Morris Schappes Papers
Call Number
Dates
Creator
Extent
Language of Materials
Abstract
Morris U. Schappes (1907-2004) was a scholar, editor and activist who was fired by the City College of New York after being investigated as a Communist Party member, and who spent over a year in prison (1943-1944) for perjury after refusing to name other Party members when testifying before an investigating committee of the New York State Legislature. He was a founder and longtime editor of the progressive, secular magazine Jewish Currents; a popular lecturer; and the author of articles, reviews, radio broadcasts, books and monographs, many of them on U.S. Jewish history. This collection contains correspondence, published and unpublished writings, clippings and other printed ephemera, photographs, research materials and documents produced by various progressive organizations. In addition, there is a considerable quantity of Jewish Currents editorial correspondence, Editorial Board minutes and administrative files.
Historical/Biographical Note
Morris U. Schappes (1907-2004) was a scholar, editor and activist who was fired by the City College of New York after being investigated as a Communist Party member, and who spent over a year in prison (1943-1944) for perjury after refusing to name other Party members when testifying before an investigating committee of the New York State Legislature. He was a founder and long-time editor of the progressive, secular magazine Jewish Currents; a popular lecturer; and the author of articles, reviews, radio broadcasts, books and monographs, many of them on U.S. Jewish history.
Born Moishe Shapshilevich in Kamenetz-Podolsk, Ukraine, Schappes spent his earliest years in Brazil and then moved with his parents to New York City in 1914. Bureaucrats reduced the family name to Schappes and his mother Americanized his name as Morris. He added the middle "U" later as part of his byline as a sportswriter on the newspaper of City College of New York (CCNY), where he graduated in 1928 and subsequently joined the faculty as an English lecturer. (He had previously attended Townsend Harris Hall High School.) He also attended Columbia University as a graduate student, earning a master's degree in 1930. In that same year, he began his sixty-two year marriage to Sonya Laffer, who died in 1992.
A longtime fixture in the world of American Communism, Schappes gained widespread attention in 1941 when he was fired, along with 40 others, from the faculty of CCNY for Communist Party membership or involvement. The school had first attempted to dismiss him in 1936 for his political activities but he was retained as the result of a student protest. Later he served 13 1/2 months (1943-1944) in prison for perjury after refusing to name other Party members before New York's Joint Legislative Committee on the State Education System (known as the Rapp-Coudert Committee). After his release from prison, Schappes worked briefly in a war production factory in Queens and, in 1946, joined with other Party activists to found the magazine Jewish Life, which became an unofficial Party organ. He supplemented his income by freelance lecturing and writing.
As a scholar, Schappes first achieved some prominence for his work on the poetry and letters of Emma Lazarus, and he published a number of books and monographs between 1944 and 1987. Having developed a strong interest in Jewish history while serving in prison, he subsequently published two broad historical studies: A Documentary History of the Jews in the United States, 1654-1877 (1950) and The Jews in the United States: A Pictorial History, 1654 to the Present (1958).
In the early 1950s, Schappes experienced another brush with government committees when the State Department began a purge of books from the shelves of overseas libraries operated by the United States Information Agency. The U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, held hearings to support McCarthy's demand that 30,000 "Communist books" be removed, including Schappes' A Documentary History of the Jews…. In April of 1953, Schappes was subpoenaed and appeared before the committee to defend his books and to attack McCarthyism.
After Nikita Krushchev's 1956 speech denouncing the misdeeds of Stalin, the subscription base of Jewish Life began slipping away and the magazine's staff joined many of the rank-and-filers in their disillusion with the Communism they had known. The result was the founding of Jewish Currents, with Morris Schappes as its editor; the journal, independent of Party discipline and financing, would become an intellectual home for an increasingly diverse base of (mostly) secular Jewish leftists.
Schappes dedicated more than four decades to Jewish Currents, and to shaping the views of its enthusiastic and loyal readership. In his "Editor's Diary" column, he reported on books, plays, films and events in the progressive Jewish movement and engaged in a number of noteworthy controversies, including a historical defense of American Jewish responses to the Holocaust; commentaries about solidarity and tensions between U.S. Jews and African-Americans; and his concerns about antisemitism in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. Schappes played an active role in the day-to-day management of Jewish Currents until 2000.
Throughout his working life, he was a sought-after lecturer and commentator on Jewish affairs and wrote many articles, essays and letters to the editor in a variety of newspapers, magazines and journals. In 1981, the faculty senate of City College formally apologized for firing him and his colleagues.
Morris Schappes died in New York City on June 3, 2004. He was 97 years old.
Sources:
Douglas, Martin, "Morris Schappes, Marxist and Jewish Scholar, Dies at 97", New York Times (June 9, 2004).
Forward Staff, "Leftist Magazine Editor Morris U. Schappes, 97, Dies", Forward, http://www.jewishcurrents.org/schappes.htm , July 17, 2008.
"Morris U. Schappes, 1907-2004," Jewish Currents, July 2004.
Arrangement
The collection contains the following series and subseries:
Series I: Personal Papers, 1913-2003
Series II: Jewish Currents Files, 1958-2004
Subseries IIA: Minutes
Subseries IIB: Correspondence
Subseries IIC: Administrative Files
Series III: WBAI Broadcasts, 1966-1994
Series IV: Subject Files, 1911-2004
Series V: Audio-Visual Files, 1966-2000
Subseries VA: Audio Cassettes
Subseries VB: Reel-to-Reel Tapes
Subseries VC: Video Cassettes (VHS)
Subseries VD: Audio Cassettes Addendum
Subseries VE: Reel-to-Reel Tapes Addendum
Series VI: Photographs, 1920-2002
Scope and Content Note
The collection contains correspondence, published and unpublished writings, photographs, clippings and other printed ephemera, research materials and documents produced by various progressive organizations. The Schappes Papers reveal a man of widely varying interests, radical views, strong opinions and devotion to the magazine he helped found -- Jewish Currents. The collection provides not only a glimpse into Schappes' personal life and his involvement with the American left, but also a record of the day-to-day management the magazine itself.
Subjects
Organizations
Genres
People
Topics
Places
Donors
Conditions Governing Access
Materials are open without restrictions.
Conditions Governing Use
Any rights (including copyright and related rights to publicity and privacy) held by Morris U. Schappes was transferred to New York University in 1996 by Morris U. Schappes. Permission to publish or reproduce materials in this collection must be secured from the Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archive. Please contact tamiment.wagner@nyu.edu.
Preferred Citation
Identification of item, date; Morris Schappes Papers; TAM 179; box number; folder number; Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University.
Location of Materials
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Materials were donated by Morris Schappes in 1996; additional materials were donated by Jewish Currents staff members Carol Jochnowitz and Esther Surovell in 2003 and 2004. Materials were transferred from the American Jewish Historical Society in 2010. An additional gift of four post cards was donated by Dr. Wendy E. Chmielewski of Swarthmore College in 2013. In 2014 non-print materials were reincorporated into this collection. In 2014 and 2018 materials were found in the repository and integrated into the collection. The accession numbers associated with these gifts are 1996.024, 2003.016, NPA.2003.016, 2004.042, NPA.2004.049, 2009.086, 2010.030, 2013.037, 2014.051, and 2018.031.
Audiovisual Access Policies and Procedures
Access to audiovisual materials in this collection is available through digitized access copies. Researchers may view an item's original container, but the media themselves are not available for playback because of preservation concerns. Materials that have already been digitized are noted in the collection's finding aid and can be requested in our reading room. Materials not yet digitized will need to have access copies made before they can be used. To request an access copy, or if you are unsure if an item has been digitized, please contact tamiment.wagner@nyu.edu with the collection name, collection number, and a description of the item(s) requested. A staff member will respond to you with further information.
About this Guide
Processing Information Note
The Schappes donations spanned a number of years and there had been several attempts to 'arrange' the earlier materials. Also, at the time of the final donation (after Schappes' death), the removal of materials from his apartment had to be done quickly and accomplished jointly with staff from the American Jewish Historical Society, who were also to receive some of the items. Under these circimstances, maintaining any significant original order would have been difficult. In addition, much of the material (from all donations) lacked organization, was not in folders and had been randomly placed in boxes.
One characteristic of Schappes' files was his creation of individual packets of material which were scattered throughout the collection. He often used clips to hold together related items rather than placing them in folders. For example, an incoming letter or an article of interest would be accompanied by additional research and correspondence, hand written notes and, perhaps, an event flyer or list of citations. In processing the collection, these packets of material were kept together and, in most cases, formed the basis of a titled folder. For materials that were already contained within folders, the original titles were retained to the extent possible.
Correspondence appears in many parts of the collection and, in the case of Jewish Currents correspondence, much of the original order was maintained even though magazine's staff over the years had changed its arrangement scheme from alphabetic by correspondent name to chronological. There are sections of each, as well as specific groups of correspondence such as rejection letters sent to individuals whose submissions to the magazine were not accepted for publication.
A series arrangement was imposed based on the aggregation of Jewish Currents files, identification of personal items and biographical material, and creation of a very large section of subject files reflecting Schappes' wide variety of interests and activities. WBAI broadcast materials and audio files were placed in separate series.
Photographs were separated from this collection during initial processing and were established as a separate collection, the Morris Schappes Photographs (PHOTOS 154). In 2014, the photograph collection was reincorporated into the Morris Schappes Papers.