Fifty Photographs: selections from SCUA collections

Joseph Starobin speaking in Springfield, Mass.

Title

Joseph Starobin speaking in Springfield, Mass.

Creator

Lipshires, Sidney

Date

ca.1950

Extent

1 photograph

Description

As the repression of the McCarthy era intensified, a handful of Americans held out in resistance. This 1950 image of Joseph Starobin, foreign editor of the Daily Worker, spoke from a makeshift platform in Springfield, using a microphone powered by a car battery. Starobin went into exile in 1951. In the audience was Sid Liphsires, a war veteran and then Secretary of the Communist Party of western Massachusetts. Like Starobin,, Lipshires was forced to relocate to escape political pressure, eventually breaking with the Party in 1957 over its failure to renounce Stalinism.

Collection:

Sidney Lipshires Papers (MS 730)

Identifier

mums730-s03-i004

Cite As:

Joseph Starobin speaking in Springfield, Mass. Unidentified photographer, ca.1950. Sidney Lipshires Papers (MS 730)