Francis Henson
Francis Adams Henson (1906-1963) was an American political activist.
Early Life
The Henson family were aviation pioneers associated with Henson Airlines.[1]
He was sent by his family to Lynchburg College in Virginia because of its Christian atmosphere. However, by the time he graduated in 1927, he had become a socialist.[2]
Career
From 1927 to 1932, Henson worked for the YMCA in New York and Connecticut. From 1932, he was by turns executive secretary of the National Religion and Labor Foundation; organiser and co-secretary with Donald Henderson of the American League against War and Fascism, Secretary of the International Student Service in the United States, and Secretary of the Emergency Committee to Aid Refugees from Germany.[2]
According to one account which Henson wrote in the mid-1940s, he was a fellow traveler of the Communist Party from early 1933 until 1936.[2]
In the mid-1930s, Henson was a member of the left-wing Revolutionary Policy Committee of the Socialist Party of America. Along with Irving Brown he was suspected by the party's national secretary, Clarence Senior, of being a Lovestoneite plant.[3]
Robert J. Alexander records:
- Francis Henson, who was later to play an important part in Lovestoneite work in the United Auto Workers, has said that in the RPC period he did not belong to the Communist Opposition but was very sympathetic to both the official Communists and the Lovestoneites, and that he conferred quite frequently with Lovestone. He thought that he was looked upon by them as being one of "their men" in the RPC. When he would from time to time confer with official Communists and the Lovestoneites, Henson would be strongly rebuked by Lovestone and Irving Brown. Henson added that Brown was generally seen as the recognized spokesman for the Lovestoneites in the Socialist Party.[4]
In 1935, Henson became treasurer of the Committee on Fair Play in Sports, which opposed the German Olympics, and travelled to Germany to campaign against it.[5]
In early 1936, the Lovestoneite Worker's Age reviewed a pamphlet by the Revolutionary Policy Committee's successor organisation, the Revolutionary Policy Publishing Association (RPPA). It praised the position adopted by "Irving Brown, William B. Chamberlain and Francis A. Henson", suggesting that there was "little any revolutionary Socialist or Communist can find to disagree with."[6]
Henson was one of a number of Lovestoneites brought in to support Homer Martin's leadership of the United Auto Workers in the late 1930s, as Alexander recounts:
- Perhaps most important of all was the appointment of Francis Henson as administrative assistant to President Martin. Although he was nominally a member of the Socialist Party, Henson was a close sympathizer with the Lovestoneites and informed the writer that while serving as Martin's assistant, he was advised principally by Jay Lovestone. Henson commented that Lovestone's advice was usually good but not always followed by those in the union apparatus.[7]
Notes
- ↑ Thomas E. Mahl, Desperate Deception, Brassey's, 1999, p.220.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Thomas E. Mahl, Desperate Deception, Brassey's, 1999, p.91
- ↑ Robert J. Alexander, The Right Opposition: The Lovestoneites and the International Communist Opposition of the 1930s, Greenwood Press, 1981, p.109.
- ↑ Robert J. Alexander, The Right Opposition: The Lovestoneites and the International Communist Opposition of the 1930s, Greenwood Press, 1981, p.109.
- ↑ Thomas E. Mahl, Desperate Deception, Brassey's, 1999, p.92
- ↑ Robert J. Alexander, The Right Opposition: The Lovestoneites and the International Communist Opposition of the 1930s, Greenwood Press, 1981, p.110.
- ↑ Robert J. Alexander, The Right Opposition: The Lovestoneites and the International Communist Opposition of the 1930s, Greenwood Press, 1981, p.57.
