Sherman Labovitz author of Being Red in Philadelphia: A Memoir of
the McCarthy Era at the Kelly Writers House
a professor of social work...alumnus of
Penn...radical political
activist...talented
memoirist...speaks about...
Monday, January 18, 1999 7 P.M.
part of the Writers House Alumni Writers Series
introduced by Ira Schwartz, Dean of Penn's Social of Social Work
Back in 1953, Sherman Labovitz was a world war II vet living in a
modest
Strawberry Mansion rowhouse with his wife and two kids, holding down a
low-paying job with a small newspaper. But there was nothing typical about
his job as Philadelphia circulation manager for the communist Daily
Worker or his political ideas.
So when he was awakened by pounding on his front door on a muggy summer
night in 1953, Labovitz told his wife, "This is it." The FBI had arrived
to haul him off in handcuffs.
Sherman Labovitz...
- came of age in the progressive political and social movement in
Philadelphia, a period that included years of membership, and then
leadership, in the Philadelphia section of the U.S. Communist Party
- was arrested with other communist leaders in the summer of 1953 and
tried under the Smith Act of treason; he was the youngest defendant of the
"Philadelphia Nine," which included among others the radical modernist
poet, Walter Lowenfels
- was for many years a Professor of Social Work at
Richard Stockton
College of New Jersey, having established the undergraduate program in
social work there
- has been an active partner with the Council of Social Work Education
- has written a beautiful, moving memoir of his experiences being tried
under the Smith Act and defended by unusually principled prominent
Philadelphia lawyers
- Click here to
read a review that appeared in the Philadelphia Daily News.
Philadelphia communists picket to demand the release of W.E.B. DuBois,
1951 (source: Temple University Urban Archives)
