59th Issue: Clara Lemlich Shavelson

Today I learned about Clara Lemlich Shavelson. Clara was born in 1886 in Ukraine. She grew up in a Yiddish speaking Jewish village, and raised money for books to learn Russian by writing letters and sewing buttonholes for her neighbors. She became interested in socialism and communism through revolutionary literature, and moved to New York in 1903 with her family due to a pogrom in her village.  

 

 

Clara began working in the garment industry, but she was upset about the long hours and low pay. She became involved in the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. Clara became known for her charm and bravery. In 1909, to rally support for the workers striking at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, Clara raised a call to action, not just vague words and platitudes. She said: "I have listened to all the speakers, and I have no further patience for talk. I am a working girl, one of those striking against intolerable conditions. I am tired of listening to speakers who talk in generalities. What we are here for is to decide whether or not to strike. I make a motion that we go out in a general strike."

20,000 workers went on strike, and Clara was in front. Even after thugs hired by the company broke several of her ribs, she returned straight back to the picket line. The strike lasted for four months, after which union contracts were produced at almost every garment factory. Unfortunatley, there was no union contract at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, and  the fire the next year caused over 150 workers to die. Clara ended up searching through the dead bodies looking for a missing cousin, who she never did find.

Clara switched to campaigning for women’s suffrage, which she saw as necessary to improve working women’s lives. She didn’t agree with the upper class women who led the movement. She founded the Wage Earner’s Suffrage League, and then continued her work with the Women’s Trade Union League.

Clara quit her job when she got married to Joe Shavelson in 1913. She had three children – Irving, Martha, and Rita. They lived in a working-class neighborhood, and Clara did not go back to work, instead raising her family and organizing housewives. There had already been several boycotts at this time, against the high prices of meat, as well as rent and protests against evictions. Clara started the Council of Working Class Women, protesting high meat prices in New York City that eventually caught on nationwide. When the council dissolved, due to bad PR since it was related to the Communist Party, Clara worked for the Emma Lazarus Federation of Jewish Women’s Clubs. She “protested nuclear weapons, campaigned for ratification of the United Nations' Convention on Genocide, and against the War in Vietnam, and forged alliances with Sojourners for Truth, an African-American women's civil rights organization”.

In the 1960s, Clara entered the Jewish Home for the Aged in Los Angeles. Her children lived in California, so she could be close to her family. While she lived there, she persuaded the staff to unionize, and got them to join in the United Farm Workers boycotts of grapes and lettuce, staying true to her beliefs to the very end.