Register of the James Daugherty Collection,
1937-1980
Processed by Patricia Martinez; machine-readable finding aid created by
Xiuzhi Zhou
Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research
6120 S. Vermont Avenue
Los Angeles, California 90044
Phone: (323) 759-6063
Fax: (323) 759-2252
Email: archives@socallib.org
URL: http://www.socallib.org
© 1999
Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research. All rights reserved.
Register of the James Daugherty Collection,
1937-1980
Collection number: MSS 017
Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research
Los Angeles, California
Contact Information:
- Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research
- 6120 S. Vermont Avenue
- Los Angeles, California 90044
- Phone: (323) 759-6063
- Fax: (323) 759-2252
- Email: archives@socallib.org
- URL: http://www.socallib.org
- Processed by:
- Patricia Martinez
- Date Completed:
- December 1995
- Encoded by:
- Xiuzhi Zhou
© 1999 Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research. All rights reserved.
Descriptive Summary
Title: James Daugherty Collection,
Date (inclusive): 1937-1980
Collection number: MSS 017
Creator:
Daugherty, James
Extent: 2 cartons
Repository:
Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research.
Language:
English.
Administrative Information
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 item and is not intended to include or imply permission of the
copyright holder, which must also be obtained.
Preferred Citation
[Identification of item], James Daugherty Collection, Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research, Los Angeles.
Biographical Sketch
James L. Daugherty (b. 1910) began his labor activism in his twenties when he was fired from an F.W. Woolworth store in Los
Angeles for supporting the store employees in their campaign for better working conditions. He took a job with the Southern
California Gas Company and soon became involved with the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America (UE), becoming
president of UE Local 1414. A grassroots activist in the growing industrial union movement, he joined the Utility Workers
Organizing Committee, one of the organizing committees affiliated with the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) which
took off in L.A. in the late 1930s. In the Los Angeles and California CIO organizations, Daugherty worked alongside L.A. CIO
leader Phillip (Slim) Connelly, in an aggressive campaign to bring large numbers of L.A. workers into CIO unions. The Utility
Workers Organizing Committee became the Utility Workers of America, CIO.
In 1946, Daugherty became president of the California CIO, a leadership position that was cut short when the U.S. labor movement
was caught up in the anti-communism that followed World War II. The 1947 Taft-Hartley Law required union members to sign non-communist
affidavits. Along with Harry Bridges, president of the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union and western regional
CIO leader, Daugherty resisted the assault on the left CIO unions, several of which were expelled from the CIO. The charter
of the California CIO was revoked by the national CIO in 1949.
After the debacle of the CIO, Daugherty worked as an organizer for the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers
in Coeur D'Alene, Idaho, leading several Mine Mill shops into the UE. Laid off from UE, Daugherty eventually returned to Los
Angeles. Retired from the labor movement, he continued to make himself available to young labor activists and assisted Southern
California Library for Social Studies and Research founder Emil Freed in expanding the library's labor holdings.
In 1991, the UCLA Oral History Program made an oral history interview with Daugherty conducted by Myrna Donahoe in 1987 and
1988, available for research. The transcript of it,
James L. Daugherty: Utilities Workers, the UE, and the CIO, is deposited in the Special Collections Department of the UCLA University Research Library. Researchers will want to consult
that for a more detailed biography of Daugherty's life of labor activism, his involvement with the Communist Party (CP), and
his view of the relationship between the CP and the organized labor movement.
Scope and Content
The papers described (two cartons) are part of a larger James L. Daugherty Collection at the Library. The priority was to
process his labor papers that relate most to Los Angeles. They are primarily files he maintained while he was a leader in
the L.A. CIO. In Box 1, researchers will find documentation on the California CIO Council and the Los Angeles CIO primarily
in the period 1946-1950, when the Cold War backlash against Left-led unions was at its height. In Box 2, the Utility Workers
of America, CIO files, 1940-1948, complement the CIO files in Box 1. Together these files provide a glimpse into the politics
of the local and national labor movement at a time when the mass industrial organizing of the original CIO had come to a near
standstill in the face of national and international Cold War politics.
Eventually Daugherty's files on the UE and Mine, Mill Smelter unions will be processed and added to the CIO and Utility Workers
papers described to date. In addition to his own papers, Daugherty rescued many labor pamphlets, periodicals, and files from
the old Los Angeles CIO building at Avalon and Slauson when it was closed down. These were given to the Southern California
Library where they became the core of the labor collection at SCL.
See related SCL Collection: California CIO Council Union Research and Information Services.
Related Collection
Title: California CIO Council Union Research and Information Services Records, 1935-1956.
Title: Shevy Wallace Healey Papers (CIO Los Angeles Organizing), 1938-1962.
Title: Standard Coil Organizing Campaign Collection (UE vs. IUE-CIO), 1949-1954, n.d..
Title: Julius Mel Reich Labor Archives Collection.
Box 1, Folder 1-4
Correspondence 1651, 1953, 1955-1958, 1959, 1960, 1962-1963, 1969-1970, [N.D.]
Box 1, Folder 6
Executive Board, Meetings 1946-1949
Box 1, Folder 8
Cost of Living 1946, 1947
Box 1, Folder 10
Facts and Figures
1945-1946
Box 1, Folder 13
Oil Workers International Union 1949
Box 1, Folder 14
Pamphlets 1945, 1947, 1948, [N.D.]
Box 1, Folder 15
Political Action 1947-1948
Box 1, Folder 16
Publications, Miscellaneous 1952
Box 1, Folder 17
Research Department 1946-1948
Box 1, Folder 19
Revocation of Charter 1949-1950
Box 1, Folder 20
Speeches 1937, 1944, 1949
Box 1, Folder 21
Taft-Hartley Law 1947, 1948
Box 1, Folder 23
Statements 1947, 1948, 1954
Box 1, Folder 25
Wage Order and Sanitary Regulations [N.D.]
Box 1, Folder 28
Pamphlets/ Leaflets 1948, [N.D.]
Box 1, Folder 32-34
International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union
Box 1, Folder 32
Resolutions 1949, 1957, 1959
Box 1, Folder 33
Statement Of Policy 1949, 1957, 1959
Box 1, Folder 34
Un-American Activities Committee, Local 6, 1953
Box 1, Folder 35
Oil Workers International Union Organizing Campaign
Box 1, Folder 35
CIO News
1942, 1943, [N.D.]
Box 1, Folder 36-43
United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America
Box 1, Folder 36
Agreements, Constitutions, Reports and Resolutions 1977, 1980
Box 1, Folder 37
Chrysler Local 230-1950, 1972
Box 1, Folder 38
The Local 216 Assembler
1980
Box 1, Folder 39
Local 230,
Feather Merchant1965-1966
Box 1, Folder 40
Local 230,
Feather Merchant1967-1969, 1971
Box 1, Folder 42
UAW Solidarity
1973, 1983
Box 1, Folder 43
Constitutions and By-Laws [N.D.]
Box 1, Folder 44-45
United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers Of America
Box 1, Folder 45
Shop Chairmen's Manual, Local 735- [N.D.]
UTILITY WORKERS OF AMERICA, CIO
Box 2, Folder 2
Annual Conventions 1941, 1943, 1948
Box 2, Folder 4
Conferences and Meetings, Miscellaneous 1946, 1948
Box 2, Folder 6
Constitutional Conferences 1942, 1944, 1946, 1947
Box 2, Folder 7
Convention Proceedings 1945-1948
Box 2, Folder 9
Council Conferences 1946, 1948
Box 2, Folder 11
Daugherty, James L., Removal From Office 1947
Box 2, Folder 13
Executive Board, Meetings 1946-1947
Box 2, Folder 14
Executive Board, Meetings 1944, 1947, 1948
Box 2, Folder 17
Local 132-1940, 1944, 1945, 1947, 1948
Box 2, Folder 19
Local 324, Retail Clerks Union 1968
Box 2, Folder 22
Publications, Miscellaneous 1947
Box 2, Folder 23
Regional Conferences 1944, 1945, 1947
Box 2, Folder 24
Reports and Statements 1946, 1947
Box 2, Folder 26
Southern California Gas Company 1947-1948
Box 2, Folder 28
State Conferences 1943, 1944, 1945, 1946, 1948
Box 2, Folder 32
Utilities Council of Southern California 1948
Box 2, Folder 33
Wage Action Policy Committee 1946-1948