This front-page Forward photo of Lovestonite-identified communist marchers was taken at a pro-labor anti-fascist parade on May Day of 1934. “For five hours a sea of people streamed towards Madison Square Park,” The Forward said. “The sizable crowd had nowhere to move there. Speakers addressed the masses as they marched by the park. Protests against fascism, dictators and reactionaries took place. An unforgettable day.” Here, in the same park where today one forages for some of the city’s most popular burgers, shakes and public art, back in in 1934, one of the largest, most well-attended anti-fa protest marches ended their route. The New York Times reported that 100,000 marchers and onlookers gathered peacefully in Manhattan at one of the first demonstrations against the rise of fascism. Yiddish poet, translator, activist and Forward City Editor Gavriel-Hirsh Liliput, in his reporting from the scene, noted hundreds of thousands of workers, men and women dressed in their finest. “With beaming faces the began arriving at Madison Square. With placards, red flags and even floats, with caricatures and serious demands, they arrived.” Anti-Hitler flags and banners can be seen in the Forward image above which shows the Lovestonite branch of the communist movement. The group was only active during the 1930s, but they played an critical role in trade union organizations, particularly the auto and garment industries. The Lovestonites opposed Hitler’s and the Nazis’ rise to power, urging unity among labor and radical groups against fascism in Germany.

At the parade, Forward editor in chief Ab Cahan, pictured above, and his general manager B.C. Vladeck and others marched under the newspaper board’s own banner. Bands played and folks marched to the sounds of the “Internationale” as sung by those in attendance. Leaders spoke about the class struggle, fascism and the need to unite for the workers and against the rise of fascism. Speakers included Estelle Abramson of the women’s section of the Socialist Party and representatives of typographical union no. 6. who would eventually incorporate (in 1961) the Hebrew-American Typographical Union and the Yiddish typesetters of The Forward.

The Lovestonites, led by former general secretary of the Communist Party, Jay Lovestone, split from the Stalin-supporting Communist Party USA after Stalin purged a number of rivals, executing them after sham trials. Lovestone had been loyal to Stalin’s former ally, Nikolai Bukharin, landing him on Stalin’s list of enemies. At the time, Hitler was on Stalin’s list of allies. Lovestone was born in what is today Belarus and moved to New York at the age of nine when his father got a job as a cantor in a synagogue. For many years, he continued to travel between the U.S. and the Soviet Union for Communist Party business. Stalin’s antipathy for the Jewish, anti-fascist Lovestone wasn’t his only problem. As a Communist during the Red Scare, he was monitored by the FBI, who had a 5,700-page-long file on him. Rival communist entities spied on him too, stealing documents from his apartment in the London Terrace complex on West 24th Street, seen here, once home to notable Jewish activists, intellectuals and artists. The 1934 parade was one of the first times Socialists and certain communist-identified groups that had been rejected due to their anti-fa stance, marched together for to oppose Hitler and fascism. “While capitalism came in for its customary share of uncompromising lampooning on May Day paraders’ posters,” wrote the JTA on May 2, 1934, “it was Hitler, Nazism and Fascism in general on which floats, bunting, flags and banners of New York’s marching Communists and Socialists concentrated their attacks yesterday.”

Taken at that same 1934 May Day parade, the original photo caption reads “Hitler’s effigy being hung by members of the Young People’s Socialist League.” a group popular with children of immigrant readers of the Forward, including US Senator, and former Presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders. Facing them are students members of the League for Industrial Democracy Forward journalist, \[Gavriel-Hirsh Liliput]http://yleksikon.blogspot.com/2017/04/gavriel-hirsh-liliput-kretshmer.html), wrote “Socialist youth marched in uniforms of blue shirts and red ties. The painters wore their overalls, the cap makers their hats and the ladies necktie makers wore oversized neckties.” Originally founded in 1907 as the official youth arm of the Socialist Party of America, the Young People’s Socialist League focused on increasing youth voter turnout for democratic socialists and social democrats. The group raised money and collected clothes for strikes in Virginia and West Virginia and helped with picketing on behalf of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. The group was revitalized in the beginning of the 1930s after Forward-supported Norman Thomas, ran for president in 1928 and the start of the Great Depression led to growth in the Socialist Party of America. Thomas became his party’s six-time presidential candidate, running in 1928, 1932, 1936, 1940, 1944 and 1948. Thomas’s campaigns opposed segregation, anti-labor laws and practices, and pushed to open the United States to Jewish victims of Nazi persecution in the 1930s. In the 1940s, Thomas became one of the few public figures to oppose President Roosevelt's internment of Japanese Americans following the attack on Pearl Harbor. He accused the ACLU of "dereliction of duty" when they came out in support of internment.

Taken at the 1934 May Day parade, this photo also ran in The Forward with the caption “members of ILGWU on parade.” The Forward had very close ties to the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union that was one of the largest unions in the U.S. and played a role in the labor movement in the 1920s and 30s. ILGWU’s members formed a large base of Forward readership from these early days of struggle for worker’s rights, and on into the 1970’s and 1980’s. The representatives of the ILGWU, The Forward reported, were demanding a 30-hour work week and the abolition of child labor. On the right side of the photo, a man can be seen carrying a sign that reads “Down with Nazism, Down with Hitler.” Interestingly, the people captured in the picture are mostly men, but the ILGWU was one of the first American unions to have a majority female membership. As late as Labor Day of 1964, the ILGWU placed an ad in The Forward highlighting the long struggle for women’s suffrage. The Yiddish ad referenced their historical position: "In the struggle for women's right to vote, women must have voting rights to end the sweat shop. We need to create the laws under which we labor and die." And we continue to cover that important story, and the impact of today's social protests.