Albert Goldman (1897 - 1960) was a civil rights lawyer and communist activist.
Biography
Childhood and Young Adulthood
Albert was born in 1897 in Minsk, Belarus (then the Russian Empire) and to a Jewish family who emigrated to the US in 1904, settling in Chicago. He attended school in Chicago and left for Cincinnati to study as a rabbi in a Hebrew college. He was a star athlete, being captain of the running and basketball teams. He graduated in 1919 and worked as a tailor, being exposed to socialist ideas and joining the IWW and Communist Party of America. He went on to study at the Northwestern University Law School, from which he graduated in 1925.[1]
Communist Activism
Upon becoming a lawyer, he began to work for the legal defense of the communist party, defending political radicals and trade unionists who had broken the law from imprisonment. He traveled to the USSR in 1931, and became disillusioned with Stalinism, and soon became a Trotskyist, leading to his expulsion from the Communist Party. He joined the Communist League of America, notably representing the CLA-led Minneapolis Teamsters strikers in 1934. He advocated for a coalition of anti-stalinist leftists, but failed to gather support for his position.
He later became the lawyer of Leon Trotsky who had been exiled in Mexico. Later defending him in the Dewey Commission, led by John Dewey. He also worked to translate and transfer Trotsky's writing collection to Harvard University. He defended socialist workers for violating the Smith Act during World War II and became increasingly critical of Trotskyism, arguing that Stalinism grew in strength and World War II would not trigger a revolutionary wave like World War I. He was imprisoned and banned for being a lawyer, leading to him opening a car rental business. He ran for mayor of Chicago on a socialist platform but lost.[2]
Death
Albert developed health problems towards the end of the 1950s, leading to his death from cancer in 1960. His papers reside at the Wisconsin Historical Society, located on the campus of the University of Wisconsin, Madison.[3]