Labor, Civil Rights Organizer Harry Fleischman, 90
Harry Fleischman, a leader of Eugene V. Debs’s Socialist Party USA, and a life-long agitator for civil rights and social justice, died of cancer at his son Peter’s home in Manhattan on November 1. He was 90 years old.
Born in the Bronx on October 3, 1914, Fleischman became involved with the party as a teenager, eventually organizing unions and strikes at manufacturing jobs. He served as the Socialist Party’s national secretary from 1942 to 1950. He also was campaign director for Norman Thomas, the socialist candidate for president who ran six times between 1928 and 1958; W.W. Norton published Fleischman’s “Norman Thomas: A Biography” in 1964.
From 1953 to 1979, Fleischman worked as director of the American Jewish Committee’s National Labor Service, where the black press, labor press and Jewish press, among others, published his syndicated column, “Let’s Be Human.” For more than 50 years, he held a post with the Workers Defense League, a New-York labor-rights group, acting as its chairman for 25 of those years until shortly before his death.
Bernard Bellush, a friend and colleague dating back to the 1930s and a contributing editor at the Forward, offered praise for Fleischman’s gentle perseverance. “Most individuals became sour and disenchanted with the activism and seeking the goals of democratic socialism,” Bellush said. “But Harry Fleischman did not.”
Jon Bloom, executive director of the Workers Defense League, recalled how Fleischman was fond of repeating a quote attributed to Norman James. “There are no lost causes,” both men would say. “There are only causes not yet won.”
Fleischman’s first wife, Natalie, died in 1989. Surviving him are his second wife, Ethel, as well as three children, three stepchildren, nine grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we need 500 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Our Goal: 500 gifts during our Passover Pledge Drive!
