Abstract Robert W. Cherny is a U.S. historian, Professor emeritus of History at San Francisco State University, and a co-founder of the Labor Archives and Research Center, also at San Francisco State University. His research files contain materials gathered by Cherny in the course of his research for biographies of the Russian-American painter Victor Arnautoff and the Australian-born U.S. labor leader and longtime head of the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union (ILWU) Harry Bridges,...

Abstract

Sound recording of interview with Loretta Starvus Stack conducted by Lucille Kendall. Discusses working-class childhood in Willimantic, Connecticut; her time with the party; and imprisonment as one of Smith Act defendants in 1951. Discusses the conditions of being jailed with the other female defendants, the strategy of their legal defense, and her feelings of the Communist Party USA's New York leadership going "underground" after the Smith Act arrests.