Todes, Charlotte, 1897-1996

Charlotte Stern, a communist activist, educator and trade unionist, was born in Haverhill Massachusetts in 1897. Her parents were Russian-Jewish working class emigres. Stern attended Girls Latin School in Boston, graduated from Radcliffe College in 1917, and subsequently worked as a social worker in East Boston, where she met and married Bernhard J. Stern (1894-1956), later a noted radical sociologist. During the mid 1920s, Stern served as the Organization Secretary of the Workers Health Bureau, advocating the implementation of health and safety measures for workers. Moving to Seattle in 1927, she spent the next two years as secretary of the local International Labor Defense organization, campaigning under the banner of the Centralia Liberation Committee for the release of ten IWW activists imprisoned for murder since 1919. Returning to New York City, her daughter Mira was born in 1931, and she published a book Lumber and Labor (1931), and a pamphlet The Injunction Menace (1932). She also wrote and was briefly an editor for the Daily Worker, and taught at the Communist Party's Workers School and its successor, the Jefferson School.

In 1936-37 she became an organizer for the Hairdressers and Cosmetologists Local 560B; in 1938-39, education director for the United Office and Professional Workers of America; in 1941, education director for Local 6, Hotel and Club Employees Union. Next year, her book William H. Sylvis and the National Labor Union (1942) was published. In l944 she became Local 6's "member" on the Executive Board of the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee which had been organized in 1942 to aid Loyalist refugees of the Spanish Civil War. The JAFRC was subsequently accused by the U.S. House of Representatives of being a communist front and most of its national officers were convicted in 1947 of contempt of Congress. Charlotte Stern served a three month jail term (June-August, 1950). In October 1950 she lost her job with Local 6 when its leadership changed political direction.

From the description of Papers, 1927-1956. (New York University). WorldCat record id: 477855158