The records of the California Labor School(CLS) are comprised of materials documenting the educational programs, activities, and events of the school. The records are organized into four series: Academic Files, Office Files, School Promotion, and School Publications. Records of particular interest are pamphlets found in the School Publications series, which include essays, speeches, stories, plays, and even a book of early songs by Malvina Reynolds. Researchers will also find notable historical facts on the CLS in the Press Releases and Ephemera folder of the School Promotion series.
The California Labor School (CLS) was founded in 1942 in San Francisco as the Tom Mooney Labor Schoolchanging its name in 1944. David Jenkins was the initial director and Holland Roberts the first education director for this "people's school." The school was sponsored by 72 trade unions belonging to the then separate American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations, and offered courses on a wide variety of subjects including labor organization, journalism, music, drama, history, women's studies, economics and industrial arts. Courses were taught by union officials and professors from neighboring universities, such as Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley. By 1947 the CLS boasted having taught over 30,000 students, and had opened branch schools in several different California cities including Oakland, Berkeley, and Los Angeles.
In 1945, the CLS received approval from the United States Veteran's Administration to educate veterans under the GI Bill. This status made the school unique among its contemporary progressive schools, and brought in many students with government funding who otherwise would not have been able to attend.
The school frequently hosted prominent guest speakers such as W.E.B. DuBois, Frank Lloyd Wright, Eric Sevareid and Orson Welles. The CLS also put together acclaimed choral and drama groups, comprised of students and union members, which entertained widely at different school and union events.
In the first of a series of charges, the school was targeted by the Tenney Committee of the California legislature in 1947, as being subversive and un-American. In 1948, the Attorney General of the United States placed the school on its subversive list causing the Treasury Department to revoke tax-exempt status retroactively, forcing the CLS to pay $7,000 in back taxes. The school survived in a smaller manifestation until 1957 when it finally ran out of funds to fight its many court battles.
