Title: Hal Draper Papers

Dates: circa 1940-1990

Collection Number: D-373

Creator/Collector: Draper, Hal.

Extent: 85 linear feet

Repository: UC Davis. Special Collections

Abstract: Collection contains research notes relating to political history and manuscripts of his writing.

Language of Material: English

Collection is open for research.

All applicable copyrights for the collection are protected under chapter 17 of the U.S. Copyright Code. Requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Head of Special Collections. Permission for publication is given on behalf of the Regents of the University of California as the owner of the physical items. It is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained by the researcher.

[Identification of item]. Hal Draper Papers. Collection Number: D-373. UC Davis. Special Collections

Hal Draper was a Marxist writer and a socialist activist. Through his political activism and authorship, he accomplished much as an educator, librarian, journalist, translator, editor, and author. Draper was born in Brooklyn, New York on September 19, 1914. Draper attended Brooklyn College, earning a bachelor’s degree in 1934. After college, he stayed in the local area, teaching at various New York City high schools from 1936 to 1942. During World War II, he was a shipyard engineer and a sheet metal mechanic. During 1948 and 1949 he served as an editor for The New International, a socialist periodical. Through 1949 to 1957 he was an editor for Labor Action, another socialist newspaper. Draper returned to academia in 1960, earning a master’s degree at the University of California, Berkeley. Shortly after, Draper continued at UC Berkeley as a librarian and biographer. After concluding his librarian career in 1970, Draper wrote extensively on Marxism and socialism. Between 1960 to 1974, he served as a member for the New Politics editorial board, a socialist journal. Draper was a national secretary and antiwar activist for the Young People’s Socialists League in 1938 to 1939. He also served as chair for the Independent Socialist Committee in Berkeley from 1963 to 1970. In 1981, he founded the Center for Socialist History in Berkeley, a library in Alameda, California that promoted research and publication in the field of the history of socialism. Draper.served as director of the Center for Socialist History until 1990. Draper was regarded as the most prominent American Socialist and the most important American Marxist due to his writings in the 1950s and 1960s. His passion in the field of socialism and Marxism inspired him to create powerful books. Draper authored various political books including Introduction to Independent Socialism, Berkeley: The New Student Revolt, Grove, The Dictatorship of the Proletariat from Marx to Lenin, and War and Revolution: Lenin and the Myth of Revolutionary Defeatism. Furthermore, Draper contributed to other fields of allied causes such as, As We Saw the Thirties and The Israel/Arab Reader. As a translator Draper participated on The Complete Poems of Heinrich Heine: A Modern English Version. Along with his political works, Draper authored science and fiction stories such as The Day Civilization Collapsed and Ms. Find in a Lbry. Draper passed away on January 26, 1990 in Berkeley California.

Collection contains research notes relating to political history and manuscripts of his writing.