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Archie Brown Photographs

Call Number

ALBA.PHOTO.207

Date

1937-1989, inclusive

Creator

Brown, Archie, 1911-1990.

Extent

0.5 Linear Feet

Language of Materials

English .

Abstract

Archie Brown (1911-1990), San Francisco waterfront unionist, Communist Party organizer, and active member of the Bay Area Post of the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, fought with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain and participated in the Battle of the Bulge during WWII. He served on the Executive Board of the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union, Local 10, was prosecuted under the Landrum-Griffin Act barring Communists from serving as elected union officials, and won a Supreme Court decision in 1965 that overturned this legislation. The collection contains photographs of Brown at Veterans' receptions, reunions and other events. The collection also contains negatives and slides.

Historical/Biographical Note

Archie Brown was born on March 5, 1911 in Sioux City, Iowa to Nathan and Sarah Brown, Russian Jews who immigrated to the United States in the early years of the 20th century. In search of greater economic opportunity, Nathan relocated to Oakland, California, and soon after, 13-year-old Archie hopped a freight train to join his father and older brother in gainful employment. There he hawked newspapers and was initiated into labor activism while participating in a newsboys' strike in 1928. Members of the Trade Union Education League (TUEL), the labor-organizing wing of the Communist Party, helped the newsboys advance their cause, and fostered Brown's political education. He joined the Young Communist League (YCL) the following year and soon was taking part in efforts to organize agricultural workers, many of them migrant Mexicans and Dust-Bowl refugees. Brown's talents as a persuasive and indefatigable organizer came to the fore early on. A frequent orator at rallies and meetings, Brown was arrested at a YCL event in San Pedro in 1934 and charged with disturbing the peace; he received a three-month sentence. Following his release, he joined the International Longshoremen's Association, a forerunner to the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union (ILWU), and became a moving force in organizing waterfront workers in the San Francisco Bay area. It was during this time that Brown met Esther ("Hon") Matlin at a YCL dance. By 1936 the couple were married. Theirs was an enduring union that produced four children and lasted over 50 years.

With the overthrow of the popularly elected government in Spain by fascist forces in 1936, the Communist Party began recruiting volunteers to join the International Brigades' defense of the beleaguered nation. Brown's younger brother Frank ("Bimbo") was among the initial recruits from ILWU, Local 10 to enter the fray early in 1937. Archie, by now an important Party leader and well-known labor radical in the San Francisco area, was denied a passport by the local passport agency (his claims of wanting to pursue studies in France were met with incredulity). Undeterred, he traveled to New York City and in May 1938, after three months of unsuccessful efforts to obtain a passport, stowed away on a ship bound for France, to make his way to Spain. He arrived in time to serve with the Lincoln Brigade as company commissar in the Ebro Offensive and in the final bloody retreats of the war. Following the withdrawal of the International Brigades from Spain, Brown sailed from France to New York (this time as a third-class passenger) on the S.S. Ausonia in December 1938.

For further biographical information on Archie Brown, and to review the scope and contents of his manuscript collection see, The Guide to the Archie Brown Papers, ALBA 207. This collection includes images acquired by Brown in the course of his service as a volunteer in Spain and images of Brown, and others, from before and after the Spanish Civil War.

Arrangement

Folders arranged alphabetically. The photographic prints are identified by four numbers separated by colons. The first number refers to the collection number, the second to the box number, the third to the folder number, and the fourth to the individual print. For example, the first print in this collection is labeled 207:1:1:1. Negatives are numbered in the same fashion and if there is a matching print, the print number is listed below the negative number.

The files are grouped into two series:

Missing Title

  1. I, Photographs
  2. II, Negatives and Slide

Scope and Content Note

Series I: Prints. The Archie Brown Photo Collection contains approximately 330 color photographs taken after the Spanish Civil War at veterans' events, receptions, memorials and demonstrations in Spain, Germany, the USSR, and the United States. Approximately half of the images are of the 60th Anniversary Homenaje in Barcelona. The collection contains three images of Dolores Ibarurri. Other veterans in these images include: Bill Bailey, Ernst Buschman (Thaelmann Brigade), Rudolph James Corbin, the Lemaire Brothers, Frank Lister, Mick O'Riordan, Milton Wolff and an unidentified Yugoslavian volunteer. There are also three images of Antonio Gaudi's Temple Sagrada Familia and Casa Battlo. The collection also contains 39 black and white photographs including 11 images of Brown at a luau in Hawaii, nine images of Brown with family and friends in the United States, five images of Brown in Nicaragua (attributed to David Wills), one image of Brown in a WWII uniform, two images of Ernest Hemingway in Spain, one image of the Lemaire Brothers, one image of Maurice-Arthur Lemaire, one image of Republican riflemen firing from a trench during the Civil War, two images of Spanish Street scenes, and one image of what appears to be a Soviet soldier in the USSR.

Series II: Negatives and Slide. The 56 black and white negatives contain images of Archie and Hon Brown with their family in the United States. Only four negatives, of Brown's family/friends, match prints in the collection. The color slide contains an image of a woman [Esther Brown?].

Access Restrictions

Materials are open to researchers. Please contact the Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives for more information and to schedule an appointment, tamiment.wagner@nyu.edu or 212-998-2630.

Use Restrictions

Any rights (including copyright and related rights to publicity and privacy) held by the donor were transferred to New York University. Permission to publish or reproduce materials in this collection must be secured from the Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives. For more information, contact tamiment.wagner@nyu.edu or 212-998-2630.

Preferred Citation

Published citations should take the following form:

Identification of item, date; Collection name; Collection number; box number; folder number;
Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives
Elmer Holmes Bobst Library
70 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012, New York University Libraries.

Provenance

The Archie Brown Collection was donated to New York University by Brown's widow, Esther Matlin Brown, in March 2003.

Related Material at the Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives

ALBA collections at the Tamiment Library.

John (Jack) M. Lucid Papers, ALBA #206.

Douglas Wayne Male Papers, ALBA #223.

Archie Brown Papers, ALBA #207

Collection processed by

Evan Daniel

About this Guide

This finding aid was produced using ArchivesSpace on 2023-08-20 16:42:35 -0400.
Language: Description is in English.

Edition of this Guide

This version was derived from brown photo

Repository

Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives
Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives
Elmer Holmes Bobst Library
70 Washington Square South
2nd Floor
New York, NY 10012