Samuel Adams Darcy

Samuel Adams Darcy (born Samuel Dardeck; 1905 – November 8, 2005) was an American political activist who was a prominent Communist leader in New York and California. He was active in the organization of New York City's unemployment march in 1930, as well as the 1934 West Coast waterfront strike. He was a supporter of Harry Bridges.

Background "Samuel Adams Darcy" was born Samuel Dardeck in the Russian Empire in 1905, the son of Ukrainian Jews In 1908 he and his family immigrated to New York. He spent his early years growing up in New York City, attending DeWitt Clinton High School in Midtown, and eventually New York University. At an early age Darcy witnessed his father, an ardent union member, severely beaten by police at a garment workers picket line. According to Darcy that was a defining moment in the development of his own political beliefs. During a 1998 radio interview, he recalled:

My father was a worker in American factories until his 79th year. He was a member of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, and I was about ten years old when he started taking me to union meetings. He was in Local 35. It ignited an interest in American workers' welfare that has stayed for me to this day, in fact... We tried to organize child laborers. When I was twelve and a half years old, I worked for the O'Sullivan Rubber Heel Company in Lower Manhattan about 1917 ... From my previous couple of years in my father's union, I became interested in organizing young child laborers, who were employed illegally, against laws which prohibited children [from] working in factories below the age of sixteen. We organized something called the Young Workers League. In the YWL, we looked around for help, working out a program for improvement ... I read the findings of Darwin ... and the Communist Manifesto. Darcy and the MWIU organizer, Harry Hynes, disagreed on tactics, and eventually Hynes was recalled from San Francisco. Once the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) granted a charter to San Francisco, Darcy came to see the MWIU as an impediment to organizing longshoremen.

Darcy was supportive of Henry Schmidt and Harry Bridges who formed the Albion Hall Group as a caucus within the new ILA local.

Further Party years

From 1935 to 1938, he traveled to Moscow, where he took part in the 7th congress Communist International then became the US party's representative on the Anglo-American Secretariat.

Party expulsion

In 1944, Darcy and William Z. Foster openly opposed Earl Browder's "estimation of the prospects for post-war American-Soviet harmony." Foster backed down, but Darcy escalated his protest by resigning from Party offices. Shortly thereafter, CPUSA leadership expelled Darcy.

His papers also include many Daily Worker cartoons by Jacob Burck (Furiers' Strike, Gastonia Strike, Organizing Workers, Peace) and a portrait of his friend William Z. Foster.

Works Sam Darcy Archive at marxists.org Books: Late Afternoon for the Nation State Thomas Jefferson: The Second Revolution The Challenge of Youth The Battle for Production

Articles: "New Documents on the Bolshevik Revolution," New Masses (1935)

Unpublished: The Sam Darcy Papers contain three unpublished works: The Storm Must Be Ridden (ca 1945) Tales of Three Worlds (ca 1960–63) The Second Revolution (play) (1974)