Celeste Strack Kaplan Papers,
1931-1996
Processed by Julia Bazar
Southern California Library for Social Studies and
Research
6120 South Vermont Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90044
Phone: (323) 759-6063
Fax: (323) 759-2252
Email: archives@socallib.org
URL: http://www.socallib.org/
© 2001
Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research. All
rights reserved.
Register of the Celeste Strack Kaplan Papers,
1931-1996
Collection number: MSS 035
Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research
Los
Angeles, California
Contact Information:
- Southern California Library for Social Studies and
Research
- 6120 South Vermont Avenue
- Los Angeles, CA, 90044
- Phone: (323) 759-6063
- Fax: (323) 759-2252
- Email: archives@socallib.org
- URL: http://www.socallib.org/
- Processed by:
- Julia Bazar
- Date Completed:
-
Jan. 2001
- Encoded by:
- Julia Bazar
© 2001 Southern California Library for Social Studies and
Research. All rights reserved.
Descriptive Summary
Title: Celeste Strack Kaplan Papers,
Date (inclusive): 1931-1996
Collection number: MSS 035
Creator:
Kaplan, Celeste Strack, 1915-1998
Extent:
3 boxes, 1 half-box, 1 oversize
box
3 linear feet
Repository:
Southern California Library for Social Studies and
Research
Abstract: Papers of a 1930s student radical and
Communist Party member. The collection covers her activities from her
undergraduate debating career through her resignation from the party in
1958.
Language:
English.
Administrative Information
Provenance
Donated to the Library by Celeste Strack Kaplan's husband, Leon
Kaplan, November 10, 1999.
Access
The collection is available for research only at the Library's
facility in Los Angeles. The Library is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Tuesday
through Saturday. Researchers are encouraged to call or email the Library
indicating the nature of their research query prior to making a visit.
Publication Rights
Copyright has not been assigned to The Southern California Library
for Social Studies and Research. Researchers may make single copies of any
portion of the collection, but publication from the collection will be allowed
only with the express written permission of the Library's director. It is not
necessary to obtain written permission to quote from a collection. When the
Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research gives permission
for publication, it is as the owner of the physical items and is not intended
to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be
obtained by the reader.
Preferred Citation
[Identification of item], Celeste Strack Kaplan Papers, The Southern
California Library for Social Studies and Research, Los Angeles,
California.
Biography
Celeste Strack Kaplan was born in 1915 in Chicago; the Strack family
moved to San Diego during her childhood. After graduating from high school
(1932), she earned a full scholarship to the University of Southern California
(USC) where she was the only member of the freshman class to achieve an A
average. She was a member of the championship women's debate team. Raised in a
Republican household, Kaplan became involved in radical student politics at USC
and was expelled in 1934 for her political activities. During the summer,
Kaplan returned to San Diego and worked with the National Student League (NSL)
and the American League Against War and Fascism, organizing in the local high
schools before enrolling in UCLA. She also covered the 1934 San Francisco
General Strike for the NSL's newspaper.
As a UCLA student, Kaplan continued her association with the NSL
(organizing at UCLA and Los Angeles Junior College). She had worked on
organizing the 1934 Student Strike for Peace at USC, and also the 1935 Student
Strike for Peace at UCLA. Kaplan and four male students (including the Student
Body President) were suspended in November 1934 for attempting to arrange an
open student forum. Kaplan specifically was charged with "persistent violation
of university regulations including the holding of communistic meetings on its
grounds." A large scale, negative publicity campaign was launched with support
from a number of liberal organizations. Kaplan and the other students were
reinstated with full credit in December 1934. In 1935, she was part of a
24-member delegation to Cuba in response to a request from the outlawed
National Labor Federation of Cuba (pre-revolutionary Cuba was controlled by
U.S. corporate interests). The delegation included various labor union leaders,
writer Clifford Odets, and others; Kaplan was the NSL delegate. The delegation
was arrested upon their arrival and deported. Kaplan graduated from UCLA with a
Bachelor of Arts and went on to receive a Masters of Economics from UC Berkeley
and a Masters of Social Work from UCLA. While in graduate school Kaplan
continued to work on youth related projects including the American Youth
Congress, American Student Union movement, and the YWCA's work on the Federal
Youth Act.
Kaplan was a member of the YCL (Young Communist League) as early as
the summer of 1934, though she denied party membership at the time of her
suspension. She married fellow party member, Leon Kaplan sometime in the 1940s.
She continued to use her maiden name (Strack) through the 1950s. During the
1940s and 1950s, Kaplan wrote regularly for Political Affairs magazine, which
was sub-titled "A magazine devoted to the theory and practice of
Marxism-Leninism," under her own name and two pen names: Catherine Welland and
Mary Norris. Her writing also appeared in New Masses and Mainstream. In 1948,
as the Educational Director of the Communist Party of California, Kaplan
testified in Hawaii in defense of John and Aiko Reinecke, a husband and wife
both dismissed from teaching jobs for alleged communist affiliation. Kaplan
also went on a speaking tour of the islands sponsored by the Hawaii Civil
Liberties Committee (HCLC). 1948 was also the year she taught a class in "The
History of Socialism in the United States" at the California Labor School.
During this time period, Kaplan's husband was Labor Secretary for the party. In
the early 1950's, the couple was sent underground, moving all over the country,
sometime separated, and unable to contact their families. Their only daughter,
Anna was born (1954) during this time. In 1955, they re-emerged (it was at this
point that Kaplan returned to UCLA for her Masters of Social Work). In 1958,
the Kaplans left the party as part of a mass resignation. This was a period
that found many disillusioned with the Communist Party who went on to create
other alternative political organizations
After leaving the party, Kaplan went on to become the director of EL
NIDO, a multi-ethnic social service agency serving children and families in Los
Angeles County. She retired for the first time in 1983, going on to become
founder and first president of the Los Angeles Roundtable for Children
(1983-1990), help create the County Department of Children and Family Services
(1984), and teach at the USC School of Social Work. In 1990, she retired again,
moving with her husband to Ventura County to be near their daughter and her
family, but Kaplan still taught at the Ventura County USC School of Social
Work. She died in 1998.
Scope and Content
This collection contains correspondence, flyers, articles, teaching
materials, manuscript drafts, a thesis, a book, clippings and periodicals. The
collection is divided fairly evenly between clippings, published articles and
unpublished letters and other collected materials. The materials give an inside
view of the radical student movement of the 1930s through correspondence,
flyers and periodicals, and the life and achievements of a specific, gifted
student, including her prize winning record as a debater at USC. It also
documents some of her activities as the Educational Director of the Communist
Party of California in the 1940s. It contains no reference to her period
underground except for one undated letter in which she tells her correspondent
where she is really staying as opposed to where she is "officially" staying.
The collection ends with her resignation from the party in 1958. It contains no
information on her later career as a social worker and teacher.
The collection also contains fairly extensive clippings and
periodicals files. Besides the usual materials the collection contains two
volumes, a 1960 thesis about the New Deal and Youth, in which Kaplan is
mentioned, and a well annotated book (both directly on the page and on detailed
strips of paper stuck between the pages), The Political Economy of Growth by
Paul A. Baran, which Kaplan apparently used in writing State Monopoly
Capitalism. Serril Gerber, who is also mentioned in the Blacklisted Teachers
Collections, and radical lawyer Richard Gladstein, also make appearances in
Kaplan's papers.
Arrangement
The collection is divided into three series:
Student Period,
Communist Party
Period
, and
Clippings and Periodicals
Related Material at the Southern California Library for Social
Studies and Research
Title: Richard Gladstein Papers,
Date: 1930-1969
Physical Description:
10 boxes
Title: Abraham Minkus Papers: Blacklisted Teachers in Los
Angeles,
Date: 1945-1983
Physical Description:
4 boxes
Bibliography
Kaplan, Anna L.
Born Underground, in
Red Diapers: Growing Up in the Communist Leftedited by
Kaplan, Judy and
Shapiro, LinnUrbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998.
A copy of the collection register is kept in the first box of the
collection (1/0).
Series 1.
Student Period,
1933-1945
Physical Description: 16 folders, 1 oversize folder
*Box 5 is
an oversize newspaper box
Scope and Content Note
This series covers the period that Kaplan was a student at the
University of Southern California (USC) and the University of California Los
Angeles (UCLA), as well as her graduate studies at the University of
California, Berkeley. Materials deal primarily with her political activities
while at UCLA, though one folder refers to political activities at USC and
several folders concern her work with American Student Union (ASU) and the
YWCA, concerning the Federal Youth Act. For more information on her debating
career and other academic honors see the Clippings and Periodicals series. Of
special interest are materials relating to her 1935 trip to Cuba, her
correspondence with Mary Beard, and several student papers including her 1945
Masters Thesis in Economics.
Arrangement
Series is arranged chronologically.
Box-folder 1/1
USC - Student's Cooperative League Petition,
c. 1933
Box-folder 1/2
NSL, YCL (inc. UCLA Suspension),
1934
Box-folder 1/3
San Francisco General Strike,
1934
Box-folder 1/4
Miscellaneous Flyers and Other Information,
c. 1934-1935
Box-folder *5/10
Strike Against War Poster,
April 12, [1935?]
Box-folder 1/7-1/8
American Youth Congress (AYC)
Box-folder 1/7
Flyers, Proceedings,
1935-1939
Box-folder 1/8
Congressional Record,
1937
Box-folder 1/9
American Student Union (ASU),
1935-1938, 1996
Box-folder 1/10
YWCA and
The Woman's Press - Federal Youth Act,
1937, n.d.
Box-folder 1/11
Letter from Mary Beard (wife of Charles Beard),
1939
Box-folder 1/12
Paper on
American Agriculture for a Business Cycles
Class,
1939
Box-folder 1/13
Paper on
American Capitalism versus American
Democracy,
1940
Box-folder 1/14
American Youth for Democracy,
1944
Box-folder 1/15-1/16
Master's Thesis -
The Industrial Development of the West from 1929 to
1944,
1945
Series 2.
Communist Party Period,
1948-1960, n.d.
Physical Description:
19 folders, 2 volumes
Scope and Content Note
This series covers Kaplan's period as an active member of the
Communist Party of California, including her teaching and writing activities,
as well as her resignation from the party in 1958. A significant percentage of
the series concerns her appearance as a witness at the John and Aiko Reinecke
Trial in Hawaii. These materials (which documents an early blacklisted teacher
case, the political and social climate in Hawaii before statehood, and Kaplan's
political beliefs and responses to her environment), include background
material on Hawaii, correspondence, and a draft copy of her
Hawaii Journal that was published in
the
People's Daily World (see Clippings and Periodicals
series for published version).
Of special interest are the class notes from the class she taught
at the California Labor School, and correspondence concerning articles written
for
New Masses,
Political Affairs, and
Mainstream (for the actual articles see the Clippings
and Periodicals series), the partial draft of a book-length manuscript
State Monopoly Capitalism in the United States. This
series also contains a small set of subject files (containing quotes from and
summaries of written materials ranging from Lincoln to Marx), which may relate
either to her teaching or writing activities.
Arrangement
This series is arranged chronologically, except for the undated
Subject files at the end of the series which are arranged alphabetically.
Box-folder 1/17
New Masses - Correspondence re: Central Valley
Project Articles (unpublished),
1945
Box-folder 2/1
History of Socialism in the United States, California
Labor School, taught by Celeste Strack Kaplan,
1948
Box-folder 2/2
Speaking tour and
Hawaii Diary (Draft
Manuscript),
1948, n.d.
Box-folder 2/3
Background and Follow-up (also Statehood),
1946-1976, n.d.
Box-folder 2/4
Charles Fujimoto - Correspondence, Speeches,
Professional Papers,
1948
Box-folder 2/5
Hawaii Civil Liberties Committee (HCLC),
1948
Box-folder 2/6
Background: Statehood and Smith Act,
c. 1952
Box-folder 2/7
Political Affairs - Response to Letters to the
Editor re: an Article by "Catherine Welland,"
1954
Box-folder 2/8
Resignation from the Communist Party - Correspondence,
etc.,
1952-1958
Box-folder 2/9-2/11
State Monopoly Capitalism in the United States -
Draft Manuscript
Box-folder 2/11
Chapter 5 (two versions),
c. 1958
Box-folder 3/1
Confiscation of Property,
n.d.
Box-folder 3/2
Constitutional Change,
n.d.
Box-folder 3/3
Dialectical & Historical Materialism,
n.d.
Box-folder 3/4
Dictatorship of Proletariat and Restraints on
Loyalists (Tories),
n.d.
Box-folder 3/6
Lincoln and Schurz on Unjust War,
n.d.
Box-folder 3/7
Marxism - Not Dogma,
n.d.
Box-folder 3/8
Monopolies Violate National Interests,
n.d.
Box-folder 3/9
Right of Revolution,
n.d.
Box-folder 4/1
Book with Extensive Annotation and Notes (
The Political Economy of Growth by Paul A.
Baran),
c. 1957-1958
Box-folder 4/2
Thesis:
The New Deal and Youth by George Phillip Rawick,
1960
Series 3.
Clippings and Periodicals,
1932-1958
Physical Description: 8 folders and 8 oversize folders
*Box 5
is an oversize newspaper box
Scope and Content Note
This series consists of a large number of clippings collected by
Kaplan and/or her mother documenting her academic career focusing primarily on
her debating successes and her suspension from UCLA. Other clippings include
the printed version of her
Hawaiian Diary (see the Communist
Party series for manuscript version), and a 6-part series of articles by John
Gates on
Why I Quit the Communist Party,
published in the
New York Post around the time of Kaplan's own
resignation from the Party. The periodicals include student publications (put
out by the National Student League, local chapters and similar organizations)
and Marxist periodicals that Kaplan wrote for under a variety of names. There
are also single periodicals or articles within some of the clippings and other
files.
Also of interest is an exchange of articles between J.G. Shaw, in
Liberty Magazine entitled
Will the Communists Get Our Girls in College?
One Father's Story
(Sept. 7, 1935), and his daughter, Nancy
Bedford-Jones, whose response,
My Father is a Liar, in the September
3, 1935
New Masses, identifies the actual author as H.
Bedford-Jones and cites various distortions and lies in his article. The
Liberty article can be found in the "Miscellaneous
Articles" folder under Clippings and the
New Masses article under Periodicals.
Box-folder *5/1
Debate Club and Honors,
1931-1934
Box-folder *5/2
Development of Student Movement (including Anti-War
Activities),
1932-1934
Box-folder *5/3
UCLA Expulsion and Aftermath,
1934
Box-folder *5/5
Other Publicity,
1935-1936, 1939, n.d.
Box-folder *5/6-*5/7, 3/10
Box-folder *5/6
Hawaiian Diary,
People's Daily World,
Oct. 8, 1948
Box-folder *5/7
Kaplan Trip, Reinecke Case and Fujimoto,
1948, n.d.
Box-folder 3/11
John Gates - 6 part Series:
Why I Quit the Communist Party,
New York Post, 1958
Box-folder 3/12-3/17, *5/8-*5/9
Box-folder 3/12
Student Review -National Student League,
1934
Box-folder 3/13
Other National Student League Publications and
The Student Outlook: The Intercollegiate Socialist
Review
- League for Industrial Democracy,
1934
Box-folder 3/14
National Student Mirror - National Student
Federation of America,
1934-1935
Box-folder *5/8
Student Outpost and
College News, 1933-1935
Box-folder *5/9
New Masses and
Time, 1934-1936, 1945
Box-folder 3/15-3/16
Political Affairs - Articles by Strack,
"Welland," & "Norris"
Box-folder 3/17
Mainstream - Article by Strack,
February 1957