Price, William Addison, 1915-2009

William Addison Price (1915-2009) was a journalist and community organizer. He grew up in Montclair, NJ and flew air-rescue missions for the Navy during World War II, earning the rank of lieutenant. Price’s war experiences inspired him to become a socialist. He joined the New York Daily News in 1940, eventually becoming the paper's United Nations correspondent. In 1948, Price and other members of the Newspaper Guild founded the Newsmen's Committee to Investigate the Murder of George Polk, who was Price's cousin and a fellow journalist. (Polk was murdered in Greece during the Greek civil war by forces allied with the anti-communist government.)

Price appeared before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, an inquisitorial committee which was investigating allegations that Communists had infiltrated the media, in 1956. The Subcommittee inquired if Price was a member of the Communist Party and if he used the plane he owned as a courier aircraft for the Communist International. Price invoked the First Amendment, rather than the Fifth, and argued that the Subcommittee did not have the right to inquire into his political beliefs. He was fired from the Daily News after testifying before the Subcommittee, and additionally was found guilty of contempt of Congress and was fined and imprisoned. Price's appearance before the inquisitorial committee and its aftermath spurred him to become a participant in the Committee of First Amendment Defendants coordinating committee. He also served as secretary of the New York Council to Abolish the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Price later wrote for the National Guardian, covering social issues in New York City and the civil rights movement in the South. In 1981, Price was awarded $10,000 by the Department of Justice after the FBI's "Squad 47" was found to have illegally wiretapped Price and four others on suspicion that they were associated with the Weather Underground. During the 1980s and 1990s, Price was a member and periodic resident of a congregate living house on Fire Island.

Beginning in the 1970s and continuing into the 2000s, Price worked with a number of community organizations on New York City's Upper West Side to defend tenants' rights and protest the city's urban renewal plans. He was particularly active with the United Tenants Association (UTA), an organization of tenants who lived in buildings in the city's designated West Side Urban Renewal Area (WSURA), and was treasurer of the later dissident subgroup of UTA, the Ad Hoc Committee for Low-Rent Housing. Founded in 1977 by the mostly low-income inhabitants of several city-owned buildings, UTA fought for the right to manage and rehabilitate the buildings in which its members lived, fearing that development in the WSURA would raise rents and push minority groups out of the area. The city's Fifth Amendment to the WSURA plan was passed by the early 1980s and guaranteed UTA tenants the right to rehabilitate the buildings they inhabited as low-rent apartments. However, it was not until 1991 that UTA began renovating the buildings through the city's Mutual Housing Association program (run by the Department of Housing Preservation and Development), thereby forming the United Tenants Association/Mutual Housing Association-Housing Development Fund Corporation, Inc. (UTA/MHA-HDFC, Inc.). Members of UTA’s Ad Hoc Committee contended that UTA’s association with the Mutual Housing Association would cause rents to continually increase and cause further gentrification of the area, as many low-income families in the area had already been relocated by urban renewal. In addition to the dispute between UTA/MHA-HDFC, Inc. and UTA Ad Hoc, UTA/MHA-HDFC, Inc. also brought nonpayment proceedings against Price and other tenants who refused to pay the increased interim rents.

From the guide to the William A. Price Papers, Bulk, 1960-1999, 1930s-2000s, (Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archive)