{"value"=>"<p>Rose Pesotta was a celebrated and archetypal labor organizer. She was also a union official, garment worker, and writer. She was born in 1896 in the Jewish ghetto of the Ukrainian town of Derazhynia, and died in Miami, Florida in 1965. Pesotta was the daughter of Itsaak Peisoty, a grain merchant who was murdered by an anti-Semitic mob when she was a child. Pesotta's mother, Masyas was one of the intellectual and cultural leaders of the ghetto. Pesotta attended private elementary school in Derazhynia, and also studied at home with a private tutor who introduced her to the works of social critics as well as writers such as Leo Tolstoy, Feodor Dostoyevsky, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. At a very young age she joined the radical underground and began studying the works of revolutionary writers and social theorists.</p> <p>In 1913 the seventeen year old Pesotta emigrated to New York City to avoid an arranged marriage. She went to work as a shirtwaist maker and joined Local 25 of the International Ladies Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU). By day she worked in the sweatshops of lower-Manhattan, and at night attended school. In 1920 Pesotta was elected to Local 25's executive board, and in 1925 she started ILGWU's first education department. She also became active in the anarchist movement and worked on behalf of Sacco and Vanzetti. After attending the Bryn Mawr School for Women in Industry, the Brookwood Labor College, and the Wisconsin School for Workers, Pesotta became a paid organizer for ILGWU.</p> <p>In the early 1930s ILGWU assigned her the task of organizing Chinese and Mexican garment workers in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Her fruitful work on the West Coast gained her a national reputation as a resourceful and charismatic labor organizer. In need of such qualities in their first tests of strength in 1936, the fledgling Committee of Industrial Organizations (CIO) borrowed Pesotta from ILGWU to work alongside three of its best organizers, Powers Hapgood, Adolph Germer, and Leo Krzycki. Because of their tenacity and leadership in the rubber-workers sit-down strike in Akron, Ohio, and the auto-workers strike of 1937 in Flint, Michigan, the four organizers were given the nickname, \"Four Horsemen of the CIO\".</p> <p>As a result of her experiences in these strikes, including being beaten by hired goons, Pesotta became an outspoken champion of the rank and file. She reproached the officers of ILGWU for their failure to include more women (who composed close to 90% of the union's membership) at the higher levels of leadership. These reproofs caused a rift in her relationship with the predominantly male ruling officials. The feeling of remoteness from the union hierarchy increased with time and led to Pesotta's decision in 1942 not to seek reelection to the office of vice-president in which she had served since 1934. Afterward Pesotta returned to the rank and file where she worked as a sewing machine operator until her terminal illness.</p> <p>During the late 1930s Pesotta labored in vain to have her friend, Emma Goldman, readmitted into the United States. Pesotta was also a staunch supporter of the Spanish Republic during the civil war of 1936-1939, and organized aid for refugees interned in French camps and in danger of being returned to Spain.. Much of her time in later years was given to liberal support-groups such as the New York Chapter of the League for Industrial Democracy, the Workers' Defense League, and the Jewish Labor Committee, and worked in support of the State of Israel. Pesotta was a prolific writer. She published two autobiographical books, <em>Bread Upon the Water</em> (1945), based on her experiences as a union official and labor organizer, and <em>Days of Our Lives</em> (1958), about her Russian childhood. She also published numerous articles in labor and radical periodicals.</p>"}
{"value"=>"<p>Correspondence and papers, 1916-69, reflecting Pesotta's long career as a garment industry and CIO labor organizer in the United States and Canada, and as a union official, anarchist, and writer. Included are general correspondence dealing with Pesotta's activities as a garment worker, general labor organizer, and union official; letters by Emma Goldman, love letters of Powers Hapgood (with a few copies of Pesotta's letters), letters of the anarchist refugees, Molly Steimer Flechine and her husband, Simin Flechine; and family letters and papers. There are also financial accounts; diaries; papers relating to Pesotta's involvement in the anarchist movement and her activities on behalf of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Spanish Republicans; writings, notes and speeches by Pesotta and others, pamphlets, periodicals, and newspapers; photographs; subject papers; clippings; and Spanish Civil War, anarchist, antifascist, and Polish revolutionary posters.</p> <p>The papers of Rose Pesotta span the years, 1916-1969, and document her life and work chiefly during the Depression Era as a sewing machine operator in the garment industry, as an organizer for the International Ladies' Garment Worker's Union and the Congress of Industrial Organizations; as a philosophical anarchist; and on behalf of Sacco and Vanzetti, Emma Goldman, the Spanish Republic, and political refugees, particularly two anarchist colleagues and friends, Mollie and Simin Flechine.</p>"}
{"value"=>"<p class='list-head'>The Rose Pesotta papers are arranged in fifteen series:</p>\n<ul class='arrangement series-descriptions'>\n<li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/2390#c1062289'>Series I. Correspondence</a></div>\n</li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/2390#c1062309'>Series II. Accounts</a></div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>Invoices, vouchers, sales statements for Pesotta's books <em>Bread Upon the Water</em> and <em>Days of Our Lives</em>, canceled checks, rent book, convention expenses, and insurance certificates.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/2390#c1062310'>Series III. Diaries</a></div>\n</li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/2390#c1062313'>Series IV. Union Activities-ILGWU</a></div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>Includes Minutes of the General Executive Board, 1934-1943; reports on labor conditions in Boston, Buffalo, Chicago, and Canada; reports to the General Executive and to the National convention; report of the Pacific Coast Convention; financial statements; resolutions; list of shops visited and complaints adjusted; receipts for strike pay; budgets, etc. There also are miscellaneous papers dealing with Los Angeles Locals 96, 266, and 384</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/2390#c1062365'>Series V. Sacco and Vanzetti</a></div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>Chronology of the Sacco-Vanzetti case; financial report of Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee; bulletins, broadcast, newspapers, pamphlets, and clippings; memorabilia; and miscellany.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/2390#c1062378'>Series VI. Spain</a></div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>Papers relating to La Confederación Nacional de Trabajo y La Federación Anarquista Ibéroca; Boletins de Infomacion, ; Las Mujeres Libres; and photographs of the funeral of Buenaventura Durruti, Emma Goldman in Barcelona, and bomb damage in Barcelona; newspaper clippings; and miscellany.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/2390#c1062385'>Series VII. Puerto Rico</a></div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>Message from President Truman; articles; pamphlet; abstracts of addresses made at the Institute on Puerto Rican Problems; excerpts concerning Puerto Rico from the Congressional Record; Senate hearings on proposed Bill S. 981; Congressional hearings on political, economic, and social conditions in Puerto Rico; proposed resolutions and bills; speeches; school attendance statistics; and El Organizador: Boletin Informativo por la Union International de Trabajadoras de Aguja.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/2390#c1062408'>Series VIII. Histadrut</a></div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>Articles, bills and vouchers; ephemera; magazines; memoranda; minutes; pamphlets; report of the United Nations Committee on Palestine; and miscellany.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/2390#c1062417'>Series IX. Writings, speeches, and notes</a></div>\n</li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/2390#c1062590'>Series X. Subjects papers</a></div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>Composed of papers relating to organizations, individuals, and topics. Among others are the Congress of Industrial Organizations, Jewish Labor Committee, National Religion and Labor Foundation, biographical information on Pesotta, racial bigotry and anti-Semitism, union democracy in America, and the Workers' Defense League</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/2390#c1062627'>Series XI. Pamphlets, newspapers, and periodicals</a></div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>Pamphlets include Alexander Berkman on the Kronstadt rebellion, a memorandum submitted by Nation Associates to the President of the United states petitioning for the recognition of the Spanish Republic, Michael Cohn, John Dos Passos, and Henry Harrison on Sacco and Vanzetti, Arturo Elias on the Mexican people and the Catholic Church, Emma Goldman on the place of the Individual in society, Hippolyte Havel on Anarchism, Charles A. Madison on Emma Goldman, Joseph North on the Earl Browder case, reports to the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, Songs of the Workers published by the Industrial Workers of the World (50th anniversary edition), Bartolomeo Vanzetti's <em>Story of a Proletarian Life</em> and <em>The Background of the Plymouth Trial</em>, the Bulletin of the Women's Bureau relating to women's jobs. Included in the newspapers and periodicals are the <em>Anarchist Soviet Bulletin</em> (1919), <em>Anarchy 21</em> (1962<em>), Black Worker</em> (1949), <em>Bulletin of the International Peasant Union</em> (1950<em>), Bulletin of the Joint Committee for the Defense of Revolutionists Imprisoned in Russia</em> (1924, 1925), <em>Challenge</em> (1950, 1951), <em>Maratima, Organo del Sindicato Nacional del Transporte Maritimo</em> (Barcelona, 1938), <em>Countercurrent (La Controcorrente)</em>, (Boston, 1940, 1942, 1944), <em>Cultura Proletaria; Periodico de Ideas, Doctrina & Combate</em> (New York, 1938), Free Society (London, 1921), <em>Golos Truzenika (The Toiler's Voice)</em> Russian Monthly of the International Workers of the World (Chicago 1927), <em>Man!</em> (San Francisco, 1933, 1934, 1935), <em>Revolt</em> (1916), <em>Road to Freedom</em> (1931, 1932), <em>Tierra!</em> (1934), <em>Workers Age</em> (1935, 1936). Boxes 41-43.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/2390#c1062780'>Series XII. Photographs</a></div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>Rose Pesotta; Powers Hapgood; Emma Goldman; David Dubinsky, Mollie Steimer Flechine; William Green, picketing, union meetings and conventions, etc.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/2390#c1062781'>Series XIII. Newspaper clippings</a></div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>Newspaper clippings</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/2390#c1062782'>Series XIV. Miscellaneous</a></div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>Illustrated history of ILGWU.</p> <p>Life Magazine.</p> <p>Composition books.</p> <p>German revolutionary calendar.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/2390#c1062783'>Series XV. Posters (Map Case C-13)</a></div>\n</li></ul>\n", "type"=>"arrangement"}