1930s |year=1990 | accessdate = July 13, 2016 | url = http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/85yha5cb9780252061448.html |publisher=University of Illinois Press}} * {{cite web | url = http://www.worldcat.org/wcidentities/lccn-n90634015 | title = Darcy, Samuel 1905– | publisher = OCLC WorldCat | date = | accessdate = July 13, 2016}} * {{Citation |last=Kimeldorf |first=Howard |title=Sam Darcy - Howard Kimeldorf Oral History Project - Oral History Audio |date=1986-05-10 |url=https://archive.org/details/DarcySam_HKOHP |doi=10.6069/p3e6-z670}} * [https://archive.org/details/derweltbolschewismus3_202002/page/n114/mode/1up "Darcy (USA) auf dem VII. Weltkongress der Komintern in Moskau"]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Darcy, Samuel}} Category:1905 births Category:2005 deaths Category:Ukrainian Jews Category:Members of the Socialist Party of America from New York (state) Category:Members of the Communist Party USA Category:California socialists Category:Communists from California Category:Emigrants from the Russian Empire to the United States Category:DeWitt Clinton High School alumni Category:New York University alumni