Rose Pastor Stokes

Eugene V. Debs, Max Eastman and Rose Pastor Stokes in 1918.

Rose Harriet Pastor Stokes (18 July 1879 - 20 June 1933), a native of Russian Poland, was a Jewish-American Socialist Party leader, writer, birth control advocate, Communist and feminist. She was active in labor politics and women's issues. Her nickname was "Rose of the Ghetto".^[1] She had some notoriety for marrying millionaire James Graham Phelps Stokes, a member of elite New York society, personal friend of President Woodrow Wilson and activist in Socialism.

Biography

Youth and emigration

Rose Harriet was born in the tiny Jewish shtetl of Augustava Suvolk in Russian Poland on July 18, 1879. She was the daughter of Jacob and Anna Wieslander. Her parents separated, and her mother took the family to London in 1882 when Rose was three. There she married Israel Pastor, whose surname Rose took. The family lived in the East End. Rose Pastor attended classes for a time at the Bell Lane Free School. Israel Zangwill was once a pupil there and later an instructor.

In 1891 when Pastor was twelve, her family emigrated to Cleveland, Ohio. In 1892 she found a job in a Cleveland cigar factory, where she worked as a cigar-maker for the next eleven years. Her stepfather died a few years after the family arrived in Cleveland, and Pastor helped support her six siblings and mother.^[2]

Writing and activism

During this time, Pastor discovered her talent for writing. Responding to a request for thoughts from Jewish workers, she submitted an essay to the Jewish Daily News in New York City. It was published and she was encouraged to write more. The paper continued to publish her work. Pastor's success led her to relocate to New York in 1903. Pastor became a columnist in the English-language section of the Jewish Daily News, where she offered advice to other young women, as well as writing human interest features. The paper was published mostly in Yiddish. Her salary was approximately $15 a week, and after a couple of years she was able to bring her mother and siblings from Cleveland to New York.^[3]

In July 1903, Pastor was asked to interview James Graham Phelps Stokes, known as Graham Stokes, or J. G. Phelps Stokes, a prominent businessman and supporter of a settlement on the Lower East Side. He was often in the news because of his social status and his involvement in caring for the needy. In September 1905 he formed the Intercollegiate Socialist Society with Upton Sinclair, Jack London, Clarence Darrow, and Florence Kelly, to encourage study and discussion of socialism in colleges. Descended from families prominent since the colonial history of New England, Stokes was a railway president and a society figure who had given up his mansion at 299 Madison Avenue to be closer to the work he found most satisfying, that of social projects. Stokes moved to the University Settlement on the Lower East Side, which administered to the masses of new immigrants from Europe. It was near the Jewish Daily News. Pastor praised Stokes' ideals in her account of the interview. Soon Pastor also became active in work of the settlement house. They married in 1905.

In 1909 a few years after their marriage, the Stokes moved to a house in Greenwich, Connecticut, where Pastor Stokes was integrated into her husband's circle of intellectual socialists, including William English Walling, Anna Strunsky Walling and Helen Stokes.^[4] Both Graham and Rose Stokes continued their activities on behalf of the Socialist movement. Pastor Stokes frequently traveled around the country to speak and debate about the cause. She also helped picket, strike and organize for specific events. She wrote regularly for the New York Call.^[5]

In 1910 Pastor Stokes took part in the Shirtwaist Strike, to show support for the 40,000 garment workers. Her marriage to James Phelps Stokes had increased her prominence, and reporters came to cover her appearance at the strike headquarters at Clinton Hall. "My ideal is that we all be economically interdependent. We should not be independent like millionaires, nor dependent like laborers. My ideal is that we all be interdependent. And I'm not working in a losing cause."^[6] In May and June 1912, Pastor Stokes helped lead a strike by the New York City restaurant and hotel workers. In the "winter of 1913, she aided the New York garment workers in their bitter strike."^[7]

James began to devote more time to writing, but Pastor Stokes continued her activism. Among her activities to help women, she worked to distribute birth control information, organizing meetings with Margaret Sanger and Emma Goldman.^[8] She also continued to contribute poetry to The Masses, Independent and The Century. In 1916 she wrote a play about a labor leader.^[9]

Marriage

Pastor's friendship with Stokes deepened, and in early 1905 they announced their engagement. The couple were married in July 1905. Both became active members of the Socialist Party.

Despite tensions due to their differing positions on World War I, relations between Pastor Stokes and her husband were relatively congenial. Graham had been embarrassed before WWI by her activities for birth control and labor politics. Some of his family were quite opposed to her politics. With increasing strain, in 1925 Graham brought a petition for divorce in Nyack, New York, on grounds of misconduct by his wife. He won a decree. Pastor Stokes then issued a statement denouncing the New York divorce laws. She stated she and her husband had co-existed as friendly enemies for some time. She said she would cherish her freedom.

By 1929 Pastor Stokes had remarried. Her second husband Jerome Isaac Romaine, also an immigrant, was a language teacher. The couple lived at 215 Second Avenue.

War and prosecution

In 1917 the Socialists denounced the American war program. Stokes withdrew from the party and joined the Armed Forces of the United States. At first Rose Pastor Stokes also left the Socialists, as she was disappointed with the party's official position on the war: endorsing "active interference with the war effort". She believed that Germany was a threat to democratic nations. Shortly she rejoined the Socialists, as she doubted whether President Woodrow Wilson's policies actually furthered international democracy.^[10] She became associated with the Left Wing of the political faction. In a few years this element grew into the American Communist Party.

Pastor Stokes began to travel throughout the United States, speaking and contributing articles to various newspapers. In 1918, after comments following a speech in Kansas City were incorrectly reported, Pastor Stokes wrote a letter to the editor of the Kansas City Star in which she criticized US involvement in World War I. She accused the US government of being allied with profiteers. Controversy over the letter led to a federal indictment and trial of Pastor Stokes in Kansas City, Missouri, for violating the Espionage Act of 1917. This was one of several indictments of activist women during the WWI years. Their criticism of the war threatened the national power of the patriotic mothers.^[11]

After receiving a sentence of 10 years in Missouri State prison, Pastor Stokes and her attorney, Seymour Stedman of Chicago, Illinois, successfully appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in St. Louis, Missouri. The experience of her trial and conviction pushed Pastor Stokes' politics to the left. She joined the Communist Party in 1920.^[12] The government dismissed the case against her in 1921.

Communist party and last years

Pastor Stokes withdrew again from the Socialist Party and became a founding member of the Communist Party. In 1922, she traveled to Moscow as an American delegate to the Fourth Congress of the Communist International. Pastor Stokes also served as the reporter for the special Negro Commission at the Congress. After returning to the United States, she was elected to serve on the Executive Committee of the newly formed Workers' Party. It was at this time that Rose adopted the pseudonym "Sasha".^[13][14] She participated in strikes and made court appearances to support men and women arrested for picketing and/or demonstrating. In 1929 she was arrested for demonstrating during a garment workers' strike. Due to her many activities over the years with activists of the Lower East Side, she was called "Rose of the Ghetto".^[15]

Pastor Stokes was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1930. In 1933 she went to Germany for radiation therapy. In April 1933 friends collected funds for hospital expenses. Pastor Stokes entered Municipal Hospital in Frankfurt, Germany, on April 15, where she was operated on for cancer by Professor Vito Schmiden. While under treatment, she died at age 54 in the hospital on 20 Jun 1933. Her body was cremated and the ashes sent to New York, where a memorial service was held at Webster Hall.^[16]

At the time of death, Pastor Stokes was working on her autobiography. Before her death, she had sent numerous documents related to her writing to her agents in the United States. Her unfinished autobiography was published posthumously.

Her papers were collected and archived by New York University, where they are held at the Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives.^[17]

Works by Rose Pastor Stokes

• "The Condition of Working Women, from the Working Woman's Viewpoint", Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1906 ^[18]
• Songs of Labor by Morris Rosenfeld, Translation, in collaboration with Helena Frank. Boston: Richard G. Badger, 1914.
• The Woman Who Wouldn't and Other Plays. New York: Putnam's, 1916.
• "I Belong to the Working Class": The Unfinished Autobiography of Rose Pastor Stokes. Eds. Herbert Shapiro and David L. Sterling (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1992).

Footnotes

Additional reading

Additional reading/External links

• "Rose Stokes Dies After Operation", New York Times, 21 Jun 1933
• Michael P. Donnelly, "The Martyrdom of Rose Pastor Stokes", Capital Crime and Federal Justice in Western Missouri: Four Cases
• Engdahl, J. Louis (January 19, 1918). "Rose Pastor Stokes Asks Privilege to Return to Socialist Party Ranks" (PDF). The Eye Opener (Chicago), v. 9, no. 26, pg. 4.. Marxists Internet Archive. http://www.marxists.org/history/usa/parties/spusa/1918/0119-engdahl-onstokes.pdf. Retrieved 2006-10-08. 
• Stokes, Rose Pastor. "Rose Pastor Stokes". The Communist, November 8, 1919. Marxists Internet Archive. http://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/stokes/index.htm. Retrieved 2006-10-08.