Harry Bridges Case Files, 1934-1972
Scope and Contents
Leonard was a member of the law firm that defended Harry Bridges during his legal battles. It consists of four types of materials: case files, bound volumes of trial transcripts, an extensive card file index that also provides a name index to the Communist Party newspapers, the Western Worker and its successor, The People's Daily World, and various miscellaneous items.
The case files include a variety of legal documents such as affidavits, depositions, witness files, briefs, motions, exhibits, and reports. Documents are ordered according to a numbering system set up by the law firm. There are two major divisions of the case files: the "Deportation" subseries and the "Denaturalization and Deportation" subseries. There is also a miscellaneous subseries composed mainly of unindexed documents, and "Other cases" a subseries comprising additional cases other than deportation and denaturalization.
The collection also includes bound volumes of two different trials: The Bridges Second Trial, Books 1 - 7 (volumes 1-44); and the Bridges-Roberton-Schmidt Trial, Books 1 - 17 (volumes 5-83), which include the Pretrial, Jury Selection and Opening Statements (volumes 1-5). Books 10 - 12 are missing. Trial transcripts from the first Bridges' deportation hearings are available at the University of California, Berkeley, Boalt Law Library.
The Bridges' defense team engaged in an extensive amount of investigative work during the twenty years Harry Bridges was on trial. The collection of a large alphabetical index includes several thousand cards of names, articles, and union or group meetings that had any bearing on the Bridges' cases. Each card is identified with a number or code. Merle Richmond, one of the legal secretaries in the law firm, was responsible for the index. After her arrival at the law firm in 1940, Richard Gladstein designated Richmond as his chief assistant in organizing the vast amounts of background material that came to the law firm as the Bridges' cases developed. Elinor Kahn and Marjorie Leonard were also involved with the investigative work.
Important individuals connected to this case include:
- Francis Biddle
- Harry Bridges
- Samuel A. Darcy
- Richard Gladstein
- Aubrey Grossman
- Vincent Hallinan
- Judge George Harris
- Robert Jackson
- Elinor Kahn
- Carol King
- Harper Knowles
- James M. Landis
- Norman Leonard
- Harry Lundberg
- Frances Perkins
- Michael Quill
- Mervyn Rathborne
- Merle Richmond
- J.R. Robertson
- Henry Schmidt
- Judge Charles Sears
- Telford Taylor
Dates
- 1934-1972
Access
Collection is open for research.
Biographical Note on Harry Bridges
Harry Bridges was born in Australia on July 28, 1901. He rejected the white-collar career planned by his middle-class parents and went to sea in 1917, shipping from American ports after 1920. Exposure to Australian socialism and his seafaring experiences produced a brief affiliation with the Industrial Workers of the World in the early 1920s. In 1922, he began to work as a longshoreman in San Francisco.
In 1933, San Francisco longshoremen formed a local of the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA). Bridges worked closely with Communist Party members to develop a militant longshore union with strong rank-and-file control. During the maritime and general strikes of 1934, he rose rapidly to leadership in the San Francisco local and the West Coast ILA. In 1937, Bridges led the West Coast ILA into the CIO as the ILWU, and he became ILWU president and CIO regional director.
From 1934 onward, business leaders, the press, and elected officials labelled Bridges a Red and urged deportation. He denied Party membership, but openly supported many Party positions. In 1939, a hearing produced no grounds for deportation, leading Congress to adopt new criteria. A second hearing went against Bridges. The Supreme Court reversed that decision and Bridges became a citizen in 1945. In 1949, Bridges was charged with lying regarding Communist Party membership during his naturalization proceedings. The Supreme Court ruled in his favor in 1955, federal attorneys pressed civil charges but they were dismissed.
In the 1950s, Bridges concluded that mechanization of longshore work was inevitable, and he led negotiations that produced the Mechanization and Modernization Agreement (M & M) in 1960. The ILWU accepted increased use of machinery on the docks; employers agreed to generous pensions, no lay-offs, and guaranteed pay, and also recognized ILWU jurisdiction over all the new machinery. Fortune called Bridges "the union leader who did best" for his members in 1960. A few ILWU members, especially communists, criticized the M & M for reducing the size and hence the political clout of the ILWU, producing a short-lived rift between Bridges and the Party.
During his later years, Bridges was hailed as a "labor statesman," and was appointed to a City Charter Revision Commission in 1968 and to the San Francisco Port Commission in 1970. He retired as ILWU president in 1977. In 1988, Bridges gave his blessing to ILWU affiliation with the AFL-CIO.
Drawn from an unpublished manuscript by Robert Cherny, "Harry Bridges (1901 - 1990)" and Cherny's "Frances Perkins and the Harry Bridges Case," p. 21.
Extent
46 boxes
Language of Materials
From the Collection: English
Related Secondary Sources
- Cherny, Robert W. "The Harry Bridges Deportation Case, 1934-1939." Paper delivered at the annual meeting of the Southwest Labor Studies Association, April 1988. Part of a biographical study of Bridges, in progress.
- Kutler, Stanely I. "'If at First...': The Trials of Harry Bridges." In The American Inquisition: Justice and Injustice in the Cold War. New York: Hill and Wang, 1982. Most complete published account of events to 1989, but did not utilize some important archival materials that have become available since the early 1980s.
- Larrowe, Charles P. Harry Bridges: The Rise and Fall of Radical Labor in the United States. New York: Lawrence Hill and Co., 1972. Written without benefitof some important archival material; no footnotes.
- Martin, George. Madam Secretary: Frances Perkins. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1976. Biography of the Secretary of Labor responsible for the first INS hearing.
- Perkins, Frances. The Roosevelt I Knew. New York: The Viking Press, 1946. Some information on the decision to bring charges against Bridges in 1938-39.
- Ritchie, Donald A. James M. Landis: Dean of the Regulators. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980. Biography of the hearing officer for the 1939 INS hearing.
- Walsh, James P. San Francisco's Hallinan: Toughest Lawyer in Town. Novato, Ca.: Presidio Press, 1982. Biography of Bridges' chief lawyer during the Harris trial.
- Ward, Estolv E. Harry Bridges on Trial. New York: Modern Age Books, 1940. The 1939 Landis hearing.
Creator
- From the Collection: Leonard, Norman (Person)
Repository Details
Part of the Labor Archives and Research Center Repository
San Francisco State University
J. Paul Leonard Library, Room 460
1630 Holloway Ave
San Francisco 94132-1722 USA
(415) 405-5571
larc@sfsu.edu