Born to Russian-Jewish immigrant parents on December 9, 1909, in New York City's Upper West Side, Joseph Lash would ultimately become one of the most important student leaders of the depression era, as well as a respected journalist and biographer.
As a student at the City College of New York, Lash wrote for the campus newspaper and chaired the college's socialist organization, gaining a reputation as a young radical whose views only grew more committed in the wake of the Great Depression. He became a leader in the Student League for Industrial Democracy, founded the Association of Unemployed College Alumni, and served as an officer in the American Student Union. Perhaps most notably, however, Lash was responsible for organizing various antiwar demonstrations on college campuses from 1934 to 1941.
Lash's antiwar convictions, however, were tempered by Hitler's rise to power in Germany, and by the late 1930s he favored U.S. participation in a coalition to contain fascism and briefly served with Loyalist forces in the Spanish Civil War before returning home to organize student support for the Loyalist cause. Soon the student movement began to collapse amidst infighting over Stalin's nonaggression pact with Hitler, and Lash placed himself on the anti-communist side of this debate. In 1939, he was summoned to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee to answer questions about Communist infiltration of the American Youth Congress.
It was at this meeting that Lash first met
Lash remained committed to ER's political work and the Roosevelt legacy after FDR's death in 1945. He helped found Americans for Democratic Action in 1946, and then went to work for the
Lash spent the next sixteen years of his life writing and editing books about the New Deal era and the Roosevelts. In the process he was awarded the National Book Award and the Frances Parkman Prize. He died on August 22, 1987.
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