Tag: John Jacob Astor

The anniversary of a foolish decision

Yours truly, Xavier Military Institute (High School) senior, 1971

The diary entry of a Xavier High School student[1] and research assistant to Herbert Aptheker[2] for May 25, 1971, reads:

Got over to 23 West 26th Street [headquarters of the Communist Party USA] about 6:45 [P.M.]. Whatta nice place![3] The meeting was on the third floor, where pictures of famous comrades and covers of magazines and pamphlets were displayed. Gus [Hall, General Secretary of the Party] answered questions very well. He described how the Party operates from top to bottom, about international relations. My questions concerned the time a college student needs to be an active member and about the 2 vouchers + age stipulations [minimum age, 18]. Rasheed [Storey, 1936-2016] and Gus were the vouchers and I was let in even though I[’m] still 17!!!! I really feel like a complete person. As Gus said to me, I’ll never regret it. I really have commitment and the enthusiasm and the vision. I’m proud of the Party. I want to make the Party proud of me.

May Day flashbacks: Memories of a Communist and working-class leader
Same year, 1971: Gus Hall, in hat (above “MU”), marching on Fifth Avenue in New York City [People’s World Archives]. I believe the bespectacled gent to Hall’s right is Arnold Johnson (1904-1989); James E. Jackson (1914-2007) is the second person to Hall’s left.
Three years and three months later, on September 18, 1974, I met fellow Aptheker research assistant (and non-communist historian) Hugh Murray for lunch; at six I’d meet my closest comrade and friend, who will remain unnamed “to discuss a great decision I feel I must make once and for all.” On September 23rd, still a Stalinist, I entrusted my resignation letter, addressed to the comrade who chaired the meetings, to the doorman of her building located at the southwest corner of Seventh Avenue and 14th Street. “Now I can relax and decide more clearly what I’m going to do with my life.”

To resign was a wiser decision than the one it negated, but it could not reverse the latter’s effects.

To be continued, as time permits.

Notes

[1]  Two weeks later, on June 9th, I attended graduation at Hunter College, Lexington Avenue and 68th Street. My diary entry for that day mentions my regret at having missed a lecture by James E. Jackson (1914-2007) at the Center for Marxist Education, located at 29 West 15th Street. That building, now a co-op, abuts a 21st-century extension of my pre-Civil War alma mater.

[2] Anthony Flood, “Herbert Aptheker: Apothecary for a Red Teenager,” October 25, 2018.

[3] A holding of the John Jacob Astor (1763-1848) estate, the building has a storied past. See “The Astor Offices at Nos. 21 and 23 West 26th Street,” The Daytonian, Saturday, August 4, 2012. John Jacob Astor IV (1864–1912) was a passenger on the Titanic. His son, Vincent (1891-1959), “commissioned the architectural firm Peabody, Wilson & Brown to give No. 23 a neo-Federal facelift in 1922. Only two years later he sold the building for $30,000 to Frederick Vanderbilt Field (1905-2000), a Communist who wrote for the Daily Worker ….” Yes, a Vanderbilt. One of the most intriguing and revealing autobiographies I’ve ever read was his From Right to Left, Lawrence Hill Books, 1983.