Kushner, Florence (audio interview #3 of 4)

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Kushner, Florence (audio interview #3 of 4)

Kushner, Florence ( - 12/1/2002); Paxton, Louise, interviewer

URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10211.3/218491

Date: 2021-02-02

Abstract:

INTERVIEW DESCRIPTION - This is the third of four interviews conducted with Flo Kushner as part of a project for a women's oral history class at CSULB.

Description:

SUBJECT BIO - Flo Kushner was a communist organizer starting with her teen years when she joined the Young Pioneers and later in YCL and CP. She was the youngest of three children born into a family of socialist believers. Despite their beliefs, they fled Russia following the 1905 revolution as a result of the ensuing pogroms. Although Kushner recalled living in pretty squalid conditions in the tenements of New York as a child, by the time she was a little older, the family had moved to the Bronx. This is where she received her radical political education - from the street meetings in the neighborhood and from joining her mother on the ILGWU picket lines. She joined the Young Pioneers when she was twelve. Despite her mother's aspirations for her to attend college, after two years Kushner dropped out of Hunter College and joined her sister in Chicago. Following in her sister's footsteps, she went to work at Armour Packing Company to organize the workers, and later began to work in radio manufacturing. Kushner married in 1934 when she was seventeen. Her husband was also active in YCL/CP and both worked in radio manufacturing. She continued to work on an off until after the birth of her second child in 1942, when she stayed home for two years. After her husband went into the military, she went to work in a war manufacturing plant and became an active organizer for the UE. In the late 1940s/early 1950, Kushner became the CP organizational secretary for the the Illinois district until she was sent underground by the party in 1950-1951. After her divorce in 1958, she moved to Los Angeles with her new husband, Sam Kushner, who worked for the People's World. She gave up on trying to get factory jobs and instead went into white collar work. Although she scaled back her activities in the CP, Kushner was active in the peace and freedom movement, farm workers and Chicano movements in the 1970s. The interview with Kushner was conducted as a student project for a women's oral history class at CSULB. TOPICS - shop steward @ Stewart Warner; red baiting and anti-union tactics; childcare arrangements while she was working; positions in the UE; changes in the CP/CPA under Earl Browder's leadership; organizing communist club at Stewart Warner; UE activities during WWII; Taft-Hartley Act and CP; union raiding and adoption of union affidavits under Taft-Hartley Act; battle between UE and IUEW; organizational secretary for CP; restructure of CP following Browder's expulsion; and postwar marital difficulties;marital difficulties; gender roles; family life; family background; parent's expectations for her future; curriculum and cultural programs in Hebrew school; religion; social life; clothing styles and attire; childcare during WWII; duties as organizational secretary of the CP; testifying in the Foley Square Trial; McCarthyism and period of underground activities of CP; impact of McCarran and Smith Acts on CP; arrest in 1961-62 in violation of Smith Act; meeting second husband; move to Los Angeles; red baiting and FBI harassment; husband's work history with the People's World; Kushner's work history in Los Angeles; and losing her job at Occidental College for being a communist;

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