Guide to the Steve Nelson Oral History Project Records, 1977-1978 AIS.1978.24
- Repository
- ULS Archives & Special Collections
- Title
- Steve Nelson Oral History Project Records
- Creator
- Nelson, Steve
- Collection Number
- AIS.1978.24
- Extent
- 2.5 Linear Feet (4 boxes and 64 audio cassettes)
- Date
- 1977-1978
- Abstract
- The Steve Nelson Oral History project was conducted in 1977-1978 by James R. Barrett and Robert L. Ruck, graduate students in the Department of History at the University of Pittsburgh. The interviews with Steve Nelson, one-time member of the Communist Party of the United States, radical political activist and industrial organizer, took place at his home in Truro, Maine. The collection contains audiotapes and transcriptions of interviews conducted by James Barrett and Robert Ruck; in addition, Nelson prepared transcriptions of his own oral history recollections which are included in the collection.
- Language
- English .
- Publisher
- ULS Archives & Special Collections
- Address
- University of Pittsburgh Library System
Archives & Special Collections
Website: library.pitt.edu/archives-special-collections
Contact Us: www.library.pitt.edu/ask-archivist
URL: http://library.pitt.edu/archives-special-collections
Biography
Steve Nelson's life chronicles some of the major social conflicts of the 20th century. Following in the wake of hundreds of thousands of fellow eastern and southern Europeans, Nelson left Yugoslavia (Croatia), where he had been born in 1893, at the end of World War I and headed for industrial America. His work experience, after his arrival in the United States in 1920, paralleled that of uncounted immigrants. He started out at the age of 16 in a slaughterhouse in Philadelphia, moved on to Baldwin Locomotive Works and then to a foundry. Alternating between factory work and carpentry, Nelson became increasingly involved in radical political movements. In the early 1920's, he joined the Socialist Labor Party and also came into contact with the Young Workers' League.
From Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, where he worked at Jones and Laughlin's Aliquippa Works and as a carpenter, Nelson became active in the incipient industrial organizing of this generally quiet decade. He married Margaret Yaeger who came from a family of militant Braddock steelworkers. Steve Nelson moved to Detroit where he quickly became active in the Communist Party. While working at the Chrysler and Fisher Body plants, he became section organizer for approximately 10 branches of the Party. Distributing shop papers and agitating for African-American rights, civil liberties and socialism, they helped to create the leftist United Auto and Aircraft Industrial Union, a precursor of CIO unionism in the auto industry.
Nelson then went to New York City where he could attend a workers' school at night. When the semblance of stability of the 1920's ended abruptly in 1929, Nelson journeyed to Chicago to head work amongst the unemployed. Between episodes in jail and the courts, he worked with coal miners in southern Illinois as an organizer for the National Miners' Union.
As the Party organizer for the anthracite region of Pennsylvania in the 1930's, Nelson worked mainly with rank and file unions and with the unemployed, helping people to organize around demands for relief and unemployment insurance. Except for a 2-year visit to the Soviet Union as a student at an international workers' school, Nelson remained in the anthracite region until leaving for Spain in 1937. In Spain, he served as political commissar of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the International Brigades. Al Richmond, in A Long View From the Left, called Steve the most popular officer in the Brigade. Nelson fought on the Republican side in the Spainish Civil War until he was wounded and forced to return to the United States. He was then co-opted onto the National Committee of the Communist Party and worked as Secretary of the American League for Peace and Democracy.
Nelson led the Japanese Bureau of the Party on the West Coast during the internment crisis of World War II. He also acted as the Party's Chairman in San Francisco then in Oakland and Berkeley. Both of his children were born during these years on the West Coast. In 1945, he returned to New York to serve on the National Board of the Communist Party.
In 1945, Nelson went to Pittsburgh where, as Party Chairman, he was soon caught up in the Cold War and recurring legal battles. As a key figure in the Party, Nelson was targeted for jail as the government sought to liquidate the Communist Party in 1950-1951. His association with J. Robert Oppenheimer led to headlines charging that Nelson was an "atomic spy." Tried twice under the Sedition Act and once under the Smith Act, he spent a year in prison. After serving a part of his 20-year prison term and escaping assassination, he was freed on appeal. The notoriety which the trials brought forced him to return to New York City. There, Nelson chaired the meeting at which Khrushchev's letter regarding the Stalin era was read to the members of the Party's National Committee. In 1957, Nelson, like so many thousands of others, left the Party based on more than a decade of misgivings regarding its strategy. Nelson then assumed increasing responsibility in the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and became its national commander. Nelson died in 1993.
Nelson has written 2 books about his experiences: The Volunteers, about Spain and The 13th Juror, about his trials and McCarthyism in Pittsburgh.
Scope and Content Notes
The Steve Nelson Oral History project was conducted in 1977-1978 by James R. Barrett and Robert L. Ruck, graduate students in the Department of History at the University of Pittsburgh, through funds provided by a Youth-grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The interviews with Steve Nelson, one-time member of the Communist Party of the United States, radical political activist and industrial organizer, took place at his home in Truro, Maine. In 1981, the University of Pittsburgh Press published Steve Nelson: American Radical by Steve Nelson, James R. Barrett and Robert Ruck, a book based upon the interviews conducted through the project.
The collection contains 64 audiotapes located in Series I and transcriptions of interviews conducted by James Barrett and Robert Ruck in 1977-1978 located in Series II. In addition, Nelson prepared transcriptions of his own oral history recollections which are included in Series III. Boxes 3 and 4 are not listed in this inventory as they contain duplicates of the transcriptions described below in the Contents List.
Access Restrictions
No restrictions.
Acquisition Information
Deposited by James Barrett and Robert Ruck, September 1978.
Preferred Citation
Steve Nelson Oral History Project Records, 1977-1978, AIS.1978.24, Archives & Special Collections, University of Pittsburgh Library System
Previous Citation
Steve Nelson Oral History Project Records, 1977-1978, AIS.1978.24, Archives Service Center, University of Pittsburgh
Records of Steve Nelson Oral History Project, 1977-78, AIS 78:24, Archives of Industrial Society, University of Pittsburgh Libraries
Processing Information
This collection was processed by Archives Service Center staff in September 1978.
Revision and rearrangement for the encoded version of the finding aid provided by Michael O'Malley on December 17, 2002. Information about the collection title and the controlled access terms was extracted from the MARC record in the University of Pittsburgh catalog Voyager ID number: 1372106
Copyright
Permission for publication is given on behalf of the University of Pittsburgh as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained.
Subjects
- Communist Party of the United States of America
- University of Pittsburgh. Department of History -- Graduate students
- Socialist Party (U.S.)
- Barrett, James R.
- Nelson, Steve
- Ruck, Rob
- Pittsburgh (Pa.)
- Chicago (Ill.)
- New York (N.Y.)
- Detroit (Mich.)
- Shamokin (Pa.)
- Philadelphia (Pa.)
- Wilkes-Barre (Pa.)
- Reminiscences
- Transcripts
- Interviews
- Radicalism
- Communists -- United States
- Politics
- Political activists
- Labor
- Communism
- Iron and steel workers -- Labor unions
- Coal miners -- Labor unions -- United States
- Building trades -- Employees -- Labor unions -- United States
- Labor unions
- Automobile industry workers -- Labor unions -- United States
- Labor unions -- United States
- Working class -- United States
- Labor leaders
- Labor movement
- Radicalism -- United States -- History -- 20th century
- Political parties -- United States