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Kettler, Ernestine Hara (audio interview #6 of 6)
INTERVIEW DESCRIPTION - This brief interview with Ernestine Hara Kettler took place more than two years after the previous one. At this point, she was beginning to suffer ill health and had moved out of the hotel where she previously lived and was in an assisted living residence. The purpose of this interview was to uncover the point when and the reasons for leaving the Socialist Workers Party and joining the Socialist Party. Although she was not eager to talk about this in her room within earshot of her roommate, she did provide the essential information. 7/25/1975
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- 2020-01-28
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- *** File: sufehkettler11.mp3 Audio Segments and Topics: (0:00-0:37)... Tape introduction (0:37-3:06)... In 1938, Kettler joined the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), but switched her membership to the Socialist Party (SP) when she moved to Los Angeles in 1948. She left the SWP because she did not agree with the organization's dictatorial and proletarian dynamic. At the same time, she did not hold very much allegiance to the SP either. However, a group of people she was associated with walked out of the SWP meeting when it split and she aligned herself with the SP and these people. While she was in San Francisco, she began experiencing problems with the SWP because they held meetings on Saturday nights and she could not attend these meetings because she was working with other unions. (3:06-6:56)... The SWP had begun talking about joining the Communist Party, which was something that she refused to do. The Socialist Party was more of a democratic organization. In general, her socialist beliefs wavered as she aged because it is a very ideological political theory. When there are no successes within a political ideology, your belief in that system collapses. (6:56-9:42)... When she moved to Los Angeles in 1948, she stayed with the SWP for one year and then switched to the SP. end of tape
- SUBJECT BIO - Ernestine Kettler was one of the suffragists who was arrested for picketing the White House with the National Woman's Party. She served time at the Occoquan Work House, where she participated in the strikes launched by the suffragist prisoners to be recognized as political prisoners. Shortly after this, Kettler went west, where she worked initially with the I.W.W. (Industrial Workers of the World) and later for various trade unions in both San Francisco and Los Angeles. She remained an ardent feminist her entire life and had a long history of labor and socialist activism. Her involvement with the suffrage struggle, though short-lived, was an outgrowth of both her feminist beliefs and her ties to political and bohemian circles in New York that began in her teen years. Kettler was among the former suffragists who spoke at the Jubilee celebration of woman's suffrage in Los Angeles, and she was referred to the Feminist History Research Project by leaders of Los Angeles NOW. Approximately 7 hours were recorded with her in January and February, 1973, when she was 78 years old. The interviews were conducted mainly in her room at a residential hotel overlooking MacArthur Park in Los Angeles. A petite woman, who was still very intellectually inquiring and physically vigorous, she nevertheless seemed rather depressed. Her health failed over the next two years, and she moved into an assisted living facility, where a final, brief interview was conducted in 1975. She lived there until her death in 1978. TOPICS - This side of the tape focuses narrowly on Kettler's membership in the Socialist Workers Party, and later the Socialist party;
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