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Blair, Margaret (audio interview #2 of 5)
INTERVIEW DESCRIPTION - This is the second of five interviews with Margaret Blair. They were conducted by a friend who she met when she moved to Long Beach; the friend supported many of the same causes and belonged to the same organizations as Blair. The interviewer was also enrolled an oral history class through CSULB's Senior Citizen fee waiver program. The audio quality of this interview is good. 5/7/1984
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- 2020-11-10
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- SUBJECT BIO - Margaret Blair was active in many progressive groups in Long Beach. Before coming here, she was a political activist who left the United States when her English husband was deported for labor organizing and anti-Nazi activities before the United States entered World War II. Blair grew up in Spokane, Washington, but went east to school and was living in New York when she met Mack Blair. The lived in the Los Angeles area and engaged in political organizing during the 1930s before he was shipped out with the Merchant Marine during World War II. When he returned and was threatened with deportation, they moved to Mexico. After her husband died in Mexico, she returned to live in Long Beach and continue her political work. In this series of interviews, she talks about her life and political convictions. She was interviewed by a friend who enrolled in a CSULB oral history class through the Senior Citizen's fee waiver program. TOPICS - college; family history; social values; social activities; health; husband; marriage; work; political beliefs; CP; and ILA;CP; ILA; work; racial discrimination; Mack Blair; anti-fascism; protest actions; violence; and political activities;
- *** File: cbmblair3.mp3 Audio Segments and Topics: (0:00-1:45)... Brief introduction The house mother in Blair's dormitory at Smith believed that Blair's sleeplessness was caused by pregnancy. Blair feared that she was going crazy during this period and began sleeping again after she decided that she would rather go insane than worry about the injustices in the world. It was not until she left Smith College that she learned she had a medical condition. In general, Blair was not satisfied with her education at Smith College. (1:45-4:44)... The summer after she left Smith College, Blair went to work as a maid at Yellowstone National Park. While there she met a cousin from Nebraska and they became close friends. The 2 women socialized with the young, male porters working at Yellowstone and Blair confesses that by the end of the summer she had been kissed! She and her cousin hitchhiked from Yellowstone to Spokane. After an uncomfortable experience hitching a ride with 2 men, they learned to accept rides from only families or couples. Her mother thought it was exciting that she decided to hitchhike and reported it to the local newspapers. (4:44-7:08)... When Blair returned to Washington, she rented an apartment with her sister, cousin, and another friend. Blair resigned from Kappa Kappa Gamma. Other sorority members were shocked her resignation and sent a former sorority sister, a psychiatrist, to interview Blair. In addition, 4 sorority sisters visited Blair in an attempt to convince her to stay in the sorority. (7:08-10:01)... When she reenrolled in the University of Washington she decided to major in psychology. She did not want to be a school teacher and thought that pursuing a psychology degree would prepare her for a professional career. As a young girl, she was conscious of unemployment. People often came to their home and asked for work, and her mother invited them in and fed them. The fear of unemployment and her parents reluctance to support their children once they reached the age of 21 led Blair to seek a career by which she could support herself. She studied at the University of Washington for one year this time and then transferred to Stanford University. (10:01-14:21)... She was not impressed by her professors at the colleges she attended. She had an active social life and she dated quite often while in college. In Seattle, she lived in an apartment and came and went as she pleased. It was during this time that she first tasted alcohol, which was a significant transgression from her Prohibitionist family background. At Stanford University, she found sororities to be no different than the ones she observed at the University of Washington. She lived in a dormitory and she was among very few women attending the Stanford at the time. She did not go to graduation when she received her degree in psychology. (14:21-16:32)... After she graduated from Stanford University she returned to Washington and went back to work at the Spokane Credit Company. She planned to look for work in New York and convinced her mother to travel there with her. They took a ship to New York and stopped in Panama and Cuba on the way. When the ship was off shore, the ship served alcohol and although Blair drank some, her mother was never really aware of it. On one occasion, however, she mentioned that she saw Blair in the card room drinking "lemonade." (16:32-22:23)... When they arrived in New York, Blair moved into an apartment with her sister who was working for Harper's Bazaar. During the summer, they spent their weekends in Old Greenwich where it was cooler. Her sister was having an affair with a professor at Smith College. While in New York, she gave her mother an alcoholic drink and her mother said it was the best "lemonade" she ever had. After an exhaustive search, Blair found a job as a supervisor for the Educational Records Bureau. She supervised students who scored the tests administered by the Bureau. Blair charted and graphed of the scores and her work was published in a booklet and provided to the schools that used the testing service. (22:23-24:18)... While she was working for the Educational Records Bureau, she married her first husband. She had previously met him when he showed her around Chicago. When he came to New York he called Blair and they lived together for about a year before they married. He had graduated from Yale University and was working as a statistician for the company that made Ethel for gasoline. Blair later became disgusted with him because he did not have a mind of his own. They were married for only 2 years. (24:18-27:32)... When her brother moved to New York, Blair began attending a worker's school with him and her sister Mary. Blair was more impressed by the teachers at the school, than she had been by any of her professors in college. Her husband was not pleased with her conversion to socialism and communism. She attempted to educate him and explain why the Depression was occurring, but he continued to believe what he'd learned Yale. He began drinking more and sometimes threw her books out the window. While he was away at a college football game, she moved out of their apartment with half of the furniture. She moved into a Greenwich Village apartment on the waterfront. (27:32-31:01)... When she lived in Greenwich Village she joined the waterfront section of the CP. She was an organizer for the "unit," which talked to longshoremen on the docks when they came to work in the morning. The foremen who decided which workers got to work each day often demanded kickbacks or other favors. CP members went to the docks in the morning and passed out literature and then visited the longshoremen in their homes in the evenings. The ILA was a gangster union controlled by Joseph P. Ryan. The union received millions of dollars as a result of a loading racket at the docks. Although many longshoremen did not know about these criminal activities, the longshoremen who were aware were often parolees hired by the gangsters who ran the union. The CP published a paper that featured letters by longshoremen telling about the conditions on the waterfront. This was the only way longshoremen could air their grievances because they were afraid to complain to foremen or at union meetings. End of tape. Interview ends abruptly as she is discussing the ILA. *** File: cbmblair4.mp3 (0:00-2:29)... Interview begins abruptly with as Blair continues to discuss gangster activities in the ILA. The gangsters in the ILA in New York did not bother the "left wingers" that came down to the waterfront because they were afraid that it might attract publicity to their activities. She once visited the president of Local 1258 and the atmosphere was congenial until the president and another man got drunk and someone pulled out a "black jack." When that happened, she was scared. After WWII, a newspaper reporter won the Pulitzer Prize for exposing the criminals in the ILA. When one of her comrades read the story he was shocked; he believed they failed to organize an honest union among longshoremen because they were not good enough organizers. (2:29-8:27)... Blair resigned from the Educational Records Bureau because the management there agreed to give her a raise only if by reducing the wages of the students working there. She then went to work for the Air Reduction Company, a holding company for several different businesses. Her job was to hire office staff for these companies. She had begun attending the workers school and passed her political ideas along to the job applicants she was interviewing. The company's personnel policies were discriminatory. She was supposed to hire only WASPs and each company had a code identifying women according to their race, nationality and religion. She was not allowed to hire Jews, Blacks, or people with "foreign names." Her supervisor used phrenology when interviewing applicants for executive positions and made notes on an applicant's bone structure in their personnel files. Blair worked at this company while she was organizing longshoremen at the docks. She was fired from the company after 2 years. (8:27-18:14)... In the Spring of 1935, Blair went on vacation to New Hampshire with her sisters and a group of progressive people. Most of them spent 4 or 5 hours a day building roads while Blair did most of the cooking. Before leaving on this vacation, she met her future husband Mack Blair, who was a sailor living at the IWO headquarters. She felt sorry for Blair and his friends and invited them to stay at her apartment while she was on vacation. When she returned, she found Blair and his friends wearing rosaries and learning Catholic rituals in preparation of a demonstration. They planned to go aboard a ship in New York harbor and tear down the Nazi flag. The men believed that if they were arrested wearing the rosaries, the predominantly Irish Catholic police officers would release them. The goal of the demonstration was to protest policies in fascist Germany. (18:14-23:26)... When Blair got home after the protest, she was met by one of the seamen who helped Mack tear down the Nazi flag on the ship land who was leaving for Europe. He told her that Blair had been badly beaten and was taken to a jail hospital, along with another protester who had been shot by the New York Red Squad. She collected the bail money for those who had been arrested. But Mack stayed in the jail hospital for 3 weeks. She visited him several times and he received fan mail from all over the country because he was celebrated in the press for tearing down the Nazi flag. (23:26-30:45)... After Mack was released from the hospital, he was put on trial but he was ultimately exonerated. Following the trial, he returned to Blair's apartment and insisted that they leave New York so that he could avoid deportation; he was not a US citizen. First they moved to Baltimore and rented the second floor of a house. Criminals ran the docks in Baltimore, so finding work and organizing longshoremen in Baltimore was difficult for Mack. Blair found a job working for the WPA in Washington, DC. Before leaving New York, she was active in Fiorello LaGuardia's campaign for mayor of New York. She believed she was almost lynched when she confronted a group of people being paid to cast their votes for Tammany Hall candidates. She reported their activity to the Honest Ballot Association and they rescued her. Her future husband told her that LaGuardia once said that the Nazi flag was equal to the black flag of piracy. A ship flying the Nazi flag, however, was allowed to sail into New York harbor because it was the official flag of Germany under Hitler's leadership. End of tape
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