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Paul L. Ross papers

Call Number

MS 3138

Date

1933-1978, inclusive

Creator

Ross, Paul L., 1902-1978

Extent

4.7 Linear feet in 5 boxes of various sizes

Language of Materials

A small number of documents are in Hebrew (or Yiddish?).

Abstract

Correspondence, manuscript writings, reports, clippings, legal filings, and other papers of lawyer and constitutional rights activist Paul L. Ross (1902-1978). Among the subjects covered in this collection are New York City's Temporary City Housing Rent Commission during the mayoralty of William O'Dwyer in the late 1940s; the fight to desegregate Stuyvesant Town around 1950; American Labor Party campaigns and positions, especially in 1949 and 1950; government persecution and repression of defense lawyers who advocate for political dissidents; opposition to preventive detention of political dissidents; and other matters concerning public policies and constitutional liberties from the 1940s-early 1970s.

Biographical / Historical

Lawyer and constitutional rights activist Paul L. Ross (1902-1978) was born in the village of Linetz in the Ukraine. While still a child he immigrated to America in 1908 with his family. He graduated from Brooklyn Law School in 1923. While in law school working at the firm of Sapinsky & Amster, he met Fiorello LaGuardia, then in private practice, who initially mistook the Jewish-American Ross as a fellow Italian-American. Ross remained connected with LaGuardia through his electoral campaigns in the 1920s and 1930s, eventually serving as Assistant Counsel to the New York City Board of Transportation under LaGuardia from 1936 to 1942.

In 1942 (which is the point in time where the bulk of the papers in the present collection picks up), Ross joined the Office of Price Administration (OPA) as Regional Enforcement Officer for Region II (the mid-Atlantic states). The role of the OPA was to impose price controls and rationing of certain goods during the World War II years. In 1945, Regional Administrator Daniel P. Woolley dismissed Ross, charging him with maladministration. Ross fought the charge and was exonerated in 1946, though he did not return to OPA. By then Ross had become engaged with William O'Dwyer's successful 1945 mayoral campaign and had joined the O'Dwyer administration as the new mayor's Administrative Secretary. In 1947, O'Dwyer appointed Ross to be Chairman of the Temporary City Housing Rent Commission responsible for, among other public policies, rent control.

In 1948, Ross resigned from the O'Dwyer administration in protest, at least in part, over O'Dwyer's decision to raise transit fares. Ross, a Democrat who had briefly joined the American Labor Party (ALP) in the 1930s, rejoined the ALP and became active in its politics. He ran on ALP's ticket in 1949 for City Comptroller and in 1950 for Mayor; he lost both races and never ran again for office. (Ross's ALP colleague and client on legal matters, W.E.B. DuBois, also lost his campaign for the U.S. Senate seat in 1950.)

At the time, Ross lived in the recently-opened Stuyvesant Town housing complex. Financed with both public funds and private investment by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, the buildings had a "No Negroes Allowed" policy. Ross was among the tenants who formed the Town and Village Tenants Committee to End Discrimination in Stuyvesant Town. The efforts of Ross, Lee Lorch, and others eventually led in 1950 to Met Life agreeing to admit three black families. Met Life then sought to evict Ross and other activist tenants before dropping the matter in 1952. Ross moved around this time to 31 Grace Court in Brooklyn Heights, the four story townhouse then owned by Ross's client, W.E.B. DuBois and his wife, Shirley.

Around 1949, Ross joined with others to form the law firm Wolf, Popper, Ross, Wolf & Jones (now Wolf Popper). As anti-Communist fervor increased in the 1950s, Ross took on various cases in support of civil and constitutional rights, including acting as counsel for the singer Pete Seeger at Seeger's House Un-American Activities Committee hearing. Ross himself would be named as a Communist by Dr. Bella Dodd in 1956, a charge he both effectively refuted and challenged on constitutional grounds. A major emphasis of his into the 1970s was defending clients against efforts to repress or silence defense counsel in civil rights or political cases. In the 1960s, Ross was Co-Chairman of the Citizens Committee for Constitutional Liberties (CCCL), which was formed in 1961 to advocate for the repeal of the Internal Security Act of 1950, also known as the McCarran Act. Among other features, the act allowed the preventive detention of those deemed by the government as likely to engage in certain subversive activities. Ross and the CCCL's fight intensified in 1969 when, in the swirl of national unrest over the Vietnam War and racial injustice, the Nixon administration sought to expand the use of preventive detention in the name of "law and order."

Ross retired in 1971, moving to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. But he remained active, including researching a book (apparently not published) on constitutional liberties and taking some cases, such as the appeal of Gail (Madden) Glenn of her 1974 murder conviction in New Jersey. That case was a result of an incident in Plainfield, NJ, in which a police officer was killed during a confrontation with African-American residents. Paul Ross died at his home in Fort Lauderdale in 1978.

(The above note was based primarily on documents in the collection and information from the collection's donor.)

Arrangement

The collection is organized by subject, advancing roughly in chronological order through Ross's career. This sequencing was established by the processing archivists.

Scope and Contents

The collection includes correspondence, manuscript writings, reports, clippings, legal filings, printed material, and other documents related to Paul L. Ross's career in public service and as a lawyer advocating in matters of constitutional liberties. The collection is relatively light on material from Ross's early career through the 1930s, but several subjects are especially well-documented after that time. For the 1940s and into the early 1950s, these subjects include Ross's tenure with the Office of Price Administration (especially his conflict with Daniel Woolley); activities as Chairman of the Temporary City Housing Rent Commission during the William O'Dwyer administration; campaign statements and other documents related to New York's American Labor Party of the late 1940s-early 1950s; and the tenant initiative to desegregate Stuyvesant Town. The collection holds Ross's later reminiscences of Fiorello LaGuardia and the O'Dwyer administration, and a transcript of an oral history he made with Columbia University in 1950.

For the 1950s through the 1970s, the collection is especially rich with material reflecting Ross's concern about government infringement on constitutional liberties. This includes documents related to Ross's interest in contempt proceedings, disbarments, and other forms of punishment of defense attorneys advocating for their clients in political cases. Several of these documents, including printed materials, concern the related cases: United States of America v. Harry Sacher, Richard Gladstein, George W. Crockett, Louis F. McCabe, Abraham J. Isserman, and Eugene Dennis; Harry Sacher, Richard Gladstein, George W. Crockett, Louis F. McCabe, Abraham J. Isserman, and Eugene Dennis v. United States of America; and In the Matter of Harold (Harry) Sacher and Abraham J. Isserman. In these cases, Sacher et al. were represented by Ross and his firm and the files include Ross's notebook with writing about the disbarment of the attorneys Sacher and Isserman; a typescript, edited final summation of the defense in the contempt case; and drafts of filings. These files also include Ross's 1976 essay (in typescript and manuscript form) on the subject "Government and Courts Repress, Harass and Punish Defense Counsel for Political Dissidents," submitted to, but not published by, the National Lawyers Guild. The files include Ross's research materials, which include printed material from the case United States v. Barnard E. Meyer, et al., and Philip Hirschkop; correspondence with editor Ann Fagan Ginger and others; a 1977 reminiscence "Past is Prologue: Crisis in the American Civil Liberties Union" by Abraham J. Isserman in which he recalls the ACLU's anti-Communism of circa 1940; Ross's notes; and various news articles and other printed material about relevant cases.

The substantive files on preventive detention include a few documents from Ross and the Citizens Committee for Constitutional Liberties's (CCCL) opposition to the McCarran Act during the mid-1960s. Much more is in the files from the fight over preventive detention (mass incarceration/"concentration camp") legislation in 1969-1970. These documents include remarks by Ross and CCCL Executive Secretary Miriam Friedlander; CCCL fliers, press releases, summaries of Advisory Committee meetings, and copies of the organization's newsletter "Liberty"; statements by other groups; Congressional bills; related print matter (news articles, government press releases, some issues of the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee magazine "Rights"); a scrapbook; and other documents.

Conditions Governing Access

Open to qualified researchers.

Conditions Governing Use

Photocopying undertaken by staff only. Limited to twenty exposures of stable, unbound material per day. (Researchers may not accrue unused copy amounts from previous days.) This collection is owned by the New-York Historical Society. The copyright law of the United States governs the making of photocopies and protects unpublished materials as well as published materials. Unpublished materials created before January 1, 1978 cannot be quoted in publication without permission of the copyright holder.

Preferred Citation

This collection should be cited as the Paul L. Ross Papers, MS 3138, New-York Historical Society.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Gift of Madelyn Ross, 2019.

Collection processed by

Andy Latoni and Larry Weimer

About this Guide

This finding aid was produced using ArchivesSpace on 2023-08-21 15:48:41 -0400.
Using Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Language: Finding aid written in English

Processing Information

The collection was processed by archivist Larry Weimer and intern Andy Latoni of the Princeton Internships in Civic Service program in July-August 2019. Contents were rehoused from original folders to archival ones, but most contents were kept together and labeled as found within the original folders. Nonetheless, some documents were shifted and re-labeled during processing in an effort to clarify subject content and improve access.

Repository

New-York Historical Society
New-York Historical Society
170 Central Park West
New York, NY 10024