The photograph here shows Philadelphia communists picketing to demand the release from jail of W.E.B. DuBois in 1951 (source: Temple University Urban Archives). Sherman Labovitz was among these protestors. Sherman Labovitz...* came of age in the progressive political and social movement in Philadelphia, a period that included years of membership, and then leadership, in the Philadelphia section of the U.S. Communist Party
* was arrested with other communist leaders in the summer of 1953 and tried under the Smith Act of treason; he was the youngest defendant of the "Philadelphia Nine," which included among others the radical modernist poet, Walter Lowenfels
* was for many years a Professor of Social Work at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, having established the undergraduate program in social work there
* has been an active partner with the Council of Social Work Education
* has written a beautiful, moving memoir of his experiences being tried under the Smith Act and defended by unusually principled prominent Philadelphia lawyers.
In January 1999 Sherm read from and talked about his memoir at the Writers House. Here is what Faculty Director Al Filreis wrote the next day: "Last night Sherman Labovitz spoke at the House--about his experiences as a young communist leader in Philadelphia on trial under the Smith Act (for conspiring to teach the necessity of overthrow of the U.S. government by force or violence as soon as conditions permit) and about his memoir, Being Red in Philadelphia. It was a wonderful session, well attended and exciting. Sherm was the youngest of the nine Philadelphia Smith Act trial defendants. The oldest was Walter Lowenfels, avant garde poet from the 1920s, communist, and (at the time of the indictment) the editor of the Pennsylvania edition of the Daily Worker. Sherm ended the program last night with a nice surprise. He pulled out his (rare) copy of the poems Lowenfels wrote during the trial and while in jail (awaiting high bail to be raised), and he read three of these poems--quite movingly, I thought."
