Joseph Magliacano (July 11, 1897-September 1997) was a labor activist in New Jersey and New York City. He was born in San Mango Piemonte, Italy, a village near Salerno, to a farming family some of whose members also worked in nearby textile factories. He immigrated to the New York City in 1913, where he became a barber. Not long after his arrival in the United States, he joined the labor movement and got involved in leftwing politics. In 1915 he joined a barbers' union, and in 1917 the Socialist Party; in the 1920s and early 1930s he began to work as a union organizer for textile and shoe workers, as well as organizing a relief organization for striking coal miners in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Kentucky. He also organized Italian immigrant textile workers in New Jersey and participated with them in the historic Passaic Strike of 1926, and appeared in the semi-fictional, semi-documentary film, The Passaic Textile Strike (1926), as himself.
In 1935 Magliacano was appointed organizer for Local 140 Upholstery International Union (UIU), AFL, and participated in successful drives to organize bedding and springs workers. In December 1937, he was one of the delegates to a conference of breakaway UIU locals that led to the founding of the United Furniture Workers of America (UFWA). In 1939, he was appointed organizer for the Newark, New Jersey-based Local 92 of the UFWA. He then remained with Local 140--serving as an elected officer in various capacities, as well as a business manager--until his retirement in 1968. He also ran for political office on the Communist Party of the United States ticket--in 1933, as a candidate for the New York State Assembly (for Kings County, Brooklyn, 3rd District), in 1936, as a candidate for the United States House of Representatives (for New York City's 13th District), and was active in the Italian American anti-fascist movement.
From the guide to the Joseph Magliacano Papers and Photographs, Bulk, 1923-1997, circa 1913-1997, (Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archive)
