17 Facts About Gus Tyler

August Tyler was an American socialist activist of the 1930s, a labor union official, author, and newspaper columnist.

August Tyler was born Augustus Tilove to Jewish immigrants in Brooklyn, New York, on October 18,1911.

Gus Tyler later changed his surname in honor of Wat Tyler, the leader of the English Peasants' Revolt in 1381.

Gus Tyler was the product of a radical upbringing, as he later recalled in a 1988 interview with New York Newsday:.

Gus Tyler attended New York University on a scholarship in the early 1930s, where he became involved in left-wing political activities, including public speaking on street corners on behalf of the Young People's Socialist League, the youth section of the Socialist Party.

Gus Tyler served as editor of Free Youth, one of the YPSL's short-lived publications of the early 1930s.

Gus Tyler rose through the ranks of the YPSL, rising to the top leadership position in the group.

Gus Tyler was a supporter of the so-called "Militant faction" of the Socialist Party against the older generation of party regulars known as the Old Guard and was later active in the far-left "Clarity caucus" after the Militants themselves fragmented.

In making this pronouncement Gus Tyler reasoned that the distinction between democratic-capitalist and fascist countries would be essentially meaningless in the event of war since the militarization of society inherent in the act of going to war would reduce the democratic nations themselves to reactionary dictatorships.

Gus Tyler held a succession of positions in the union rising in 1945 to the post of Assistant President, a position he held until his retirement in 1989.

Gus Tyler argued that no union had such a department.

Gus Tyler later worked with the ILGWU's successor union, UNITE, as an assistant to the president, and for many years hosted his own radio program on station WEVD in New York.

Gus Tyler continued to write a periodic column for The Jewish Daily Forward entitled "Tyler Too" well into his 90s.

Gus Tyler died on June 3,2011, in Sarasota, Florida, at the age of 99.

Gus Tyler was survived by two children and three grandchildren.

Gus Tyler wore multifarious hats: pamphleteer, professor and poet, but insisted on defining himself with a single word: agitator.

Gus Tyler's papers are included in several collections at the Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.