Lemlich, Clara (1888–1982)

American labor leader. Name variations: Clara Lemlich Shavelson. Born in the Ukraine, Russia, in 1888; died in Resada, California, on July 12, 1982; immigrated to the United States in 1903; married; children: three.

Co-founded Local 25 of the International Ladies Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU, 1906); led the 1909 "Uprising of the 30,000" strike; organized for the industrial section of the New York Woman's Suffrage Party (1910–12); co-founded Communist Party-USA.

Born in the Russian Ukraine in 1888, Clara Lemlich learned to fight at an early age. Forbidden by her Orthodox Jewish scholar father to learn how to read, young Clara secretly worked for a local tailor so that she could pay a tutor. By the time her family fled Russia in 1903 during the Kishinev pogrom, Lemlich was literate in both Yiddish and Russian and well-read in the revolutionary tracts of her day. Upon her arrival in America, she went to work in a New York City shirtwaist shop; she was 15 years old. Lemlich dreamed of becoming a doctor and spent her evening hours at the New York Public Library reading on her own, as school was out of the question. For Lemlich's family, like many immigrant families, the income of all, including children, was needed just to survive.

However, Clara Lemlich intended to do more than just survive. Frustrated by the long hours, low pay and exploitative conditions of her workplace, in 1906 Lemlich joined with several other young garment workers in the formation of the International Ladies Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU) Local 25. Her radical politics were very much a part of her trade-union philosophy. After being involved in numerous small strikes at the same time that she was attending classes in Marxist theory at the Rand School, Lemlich demonstrated her abilities as a leader and fighter in the massive strike of shirtwaist workers in 1909.

On November 22, 1909, a meeting was called to discuss a general strike in support of three striking shirtwaist firms, one of which employed Clara Lemlich. Organizers were amazed when hundreds of workers, primarily young Yiddish-speaking immigrant women, came to the meeting. Speaking in Yiddish, the 19-year-old Lemlich made an eloquent appeal for a general strike. Her plea was met with a resounding cheer, and what came to be known as "the Uprising of the 30,000" strike began. Lemlich had been out on strike since September, arrested several times, and beaten so badly by company thugs that she suffered six broken ribs. Nonetheless, she and eventually thousands of women garment workers carried on. Aided by the New York Women's Trade Union League and local Socialists, the strike lasted until February 1910. Although little was won from the employers, the strike did bring to the public's attention the horrific conditions under which many women worked. Even more important, perhaps, was the event itself. "They used to say you couldn't even organize women," Lemlich later said. "Well, we showed them!"

After the 1909 strike, Clara Lemlich was blacklisted from working in any garment shop in New York City. She spent some time as an organizer for the industrial section of the Woman Suffrage Party, the Wage-Earners' Suffrage League. However, by 1912, Lemlich and league head Mary Ritter Beard had an apparent falling out. A year later, Lemlich married a printer who was also a Russian immigrant and a Bolshevik. Together, they had three children, and Lemlich remained active. She organized a rent strike which resulted in her family's eviction and, as a member of the Communist Party, was active in unemployment councils and hunger marches during the 1930s. After her husband grew ill, Lemlich returned to work in the garment trade and once again was a member of the ILGWU. Although she was not initially recognized for her early labor activities, the union gave her an honorary pension when she retired in the 1950s, in recognition of the ex-teenager who, with "fire in her mouth," had led a strike of 30,000 women in search of economic justice.

sources:

Glenn, Susan A. Daughters of the Shtetl: Life and Labor in the Immigrant Generation. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990.

Orleck, Annelise. Common Sense and a Little Fire: Women and Working-Class Politics in the U.S. 1900–1965. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1995.

Tax, Meredith. The Rising of the Women: Feminist Solidarity and Class Conflict, 1880–1917. NY: Monthly Review Press, 1980.

Kathleen Banks Nutter , Manuscripts Processor at the Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts