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''by Chris Carlsson''
''by Chris Carlsson''
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[[Image:Opening-of-Tom-Mooney-Labor-School-on-Turk-St 6425.jpg|
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'''Original catalog pamphlet for Tom Mooney Labor School'''
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''Image: Labor Archives at San Francisco State University''
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The California Labor School was originally founded at the edge of the Civic Center, at 678 Turk Street (at Van Ness), as the Tom Mooney Labor School in 1942. After a modest beginning, it grew quickly. In 1944, the school changed its name to the California Labor School and moved to five-story building in downtown SF, where it enjoyed the support of more than 100 trade unions and many leading figures in the academic, industrial, banking, art and professional worlds. Five thousand students attended classes that year. After WWII ended, thousands of GIs returned to the US and many sought to use the GI Bill to go to school. The California Labor School was an accredited institution and GIs were able to get support to attend classes. [[Image:Welcome-to-new-CLS 6441.jpg|
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'''Catalog for the then-new California Labor School at 240 Golden Gate Ave., 1948'''
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''Image: Labor Archives at San Francisco State University''
]] Additionally, the California Labor School served as one of many local hosts for visiting dignitaries during the [[Sidney Roger and the Founding of the United Nations in San Francisco|founding convention of the United Nations]] in San Francisco in 1945.
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[[Image:Opening-of-Tom-Mooney-Labor-School-on-Turk-St 6425.jpg|
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]]
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'''Original catalog pamphlet for Tom Mooney Labor School'''
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''Image: Labor Archives at San Francisco State University''
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The California Labor School was originally founded at the edge of the Civic Center, at 678 Turk Street (at Van Ness), as the Tom Mooney Labor School in 1942. After a modest beginning, it grew quickly. In 1944, the school changed its name to the California Labor School and moved to five-story building in downtown SF, where it enjoyed the support of more than 100 trade unions and many leading figures in the academic, industrial, banking, art and professional worlds. Five thousand students attended classes that year. After WWII ended, thousands of GIs returned to the US and many sought to use the GI Bill to go to school. The California Labor School was an accredited institution and GIs were able to get support to attend classes.
Additionally, the California Labor School served as one of many local hosts for visiting dignitaries during the [[Sidney Roger and the Founding of the United Nations in San Francisco|founding convention of the United Nations]] in San Francisco in 1945.
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[[Image:Welcome-to-new-CLS 6441.jpg|
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|right
]]
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'''Catalog for the then-new California Labor School at 240 Golden Gate Ave., 1948'''
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''Image: Labor Archives at San Francisco State University''
During 1946 the school continued to build on its successes, and co-sponsored an institute on labor education with the University of California at Berkeley, and expanded its campuses to Oakland, Berkeley, and Los Angeles while holding classes up and down the state. In 1947 it bought 240 Golden Gate in the Tenderloin and moved its operations there. By this time the California Labor School has come under repeated attacks by the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars, the head of the California Federation of Labor, among others, for being “communist dominated.” To calm the public furor the California Labor School withdrew from the GI Bill program, forgoing federal tuition monies. But the anti-communist hysteria only grew more frenzied in the years that followed. In the month after the move back to the Tenderloin, Walter S. Steele of the American Coalition of Patriotic Civic and Fraternal Societies, testifies before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) that Dr. Frank Oppenheimer taught “atomic energy” at the “San Francisco party school,” by which he meant the California Labor School.
During 1946 the school continued to build on its successes, and co-sponsored an institute on labor education with the University of California at Berkeley, and expanded its campuses to Oakland, Berkeley, and Los Angeles while holding classes up and down the state. In 1947 it bought 240 Golden Gate in the Tenderloin and moved its operations there. By this time the California Labor School has come under repeated attacks by the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars, the head of the California Federation of Labor, among others, for being “communist dominated.” To calm the public furor the California Labor School withdrew from the GI Bill program, forgoing federal tuition monies. But the anti-communist hysteria only grew more frenzied in the years that followed. In the month after the move back to the Tenderloin, Walter S. Steele of the American Coalition of Patriotic Civic and Fraternal Societies, testifies before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) that Dr. Frank Oppenheimer taught “atomic energy” at the “San Francisco party school,” by which he meant the California Labor School.
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''Image: Labor Archives at San Francisco State University''
''Image: Labor Archives at San Francisco State University''
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Dave Jenkins was the director of the California Labor School from 1942-1949, during which time he was also a member of the Communist Party until he quit in 1956. In his oral history “The Union Movement, the California Labor School, and San Francisco Politics, 1926-1988,” interviews conducted by Lisa Rubens in 1987 and 1988 (Regional Oral History Office, the Bancroft Library), he describes some of the peculiar internal politics that erupted during his tenure:
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<blockquote>There was a demand for total participation in the leadership of the [California Labor] school from janitor to money-raiser. It was kind of a democratic anarchy that was leading this really because none of them were willing to go out and raise money. None of them were willing to work with the labor movement which fell almost exclusively to me.
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By 1948, I was tired. The [Communist] Party at that time then started to challenge the question of our most popular classes which were in the field of psychology and psychoanalysis. We had probably the most popular lecture series in the city. Sometimes there was standing room only literally; we used psychiatrists and mental health workers in a variety of fields… The Party in effect asked us to stop the classes when they themselves passed a ruling that anybody that was a psychiatrist or was in therapy had to drop out of the Party. The claim was that these people were no longer trustworthy, which was stupid. As a matter of fact, during this whole period of increased red-baiting, the ones who had been the most stalwart and the most to the left were the psychoanalysts and the Psychoanalytic League. There was a certain rationale that people were telling their all to the psychologists who if coerced by the FBI could be dangerous. The whole handling of these matters was poor.
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By 1948 the progressive and Left unions were expelled from the CIO, the veterans’ program at the school started to be attacked; the Tenney Committee was starting to subpoena me and others. [[Harry Bridges|Bridges]] was started to get re-indicted. All this meant the end of the school really. I often speculated that if we had taken a position to the right of the [Communist] Party, that the school could have flourished and continued to be a major institution. But I think I am probably wrong because the Party was so much a part of the school that it would have been torn apart if I had led a direction which rejected the Party Line of the time, rejecting getting involved in the politics of Henry Wallace’s campaign, or the Marshall Plan, or the CIO unions expulsion.
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It was my decision to leave the school; nobody removed me. I was given a big dinner and a gold watch and stayed on at the school a little bit, but Holland Roberts effectively took over. While I had enormous affection and respect for Roberts, he was totally intimidated by the Party leadership. We would have independent meetings at the school and say we were going to fight on the classes in therapy and psychoanalysis or agree we would take a position on something else. But once the Party objected, he would cave in.</blockquote>
[[Image:Refregier-at-daytime-art-program 6445.jpg]]
[[Image:Refregier-at-daytime-art-program 6445.jpg]]