Benjamin Gitlow papers

The Gitlow Papers document Gitlow's activities for almost half a century, both as a Communist and an anti-Communist. The papers include correspondence, speeches, writings, research notes, financial records, and a large amount of printed material. The material from Gitlow's Communist period is smaller in quantity than that from his anti-Communist years, and it consists predominately of his own writings. Among the highlights are correspondence between Gitlow and his family during the first two years of his imprisonment (series 1.3); letters he wrote to his wife while in Moscow in 1929 concerning his fight with Stalin (series 1.3); material about attempted Communist infiltration into labor unions (series 3); and copies of his speeches, essays, and pamphlets in praise of Communism (series 4). The collection also includes a small amount of correspondence with or material about James Larkin, Louise Bryant (wife of John Reed), Jay Lovestone, and Max Eastman. Except for material about his first book, I Confess, in series 1.1 and 4, the papers contain little substantive material from the mid 1930s until the late 1940s. The bulk of the collection dates from about 1949 through 1965, the year of Gitlow's death. Series 3, publications, is the largest series in the collection and contains hundreds of pamphlets, newsletters, reports, and other publications, most of which were issued by anti-Communist groups. The other series reveal in some detail Gitlow's own activities and his changed attitude toward Communism. Series 2 contains all of the working papers for Theatre for Freedom, a short lived organization Gitlow founded in 1950 to use the entertainment industry in his fight against Communism. Also of importance are the speeches, drafts of articles and books, and research notes in series 4. Significant correspondents from this period are Alfred Kohlberg, Herbert Hoover, Alf Landon, Adolphe Menjou, Senator Karl Mundt (R-SD), and Eugene Lyons. The UNC Charlotte Library purchased Gitlow's library and what was believed to be the complete collection of his papers from his widow in 1973. It was later discovered that the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford University had previously acquired some of Gitlow's papers from Myers G. Lowman of the anti-Communist organization known as the Circuit Riders, Inc. Both collections include material from the same time periods, but they do not seem to duplicate each other as to content. The Hoover collection, however, does contain a substantial amount of material from the 1930s. (See Hoover Institution register appended to this description.) Gitlow's library consisted of more than 700 books, which were dispersed in the regular library collection. A partial list of these books is in the collection file.