1. George Breitman was an American communist political activist and newspaper editor.
17 Facts About George Breitman
1. 2.
George Breitman is best remembered as a founding member of the Socialist Workers Party and as a long-time editor of that organization's weekly paper, The Militant.
3.
George Breitman was born February 28,1916, in a working-class neighborhood of Newark, New Jersey to a Jewish family, the son of Benjamin Breitman, an iceman, and his wife Pauline Trattler Breitman.
4.
George Breitman later found a job working in the New Deal's Works Progress Administration.
5.
George Breitman returned to Newark in 1935 and joined the Trotskyist movement as a member of the Spartacus Youth League, the youth section of the Workers Party of the United States.
6.
George Breitman of became involved in the unemployed movement of the period as a leading activist in the New Jersey Workers Alliance.
7.
George Breitman followed the Workers Party into the Socialist Party of America in the middle 1930s, before leaving to become a founding member of the Socialist Workers Party in December 1937.
8.
George Breitman was elected to the SWP's governing National Committee for the first time in 1939 and served continuously in that position until 1981.
9.
George Breitman was frequently a member of the party's Political Committee, which handled day-to-day operations of the organization.
10.
George Breitman was four times the SWP's candidate for the United States Senate for New Jersey, running in 1940,1942,1948, and 1954.
11.
George Breitman held that post from 1941 until 1943, when he found himself drafted into the US Army and sent to France.
12.
George Breitman was arrested at this meeting along with other participants but quickly released, owing to his American citizenship.
13.
George Breitman returned from Detroit to New York in the late 1960s to take over management of the SWP's publishing arm, Pathfinder Press.
14.
George Breitman thus saw that it portended the prospect of a great social upheaval.
15.
George Breitman died of a heart attack on April 19,1986, in New York City.
16.
George Breitman's papers are held by the Tamiment Library at New York University.
17.
The George Breitman papers, consisting of 30 linear feet of material collected in 63 archival boxes, is open for use by scholars without restriction.