Labor Sports Union Athletic Meet Postcards Collection

Collection

Identifier: MSSP_10181

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Content Description

This collection contains 10 postcards featuring images from the Labor Sports Union Athletic Meet held in Brooklyn, New York, on August 25-26, 1928. Most postcards have group images of athletes or teams with one image of an individual athlete. The postcards carry descriptive information on the front about the images, and many postcards include further hand-written information on the back. The name Sirkka Holm is also written in pencil on the back of each postcard, suggesting they were once associated with Finnish-American labor organizer Sirkka Toumi Holm.

Dates

Creation: 1928

Conditions Governing Access

There are no access restrictions on this collection.

Conditions Governing Use

Copyright status for collection materials is unknown. Transmission or reproduction of materials protected by U.S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S.C.) beyond that allowed by fair use requires the written permission of the copyright owners. Works not in the public domain cannot be commercially exploited without permission of the copyright owners. Responsibility for any use rests exclusively with the user.

Biographical / Historical

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Founded in 1927, the Labor Sports Union (LSU) was the official athletic organization of the Communist Party of the United States of America. The LSU brought together sporting organizations of the working class, labor unions, Communists, and other left-wing or radical groups. The Labor Sports Union sponsored indoor and outdoor athletic events, and the LSU emphasized an inclusive and participatory sporting philosophy, which tended to be critical of mainstream capitalist sports. The Labor Sports Union welcomed non-white participants and women to its competitions, which were intended to showcase and advertise the skills and camaraderie of laborers and the working class.

The 1928 Labor Sports Union Athletic meet was held in Brooklyn, New York, in late August and offered men's, women's, and children's competitions in track and field and swimming, as well as men's soccer games and a mass drill exercise. Press reports indicated more than 600 people participated in the event.

The Communist Party discontinued the Labor Sports Union in 1935 and, instead, focused its athletic organizing on labor union and trade union groups like the Congress of Industrial Organizations.

Biographical / Historical

Sirkka Tuomi Holm (1920-2020), the daughter of immigrants from Finland, was a long-time labor union and left-wing activist in several cities on the East Coast of the United States. Later in life, she conducted research and wrote about Finnish-American history.