A rare portrait of radical Jewish labor organizer Sigismund Danielewicz, who fought against Anti-Chinese discrimination within the labor community. Danielewicz arrived in San Francisco from Poland in the late 1870s....
A rare portrait of radical Jewish labor organizer Sigismund Danielewicz, who fought against Anti-Chinese discrimination within the labor community.
Danielewicz arrived in San Francisco from Poland in the late 1870s. An 1879 directory lists him as a barber. From 1880 to 1885, he traveled back and forth between San Francisco and the Kingdom of Hawaii. In 1883 he was elected president of the Workingmen’s Union in Hawaii. In San Francisco, he worked closely with Barber’s union and the Coast Seamen’s Union.
His labor career effectively came to an end in 1885. While serving as secretary of the International Workingmen’s Union Central Committee, he attended a west coast conference organized by the Knights of Labor. The convention was rife with anti-Chinese sentiment. One delegate from the recently-organized Seamen's Union (which Danielewicz helped form) introduced a resolution to demand the expulsion of all Chinese people from San Francisco within 60 days.
Amidst all this, Danielewicz attempted to deliver a prepared statement, arguing vehemently against such racist ideology. He said that, being Jewish, he belonged to a group of people that had been persecuted for hundreds of years. He asked the crowd if this persecution, or that of the Irish in New York, was any more justifiable than the persecution of the Chinese.
He spoke in economic terms as well, arguing, “The real object of the convention is the permanent improvement of the material condition to its constituents; and whereas, the removal of the Chinese will not effect such improvement as is shown by the condition of the working people of the Eastern States and Europe, which is worse even than that of our own people in spite of the total absence of Chinese there: and whereas, the cause of our troubles must consequently be looked for in some cause which has a universal application and which is found in the system of speculation, which withholds from the workers 92 percent of their productions."
His arguments fell of deaf ears. He was laughed at and booed off stage and later ruled out of order. His close friends at the convention including fellow radical organizer Burnette Haskell, to whom the present photograph is signed, did not come to his defense. Their close relationship never quite recovered.
Ostracized from his fellow labor organizers, Danielewicz went on to publish “The Beacon,” San Francisco’s first Anarchist publication, which ran from 1889 to 1891. He later patented a “filtrative inhaler,” meant to keep harmful particles out of the lungs. He eventually made his way down to Los Angeles and by 1921 he was working as a laborer.
The photograph was autographed by Danielewicz when he was organizing in Hawaii, and is signed to his “revered comrades,” Burnette Haskell and Anna Haskell. Burnette Haskell was a prominent radical anarchist who co-founded the Kaweah Co-operative Commonwealth and Anna Haskell (also known as Annie Fader) was a prominent socialist and suffragette. However, this inscription was done in pencil and at some point gone over in a ball point pen. Likely by Ira Cross, who gifted it to the Bancroft in 1933 (from whence it was subsequently withdrawn).