Philip Sheldon Foner (December 14, 1910 – December 13, 1994) was an American labor historian and teacher. Foner was a prolific author and editor of more than 100 books. He is considered a pioneer in his extensive works on the role of radicals, Black Americans, and women in American labor and political history, which were generally neglected in mainstream academia at the time. A Marxist thinker, he influenced more than a generation of scholars, inspiring some of the work published by younger academics from the 1970s on. In 1941, Foner became a public figure as one among 26 persons fired from teaching and staff positions at City College of New York for political views, following an investigation of communist influence in education by a state legislative committee, known as the Rapp-Coudert Committee.

Foner is best remembered for his 11-volume History of the Labor Movement in the United States, published between 1947 and 1994. He also edited the five-volume collection The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass, and wrote a biography of the abolitionist leader. His works Organized Labor and the Black Worker, (1974 and 1982 editions) and the two-volume Women in the American Labor Movement (1979 and 1980) also broke new ground in history. For his American Labor Songs of the Nineteenth Century (1975), Foner received the Deems Taylor Award, presented by the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP).

His scholarship, publications and political affiliations were considered to be on the far left. His parents were Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire. Foner grew up in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and graduated from Eastern District High School.

Foner was one of 26 faculty and staff members of City College who were fired from their jobs by the end of 1942 as a result of an investigation of communist influences in higher education by the New York State Legislature's Rapp-Coudert Committee. Established in spring 1940, it was officially known as the Joint Legislative Committee to Investigate the Educational System of the State of New York. Foner and 40 other faculty members at CCNY were subsequently brought under investigation for supposed associations and membership with the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) on March 7, 1941. Foner testified at the investigative hearings a month later in April, during which he denied being a member of the CPUSA.

Foner's three brothers: his twin Jack, a professor of history at CCNY; Moe, a worker in the CCNY registrar's office; and Henry, a substitute teacher in the New York City public schools, were also caught up in the investigation. They were fired from their jobs as well.

Foner became a professor of history at Rutgers University in Camden, New Jersey, in 1981.

Following his wife Roslyn's death, Foner married again in 1988. His second marriage ended in divorce in 1991.

Criticism

Foner's work was politically controversial in a period of American fears about immigrant anarchists, labor unrest, and the power of the Soviet Union and Communist Party. Some historians have also criticized his work on scholarly grounds. In 1971, writing in Labor History journal, historian James O. Morris documented that Foner had plagiarized material from Morris' 1950s unpublished master's thesis in his 1965 book, The Case of Joe Hill. Morris wrote that "About one quarter of the Foner text is a verbatim or nearly verbatim reproduction" of his manuscript, and had other complaints. Many academics, intellectuals and artists had suffered suppression during the McCarthy era.

Foner's nephew Eric Foner, professor of history at Columbia University said that "his uncle's radical politics are the crux of the recent debate. 'Obviously, any charge of plagiarism needs to be taken seriously,' he says. 'But I think that this controversy is being muddied up with powerful ideological issues that ought to be kept quite separate'." Dubofsky said that Foner extracted large chunks of this dissertation "without attribution or inverted commas".

Eric Foner added another perspective to his uncle's work:

<blockquote>He edited the writings of Frederick Douglass at a time when, believe it or not, nobody remembered him. He edited seven volumes of documents on the history of black labor in the United States, and collections of material from black political conventions in the 19th century. And he did all of it without research assistants or grants. This debate is not doing justice to his contributions to scholarship.

  • Proceedings of the Black National and States Conventions, 1865–1900. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986.
  • Militarism and Organized Labor, 1900–1914. Minneapolis: MEP Publications, 1987.
  • American Communism and Black Americans: A Documentary History, 1919–1929. With James S. Allen. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987.
  • Black Workers: A Documentary History from Colonial Times to the Present. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988.
  • Political Parties and Elections in the United States. By José Marti. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989.
  • Black Workers: A Documentary History from Colonial Times to the Present. With Ronald L. Lewis. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989.
  • American Communism and Black Americans: A Documentary History, 1930–1934. With Herbert Shapiro. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991.
  • William Heighton: Pioneer Labor Leader of Jacksonian Philadelphia: With Selections from Heighton's Writings and Speeches. New York: International Publishers, 1991.
  • Racism, Dissent, and Asian Americans from 1850 to the Present: A Documentary History. With Daniel Rosenberg. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993.
  • Northern Labor and Antislavery: A Documentary History. With Herbert Shapiro. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994.
  • Lift Every Voice: African American Oratory, 1787–1900. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1997.

References

Further reading

  • Kenneth C. Crowe, "Philip Foner, Leading Labor Historian, Dies", Newsday, December 15, 1994, p. A64.