Winn, Sam.

Sam Winn was born Samuel Winokur in rural western Ukraine in 1903. At the age of nine he moved with his family to the town of Lyubar (between Kiev and Lvov), where he received a rudimentary education. His father emigrated to the United States with the intention of saving money so the rest of the family could follow. The plan for emigration was interrupted by World War I and young Sam began to work as a rural laborer in the harvests and soon developed strong leadership skills. In 1919, with the Ukraine ravaged by civil war and anti-Semitic pogroms, he led a group of immigrants from Lyubar to Warsaw, where he was able to make contact with his father. With the help of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (H.I.A.S.), Sam and his family finally traveled to the United States.

Winn lived briefly in New York City, on the Lower East Side, before joining his family in Boston, where he went to high school. He eventually became an apprentice paperhanger and met his wife-to-be, Esther Berowitz, herself an immigrant from the Ukraine and an activist in the shoe-workers union. It was in Boston that Sam became politically aware and a labor activist, first as a member of Paperhangers= Local Union 258 and then as an organizer for the United Textile Workers in northern New England. When the Depression hit, he became active in the Unemployed Councils, was an organizer of the 1931 Hunger March in the Boston area and later worked for the Congress of Industrial Organizations (C.I.O.)

...