Sherman Labovitz

Sherman Labovitz was a leader of the Philadelphia Communist Party USA He was arrested with other communist leaders in the summer of 1953 and tried under the Smith Act of treason. He was the youngest defendant of the "Philadelphia Nine," which included among others the radical modernist poet, Walter Lowenfels.

Background

Born in 1923, in the small town of Sheffield Pennsylvania, Sherman Labovitz moved to Philadelphia in 1928, where he spent the majority of his life. Being mainly influenced by his sister in law Till, he became interested in anti-fascism and the Communist Party USA in the 1930’s. He worked for the Communist Party of Philadelphia gaining small leadership roles at a young age. Sherm then served some years in the US Air Force, though he never shipped out. He joked about being “the best trained, non-used, air force personnel they had”. After returning to Philadelphia in 1945, he married his wife Pauline, and continued to further his work with the Philadelphia Communist Party. In the years following Sherm began being harassed and surveilled buy the FBI. In one particular incident they followed him and his son Mark on rides and around an amusement park. In the summer of 1953 he was arrested by the FBI for conspiracy under the “Smith Act” . He was the youngest arrested with nine other party leaders in a group now known as “The Philadelphia Nine”. Held for a five-month trial, he was eventually convicted. After a brief stay in Holmesburg prison, a retrial was held and he was acquitted of all charges.

After all he went through, he continued to fight for his beliefs. Sherm became a leading member of the Sholem Aleichem Club, which is a secular Jewish club of mostly left winged Philadelphians. He was a part of the “Social Action Committee”, which aimed to promote relations between the Jewish and African American community, and to address social problems of the time. In 1957 he left the Communist Party, no longer seeing the party as the vehicle for change that he once did. Sherm studied social work at Temple University where he then served as an assistant professor, until he became a full time professor at Stockton College in New Jersey. In 1997 Sherman wrote Being Red in Philadelphia, a memoir of his involvement in the Philadelphia Communist Party, and the Smith Act trials. Until this day he is still a believer in communist ideals, though he still dissociates himself from the Party.

Philadelphia Nine

In 1953, Sherman Labovitz was a World War II veteran living in a modest Strawberry Mansion rowhouse with his wife and two kids, holding down a low-paying job with a small newspaper.He was also Philadelphia circulation manager for the communist Daily Worker. So when he was awakened by pounding on his front door on a muggy summer night in 1953, Labovitz told his wife, "This is it." The FBI had arrived to haul him off in handcuffs.

The 1954 trial of Labovitz and eight others, collectively called the Philadelphia Nine, was at the time the longest federal trial in the history of Pennsylvania's Eastern District. It resulted in lenient sentences for the defendants. The Philadelphia Nine, "made it impossible to use the Smith Act as it had been used before." Prosecutors had been traveling from city to city around the country using the same set of witnesses against alleged communists' behavior. After Philadelphia the prosecutors had ," Labovitz said. He wrote a beautiful, moving memoir of his experiences being tried under the Smith Act and defended by unusually principled prominent Philadelphia lawyers.

Career

Labowitz was for many years a Professor of Social Work at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, having established the undergraduate program in social work there. He was an active partner with the Council of Social Work Education.

References

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