Stanley Postek Papers 1933-1986

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Stanley Postek Papers 1933-1986

http://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/tamwag/wag_080/wag_080.html

Ladislaus F. Szeliga (1912-1991), better known as Stanley Postek, was a seaman, union organizer, volunteer in the Spanish Civil War, and prizefighter from Lowell, Massachusetts. Postek went to sea in the mid-1930s, and became an organizer for the International Seamen's Union of America. Along with other members of the union's rank and file, Postek broke to the National Maritime Union in 1937. Postek fought with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War and served as a merchant seaman during World War II. During the Korean War, he was barred from maritime employment, because of his associations with the Communist Party. Once he regained his papers he sailed until retirement in 1966. Postek was also involved in the Marine Workers Historical Association. He died in San Diego in 1991. The collection includes diaries, photographs, clippings documenting labor activities, sailing paperwork, and union documents. The collection documents the wide range of activities Postek participated in throughout his life, with particular emphasis on his sailing and union activities and his continued interest in these areas after he retired. Information regarding Postek's activities in Spain are represented in the collections Stanley Postek Spanish Civil War Papers (ALBA.089) and Stanley Postek Photographs (ALBA.PHOTO.089), also available at the Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives.

1.67 linear feet; in 1 manuscript box and 1 record carton.

Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives

Information

SNAC Resource ID: 6331837

Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives

Related Entities

There are 5 Entities related to this resource.

National Maritime Union

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w63w07js (corporateBody)

The National Maritime Union (NMU) was an American labor union founded in May 1937 representing workers in the merchant marine. It affiliated with the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in July 1937. After a failed merger with a different maritime group in 1988, the union merged with the Seafarers International Union of North America in 2001....

Marine Workers Historical Association (U.S.)

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w69t78fp (corporateBody)

The Marine Workers Historical Collection was the result of a community history project on the Chelsea area of New York City conducted by Joe Doyle, then a New York University Department of Public History graduate student, beginning in 1981. Doyle set out to reconstruct and document the working-class population and institutions of the Chelsea waterfront of New York City in the first half of the twentieth century. Chelsea was a center of shipping and there was a sizable Irish presence...

International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6d25sjt (corporateBody)

In the years following World War II, rank-and-file members of the International Longshoremen's Association became increasingly restive as a result of dissatisfaction with union contracts. Finally, in the fall of 1951, a series of unauthorized strikes was climaxed by a twenty-one day wildcat strike in the Port of New York. The strikers included several high-ranking ILA officials and a future president, Thomas Gleason. The strike ended when a board of inquiry to investigate the strike...

Postek, Stanley, 1912-1991.

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6pc5r9v (person)

Stanley Postek was born Ladislaus J. Szeliga on February 5, 1912, in Lowell, Massachusetts. Mr. Postek was a visible unionist throughout his life. He left school in the mid-thirties and went to the sea. He was a union organizer for the International Seamen's Union of America at the age of twenty-five, and as the rank and file broke away to form the National Maritime Union, so did he. Shortly thereafter, he volunteered for the Abraham Lincoln Brigade serving in Spain. In World War Tw...

International Seamen's Union of America

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6rz3r5s (corporateBody)