Lopatin, Harry

Harry Lopatin (1911-1999) was a socialist, a journalist who wrote for and edited Socialist Party and labor union publications, a news photographer, and labor union staffer.

Lopatin was born in Brownsville, Brooklyn, to immigrant parents. According to his widow, Adele Slotnick Lopatin, Lopatin was “born to activism,” as his mother was a former worker at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory (she stopped work at the factory several months prior to the tragic fire), and his is father took part in revolutionary activities while still in Russia, in 1905. Lopatin himself joined the Socialist Party as a teenager and in the 1930s he ran for office--the New York City Board of Aldermen, and for the New York State Senate, respectively--on the Socialist Party ticket in Brooklyn, New York--and served as president of the Brownsville Labor Lyceum, an influential left-wing cultural and political institution in Brooklyn.

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