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The Daily Worker and the Daily World Negatives Collection

Call Number

PHOTOS.223.001

Dates

1930-2001, inclusive
; 1968-1990, bulk

Creator

Communist Party of the United States of America
Andrews, Bill, 1937- (Role: Donor)
Communist Party of the United States of America (Role: Donor)

Extent

36 Linear Feet

Language of Materials

Materials are in English.

Abstract

The Daily Worker was established as the Communist Party USA's daily newspaper in 1924. As the official organ of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), the Daily Worker's editorial positions reflected the policies of the party while also attempting to speak to the broad left-wing community in the United States that included labor, civil rights, and peace activists. The newspaper has had a succession of names and has been published in varying frequencies between daily to weekly over the course of its existence. In 2010 it ceased print publication and became an online weekly publication titled the People's World. The Daily Worker and the Daily World Negatives Collection contains printed photographic images produced through a variety of processes, created and collected by the photography editors of the Daily Worker and its successor newspapers as a means of maintaining an organized collection of images for use in publication. The collection dates from 1930 to 2006, with the bulk of the material dating from 1930 to 1948 and from 1968 to 1990. The images depict people, groups, and events associated with the CPUSA. The collection contains approximately 670,000 photographic negatives in various formats; contact sheets and log sheets related to 35 millimeter negatives; and several hundred slides. NOTE: Access to Series I and Series II is closed through 2025 pending digitization.

Historical Note

The Daily Worker was established as the Communist Party USA's daily newspaper in 1924. The newspaper was initially established as the weekly The Worker in 1921 when the Communist Labor Party (CLP) merged with the Workers Party in 1921 and the CLP's newspaper, The Toiler, became the The Worker. The newspaper was published in Chicago, Illinois until 1927, when the headquarters of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) moved to New York, New York. As the official organ of the CPUSA, editorial positions of the Daily Worker reflected the policies of the party while also attempting to speak to the broad left-wing community in the United States (US) that included labor, civil rights, and peace activists. The newspaper published stories covering a wide range of events, organizations, and individuals in the US and around the world.

As a daily newspaper, it covered the major stories of the twentieth century with an emphasis on radical social movements, social and economic conditions in working class and minority communities, poverty, labor struggles, racial discrimination, right wing extremism with an emphasis on fascist and Nazi movements, the Soviet Union, and the world-wide Communist movement. The newspaper published the work of many graphic artists and cartoonists, including Fred Ellis, Hugo Gellert, Robert Minor, and Ollie Harrington, and documented the relationship between politics and folk music and folk dance, covering individuals such as Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Leadbelly, Sophie Maslow and Martha Graham. The newspaper reported on the civil rights movement, including sit-ins, voter registration campaigns, and the Freedom Rides and as well as the work of individuals and organizations, including Martin Luther King, Jr, Ralph Abernathy, Rosa Parks, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., the Black Panthers, the Soledad Brothers, and Angela Davis.

The newspaper has had a succession of names and has been published in varying frequencies between daily to weekly over the course of its existence. In 2010 it ceased print publication and became an online weekly publication titled the People's World.

Arrangement

The collection is arranged into six series:

Series I: 4 x 5, 120 and 127 Negatives, Series II: 35 Millimeter Negatives, Series III: 8 x 10 Negatives, Series IV: Slides, Series V: Log Sheets, Series VI: Contact Sheets

Series IV negatives are arranged alphabetically by shoot caption and Series V materials are arranged in chronological order. Dated negatives in Series I through III and in Series VI are arranged chronologically, followed by undated negatives arranged alphabetically by caption. In addition, all the negatives series in the collection may also be viewed in one combined list arranged in alphabetical order by caption, by clicking on the following link: http://library.nyu.edu/tamiment/dw_negs_sorted_by_shoot_title.pdf

Captions are assigned to a shoot, which is a group of images shot by a photographer or team of photographers of one event, usually on the same day. Each shoot has a unique identifying number. The 4x5, 120, 127, and 8x10 format negatives have been assigned individual frame numbers within each shoot as well (making it possible for researchers to determine in advance the total number of images available in a given shoot). 35 millimeter negative shoots (and any corresponding log or contact sheets for them) do not have assigned individual frame numbers, but the total number of frames within each 35 millimeter shoot ranges from one single frame to several rolls comprising as many as 100 individual images, with an average of 36 frames images per shoot.

While the shoot numbers for the 35 millimeter negatives, contact sheets, and log sheets correspond to one another, none of these groups of materials completely match one another. That is, not all 35 millimeter negatives have corresponding contact sheets or log sheets and vice versa.

Scope and Contents

The Daily Worker and the Daily World Negatives Collection contains printed photographic images produced through a variety of processes, created and collected by the photography editors of the Daily Worker and its successor newspapers as a means of maintaining an organized collection of images for use in publication. The collection dates from 1930 to 2006, with the bulk of the material dating from 1930 to 1948 and from 1968 to 1990. The images depict people, groups, and events associated with the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). The collection contains approximately 670,000 photographic negatives in 4" x 5", 8" x 10", and 120, 127, and 35 millimeter formats; contact sheets and log sheets related to the 35 millimeter negatives; and several hundred slides. The negatives were mostly shot by Daily Worker and Daily World staff photographers, with additional negatives sent to the paper by readers and other individuals. Slides were also largely shot by staff photographers, but the collection does contain a few commercially-produced thematic slide sets, mostly from the Soviet Union and Soviet bloc countries. The majority of the negatives are of New York City people and events, despite the international coverage of the newspaper.

Images from the 1930s and 1940s focus heavily on the activities of organized labor and the relationship of the CPUSA to local and national labor unions, particularly those affiliated with the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). Images include strikes, union meetings and elections, union social events, and parades. Images from 1968 to 1990 focus on CPUSA activities, leaders, members, and affiliated organizations. These include portraits of Gus Hall, Henry Winston, Angela Davis, and Jarvis Tyner, and images of Mark Rudd, Abbie Hoffman, Stokely Carmichael, John Kerry, H. Rap Brown, Paul O'Dwyer, Adam Clayton Powell, Bella Abzug, John Lindsay, Nelson Rockefeller, Percy Sutton, Jacob Javits, Charles Rangel, Vito Marcantonio, Rhody McCoy, and C. Herbert Oliver.. There are also negatives of conventions, demonstrations, and meetings of the CPUSA, Young Workers Liberation League, Young Communist League, and W. E. B. Du Bois Clubs. The civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements are documented through images of the Black Panther's Breakfast Program in Harlem, New York City police raiding Louis Farrakhan's Muslim Mosque, Moratorium Day demonstrations, and other anti-war demonstrations. The arts and sports are also documented in the collection, including St. Patrick's Day parades, the New York City Marathon, Apollo mission astronauts at City Hall, Aretha Franklin in concert at the Apollo Theater, jazz musicians at the Village Vanguard, and a 1968 W. E. B. Du Bois centennial meeting at Carnegie Hall whose participants included Martin Luther King, Jr. and James Baldwin. Also included are images of celebrity supporters of liberal or left-wing political causes, mainly actors such as Paul Newman, Lauren Bacall, Dustin Hoffman, Ed Asner, Ossie Davis, and Ruby Dee. Images of city life include ice cream trucks, New Jersey's Palisades Park amusement park, public school openings, and the Brooklyn-Long Island Cat Show. Images related to professional sports and athletes include sports teams affiliated with labor unions, the Hermann Matern Sports School in the German Democratic Republic, exhibition games between United States (US) and Soviet Union teams, Jim Bouton, Joe Frazier, and Muhammad Ali. Images of people and events outside of the US in the collection focus on Cuba, Chile, and the Soviet Union. From Cuba, there are images of Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, the percussion ensemble Los Papines, and events including the 1970 Organization of Latin American Journalists conference and the 1978 World Festival of Youth and Students in Havana, Cuba. From Chile, there are images of rural cooperative farms, and a 1971 May Day parade in Santiago whose participants include Salvador Allende. There are numerous images of people and events in the Soviet Union, many taken on CPUSA delegations. A large percentage of these depict CPUSA leaders including Gus Hall and Henry Winston, images of rural life in Tajikistan and the Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic, and international conferences, including the 1985 World Festival of Youth and Students, a 1988 United States-Soviet Union Friendship Summit in Moscow, and the 1963 World Congress of Women in Moscow.

Subjects

People

Bloor, Ella Reeve, 1862-1951 -- |v Pictorial works; Allende Gossens, Salvador, 1908-1973 -- |v Pictorial works; Amter, I. (Israel), 1881-1954 -- |v Pictorial works; Abzug, Bella S., 1920-1998 -- |v Pictorial works; Ali, Muhammad, 1942- -- |v Pictorial works; Abernathy, Ralph, 1926-1990 -- |v Pictorial works; Debs, Eugene V. (Eugene Victor), 1855-1926 -- |v Pictorial works; Davis, Ossie -- |v Pictorial works; Dennis, Eugene, 1905-1961 -- |v Pictorial works; Dellinger, David T., 1915-2004 -- |v Pictorial works; Conyers, John, 1929- -- |v Pictorial works; Churchill, Winston, 1874-1965 -- |v Pictorial works; Davis, Benjamin J. (Benjamin Jefferson), 1903-1964 -- |v Pictorial works; Davis, Angela Y. (Angela Yvonne), 1944- -- |v Pictorial works; Castro, Fidel, 1926-2016 -- |v Pictorial works; Chisholm, Shirley, 1924-2005 -- |v Pictorial works; Chavez, Cesar, 1927-1993 -- |v Pictorial works; Browder, Earl, 1891-1973 -- |v Pictorial works; Bussi de Allende, Hortensia -- |v Pictorial works; Huerta, Dolores, 1930- -- |v Pictorial works; Humphrey, Hubert H. (Hubert Horatio), 1911-1978 -- |v Pictorial works; Jackson, Jesse, 1941- -- |v Pictorial works; Hall, Gus -- |v Pictorial works; Harrington, Oliver W. (Oliver Wendell), 1912-1995 -- |v Pictorial works; Ho, Chí Minh, 1890-1969 -- |v Pictorial works; Gerson, Simon W. -- |v Pictorial works; Gorbachev, Mikhail Sergeevich, 1931- -- |v Pictorial works; Gregory, Dick -- |v Pictorial works; Du Bois, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt), 1868-1963 -- |v Pictorial works; Foster, William Z., 1881-1961 -- |v Pictorial works; Gellert, Hugo, 1892-1985 -- |v Pictorial works; Johnson, Lyndon B. (Lyndon Baines), 1908-1973 -- |v Pictorial works; Johnson, Hewlett, 1874-1966 -- |v Pictorial works; King, Coretta Scott, 1927-2006. -- |v Pictorial works; Marcantonio, Vito, 1902-1954 -- |v Pictorial works; McCarthy, Eugene J., 1916-2005 -- |v Pictorial works; Lindsay, John V. (John Vliet) -- |v Pictorial works; Mandela, Nelson, 1918-2013 -- |v Pictorial works; Kirkpatrick, Frederick Douglass -- |v Pictorial works; Kissinger, Henry, 1923- -- |v Pictorial works; King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968 -- |v Pictorial works; Lenin, Vladimir Il'ich, 1870-1924 -- |v Pictorial works; Lewis, John L. (John Llewellyn), 1880-1969 -- |v Pictorial works; Koch, Ed, 1924-2013 -- |v Pictorial works; Weinstock, Louis, 1903-1994 -- |v Pictorial works; Wallace, Henry A. (Henry Agard), 1888-1965 -- |v Pictorial works; Winston, Henry, 1911-1986. -- |v Pictorial works; Nixon, Richard M. (Richard Milhous), 1913-1994 -- |v Pictorial works; Mooney, Thomas J., 1882-1942 -- |v Pictorial works; Patterson, William L. (William Lorenzo), 1890-1980 -- |v Pictorial works; North, Joseph -- |v Pictorial works; Robeson, Paul, 1898-1976 -- |v Pictorial works; Powell, Adam Clayton, 1908-1972 -- |v Pictorial works; Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano), 1882-1945. -- |v Pictorial works; Rockefeller, Nelson A. (Nelson Aldrich), 1908-1979 -- |v Pictorial works; Mitchell, Charlene, 1930- -- |v Pictorial works; Ford, James W., 1893-1957 -- |v Pictorial works; Tyner, Jarvis -- |v Pictorial works; Andrews, Bill, 1937- (Role: Donor)

Conditions Governing Access

Access to Series I and Series II is restricted until June 2025 pending digitization. Once digitization is complete, digitized access copies will be available online and access to the physical materials will be restricted.

Materials in Series III through Series VI are open without restrictions.

Conditions Governing Use

Copyright (or related rights to publicity and privacy) for materials in this collection, created by the Communist Party, USA was not transferred to New York University. Permission to use materials must be secured from the copyright holder.

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, New York University.

Location of Materials

The collection is housed off-site and advanced notice is required for use. To request use of the collection, contact the repository at tamiment.wagner@nyu.edu.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

The bulk of the Daily Worker and Daily World Negatives Collection was transferred to the Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives as part of the donation of the Communist Party of the USA archives and the Library of the Reference Center for Marxist Studies in the summer of 2006. Additions to the collection include several linear feet of material received from Daily World staff photographer and artist Bill Andrews in January 2010. The accession number associated with the Bill Andrews materials is 2011.120.

Separated Materials

Original cartoons and artwork were separated to the Daily Worker/Daily World Cartoons Collection (GRAPHICS 024). Printed ephemera was separated to the Communist Party of the United States of America Printed Ephemera Collection (PE 031).

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

Daily Worker/Daily World Photographs Collection (PHOTOS 223)
Communist Party of the United States of America Audio Collection (TAM 132.1)
Communist Party of the United States of America Oral Histories (OH 065)
Communist Party of the United States of America Printed Ephemera Collection (PE 031)
Communist Party of the United States of America Records (TAM 132)

Although the Daily Worker and Daily World Photographs Collection and the Daily Worker and Daily World Negatives Collection have the same provenance, the original order of each collection was very different from the other. Negatives were arranged by shoot, while prints were arranged by personal name or subject. As a result, finding a corresponding negative for a given print (or vice versa) is not always easy or even possible.

Sources

"Daily Worker." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 30 June 2011. Web. 20 Sep. 2011.
"Daily Worker (and Successors)." Encyclopedia of the American Left. Mari Jo Buhle, Paul Buhle and Dan Georgakas. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992.
Gottfried, Erika. "Shooting Back: The Daily Worker Photographs Collection," American Communist History, 12:1, 41-69 (Spring 2013).
Schappes, Morris U. "The Daily Worker: Heir to the Great Tradition." New York: Daily Worker. Jan 1944.

Sponsorship Information

Detailed processing for this collection was made possible by a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC).

Collection processed by

Hillel Arnold. Finding aid by Hillel Arnold, Erika Gottfried and Michael Nash.

About this Guide

This finding aid was produced using ArchivesSpace on 2023-08-20 16:43:28 -0400.
Using Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Language: English

Processing Information note

Materials were placed in new acid-free folders and boxes. Original caption information, when available, was transcribed onto negative sleeves. Where captions were illegible, the archivist's interpretation is enclosed in square brackets. The language of the original captions, which includes editorializing comments (e.g., "District 9 – Hoodlums," "Demonstrations Against Czech "invasion" by Socialist forces," "Right-wingers protest "anti-Semitism" in Soviet Union," "National Caucus of Labor Committee goons attack Center for Marxist Education," "Demonstration against Israeli aggression by students") was retained. Some anachronistic terms - particularly those referring to race, ethnicity, or sex, such as "Negro," "Black," "Girl" or "Boy" (where the image is clearly of a young woman or young man, rather than a child) - have been revised, except for a few selected instances in which these have been allowed to stand, for the value they offer as a window into the political and cultural flavor of a particular time.

Shoot numbers for 35 millimeter negatives were originally assigned by Daily Worker staff, and these numbers have been retained. However, no Daily Worker shoot numbers were assigned to other negative formats, so shoot numbers were created for these materials by the archivist.

Revisions to this Guide

May 2021: Edited by Megan O’Shea to revise laudatory language in the Abstract, Historical Note, and Scope and Contents Note
July 2023: Edited by Weatherly Stephan to reflect closure of Series I and Series II during digitization

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