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Anne Burlak, 1931
Anne Burlak Timpson was born on 24 May 1911 in Slatington, Pennsylvania. She was the eldest of six children of Ukrainian immigrants, Harry and Anastasia (Nellie) Smigel Burlak. Only four children lived to adulthood. Although she wanted to be a teacher, Anne Burlak dropped out of school at the age of 14 to help support her family by working at the mill. Like many young women seeking employment in the mills, she lied about her age, sixteen being the legal age for workers. From 1925 to 1929 she worked in the silk mills in Bethlehem and Allentown, Pennsylvania. In 1927 Ella Reeve Bloor came to Bethlehem to fundraise for the labor newspaper, The Daily Worker. After the meeting, she and Anne Burlak talked about the working conditions in the mill where Burlak worked. Bloor urged Burlak to join the Young Communist League (YCL), opening up "a whole new vision and purpose in life" for Anne Burlak, who was elected that year to the District Committee of the YCL of Eastern Pennsylvania. In 1928 Anne Burlak was a delegate to the founding convention of the National Textile Workers Union (NTWU). When she tried to organize the mill in her hometown, she was fired. Although it was easy to find work nearby, every time she tried to organize her fellow mill workers, she lost her job.
In May 1929 Anne Burlak and many others, including her father, were arrested and charged for spreading Communist propaganda under the state sedition laws. Burlak decided that if she was going to be charged "for Communist ideas under the Sedition law, I might as well join the Communist Party and learn more about it." Although the sedition case was eventually dropped, Burlak found herself blacklisted and unable to find a new job. So, when the Executive Board of the NTWU asked her to organize full time, she accepted and was paid ten dollars a week to work first in Pennsylvania, then in North and South Carolina. In 1930 she was sent to Georgia. On 21 May 1930, she and five others were arrested for insurrection against the state of Georgia because they addressed an interracial audience of unemployed workers. A conviction could have carried the death penalty. Burlak and the other five members of the "Atlanta Six" were held incommunicado for six weeks before their lawyers won them the right to bail. Burlak was the first one freed, and she traveled around the country raising money for the others' bail and for their defense under auspices of International Labor Defense. Although the Supreme Court declared the Georgia insurrection law unconstitutional in the Angelo Herndon case in 1937, the charges against the Atlanta Six were not dropped until 1939.
Anne Burlak returned to the north and organized workers in the mills of Rhode Island and New Bedford, Fall River and Lawrence, Massachusetts. It was during the 1931-32 Lawrence textile strike that she acquired the nickname, "The Red Flame." When Edith Berkman and the other two organizers were arrested in 1931, Burlak was asked to go to Lawrence to take charge of the strike. A local minister had already labeled Berkman the "Red Flame from hell" and when Burlak came into town to replace Berkman, the headline in a Lawrence newspaper said, "One Red Flame goes to jail and another one rises in her place!" In spite of the fact that the media often claimed that Burlak had red hair and/or wore outrageous red clothing, the origin of her nickname had nothing to do with her physical appearance.
At the age of 21 Anne Burlak was elected the National Secretary of the National Textile Workers' Union, the first American women to hold such a high post in a labor union. Immigration authorities tried to deport her, but they were forced to release her when a baptismal certificate proved her citizenship.
Anne Burlak's father was eventually fired for his union activities. In the midst of the Great Depression, there were few jobs in the U.S., but the Soviet Union was seeking skilled workers. In 1932 her parents and brothers returned to the Ukraine. When she went to Moscow to attend the Lenin Institute in 1936, it was the last time she would see her entire family. Her father died of starvation during the Nazi occupation of Ukraine in 1943 and she did not see her mother or brothers again until 1961.
In 1932, Anne Burlak unsuccessfully ran for mayor of Pawtucket, Rhode Island on the Communist Party ticket. Her platform included unemployment and social insurance at the government's expense, cash relief instead of scrip from the local department of public aid, immediate payment of soldiers' bonuses, and the right of workers to strike. That same year, she led the Rhode Island contingent of 3000 (25% African American and 33% women) to the national Hunger March in Washington, D.C. to petition the federal government for unemployment insurance. While there, she met her future husband, Arthur E. Timpson, who was representing the Wisconsin farm delegation in D.C., but Burlak does not remember meeting him until 1935. Although he wanted to get married before he left to fight in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade as a volunteer soldier in the Spanish Civil War, they waited until he returned home and they were married on 10 November 1939.
In 1938 Anne Burlak ran for Secretary of State of Rhode Island on the Communist Party ticket, advocating jobs, security, democracy, and peace. In January 1939, while working as the Administrative Secretary of the Communist Party of Massachusetts, she was subpoenaed to testify before the House Committee for the Investigation of Un-American Activities (Dies Committee). In 1940 she was elected the Executive Secretary of the Communist Party of Massachusetts. Through World War II she appeared at legislative hearings at the statehouse regarding pro-labor and civil rights legislation. Arthur Timpson volunteered for and entered the United States Army in March 1942. Anne Burlak Timpson gave birth to her first child, Kathryn Anne Timpson, in May 1943 while Arthur was training in Pennsylvania. Arthur Timpson served overseas with General Patton's forces from June 1943 until the end of the war.
With the war over, and soldiers returning home to reclaim the jobs that many working mothers had filled while the men were overseas, the federal government decided to close federally funded day care centers. Anne Burlak Timpson successfully fought against the closing of the Boston area facilities in 1945-46. When son William Michael Timpson was born in July 1946, Anne Burlak Timpson stayed at home with her two children and edited the Roxbury Voice, a newsletter issued by the local Communist Party.
Many Communist Party leaders were arrested under the Smith Act during the summer of 1951. With her movements being followed by the FBI, Anne Burlak Timpson stayed away from her home for eight months hoping to avoid arrest, leaving her daughter with good friends, first in Kansas City, Missouri and then Roxbury, Massachusetts; once school started again, she left her son with friends in Boston. Although she managed to avoid arrest during the early part of the decade, Anne Burlak Timpson was indicted under the Massachusetts Anti-Anarchy Law and in March 1956 she was arrested with six others for violating the Smith Act. After the Supreme Court ruled in the Steve Nelson case that only the United States government could prosecute such cases, the charges stemming from the state anarchy law were dropped. The Smith Act trial was delayed until the Supreme Court made a decision in the California Smith Act case. When the California defendants were acquitted, the case against the seven in Massachusetts was dropped as well.
This was not the end of Anne Timpson's arrests, however; on 1 October 1964 Timpson was indicted again, this time under the Internal Security Act of 1950, commonly known as the McCarran Act, which required Communists to register and prohibited them from holding federal or union jobs. As one of 44 arrested, Timpson and many others refused to cooperate, citing their right not to incriminate themselves. In 1965 the Supreme Court held that the registration provision was unconstitutional, and the charges against Timpson were dropped.
Throughout this period, Anne Burlak Timpson worked as a bookkeeper. In the 1960s she was asked to serve on the board of the Marian Davis (later Davis-Putter) Scholarship Fund, an organization dedicated to providing monetary support to students working for peace and justice. In 1981 Timpson retired and she spent the last few decades of her life involved in local politics, fighting for better schools, housing, jobs, and health care. She championed the rights of low income workers and senior citizens; continued her fights against racism, classism, and sexism; and was heavily involved in the peace movement, advocating nuclear disarmament as the Cold War came to a close. Timpson dedicated herself energetically to fundraising for the Communist Party and the party newspapers, and organized a picnic fundraiser every summer in the 1980s and early to mid 1990s. In 1982 she won a Wonder Woman Award for Women Creating New Realities, which provided her a stipend so she could write her memoirs. In 1997 she was awarded the Sacco-Vanzetti Memorial Award for Contributions to Social Justice. Anne Burlak Timpson remained a member of the Communist Party to the day she died, 9 July 2002, at the age of 91 in East Longmeadow, Massachusetts.
The Anne Burlak Timpson Papers consist of 22.25 linear feet dating from 1912 to 2003 and are primarily related to her personal and political life. Types of materials include correspondence, diaries, manuscripts, speeches, legal documents, photographs, press releases, reports, minutes, newsletters, notes, subject files, journal and newspaper articles, scrapbooks, interviews, pamphlets, audiovisual materials, and memorabilia.
The bulk of the papers date from 1929 to the mid 1990s and focus on Timpson's social and political activism, her involvement in the Communist Party of the United States, her unfinished autobiography, and her family in the former Soviet Union. The collection documents seventy years of social, political, and family life through local, state, national and international lenses. Much of the arrangement, especially for the subject files, is in its original order, except for materials that were misfiled or not filed at all.
Different series provide insight into different periods of Timpson's life. While the collection is especially strong in subjects and organizations relating to the 1980s and 1990s, there are only a few primary documents related to her activism in the late 1920s. Her early years are best documented through her autobiography and oral histories/interviews. While her family correspondence is notably sparse in the 1950s and 1960s, her scrapbooks provide a sense of home and family life.
The subject files form the largest series and are a boon to anyone interested in the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA). The CPUSA is well represented from the 1960s to the mid 1990s. Especially well documented is the crisis that reverberated through CPUSA in 1991-92. In addition, the correspondence between Timpson and her brothers in the Soviet Union, as well as subject and organization files, offer a wealth of material that illuminates U.S.-Soviet relations. There is less information, however, regarding Timpson's early involvement in the Communist Party from the 1930s through the 1950s, and there is little documentation from her failed political campaigns in Rhode Island except for a few flyers. Although she talks about her work as Communist Party Secretary of Massachusetts in the 1940s in interviews, there are only a few documents that relate to this era. Materials related to her role in the Communist Party during the 1930s through 1950s are located in the writings and speeches series.
Other areas of Timpson's life are under documented. There is very little information on the period in the early 1950s when she left her children with friends while she was trying to avoid arrest. Although there is some material about her paid employment as a textile worker and union organizer in her oral histories and interviews, there are only a few items that reveal her work as a bookkeeper in the 1950s to the 1970s.
On the other hand, Timpson's Smith and McCarran Act indictments are well documented through legal materials, pamphlets, correspondence, and the F.B.I. files on Timpson. In addition to her trials, there is considerable material regarding others indicted under these or similar acts. Even though they have no specific subject files, the collection is filled with material related to race relations, the environment, anti-fascism, poverty, and the needs of the working class. Notable correspondents include Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Gus Hall, Joe Moakley, Eulalia Figueiredo Papaandreu Matusiak, Fred Whitehead, Henry Winston, and Helen and Carl Winter. In addition to the CPUSA, Timpson was involved in the U.S. Council for International Friendship, as well as other peace and justice organizations.
This collection is organized into eight series:
The papers are open to research according to the regulations of the Sophia Smith Collection without any additional restrictions.
The Sophia Smith Collection owns copyright to Anne Burlak Timpson's writings. Permission must be obtained to publish reproductions or quotations beyond "fair use."
Please use the following format when citing materials from this collection:
Anne Burlak Timpson Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass.
Anne Burlak Timpson donated her papers to the Sophia Smith Collection from 1998 to 1999. Additional materials were donated by her children, William M. Timpson and Kathryn A. Wright, as well as her brother, Nicholas H. Burlak, between 1998 and 2003, and Avi Chomsky in 2004. The F.B.I. responded to a FOIA request in 2005.
Processed by Kara M. McClurken, 2005.
This series provides an overview of Anne Burlak Timpson's personal and political life. The subseries Biographical information documents Timpson's life through short biographical statements, plays and poetry written about her, oral histories and interviews, as well as newspaper clippings and articles that document many of Timpson's arrests and indictments. The F.B.I. files on Timpson document both the close surveillance the government had on her as well as indicate people that Timpson met with, meetings she attended, as well as the government's case against her under the Smith Act. Additional newspaper clippings about Timpson and the Smith Act is located in SERIES VII. SCRAPBOOKS. There are transcripts for some of the taped oral histories and interviews. The Family subseries includes information about Timpson's husband, siblings, and son. The subseries, Daily calendars, contains newspaper clippings and other notes that were found with the calendars. This series also contains information about awards given to Timpson, tributes made before and after her death, and buttons and other memorabilia documenting the organizations to which she was dedicated. There are also some files on Timpson's vacations. Additional information about trips that Timpson took is in SERIES VI. PHOTOGRAPHS AND SLIDES and SERIES VII. SCRAPBOOKS.
This series is organized into two subseries: Family and Friends and associates. There is extensive correspondence between Timpson and her husband in the late 1930s and early 1940s, as well as letters written to Timpson by her brothers from Russia and the Ukraine from the 1960s through the 1990s. Correspondence with her brothers includes not only family news but also reactions to political and social events in the United States and the Soviet Union. The subseries Friends and associates reveals Timpson's commitment to her causes, the affection she held for aging comrades, and her willingness to share the story of her life with others. It is arranged in alphabetical order by first letter of the last name; more prolific correspondents have their own folder. The bulk of the subseries is from the 1980s and 1990s. Although most of the correspondence is to Anne Burlak Timpson, she began keeping typed copies of many of her letters in the 1990s, and they are interfiled with the correspondence she received from others.
This series contains notes, drafts, and completed and uncompleted manuscripts by Anne Burlak Timpson. There are four subseries, the first of which, Published writings, includes articles, letters to the editor, and newsletters that Timpson edited. The subseries Unpublished writings includes a few diaries, but the majority of the subseries consists of materials related to her incomplete autobiography. Correspondence relating to the autobiography is located in this subseries, arranged chronologically. Primary documents relating to subjects covered in her autobiography are in this series as well as in SERIES IV. ORGANIZATION FILES and SERIES V. SUBJECT FILES. Some of the microfilmed copies of newspaper clippings are in poor shape and are probably too faded for photocopying. Most of the Speeches subseries contains notes for speeches rather than complete works. The subseries Tributes includes notes, programs, and occasionally texts of testimonials and eulogies Timpson gave for friends and colleagues.
Files in this series are arranged alphabetically and include organizations in which Timpson was heavily involved, like the Communist Party of the USA, and groups to which she gave money, like the United Seniors Association. The series includes notes, minutes, reports, newspaper clippings, newsletters, correspondence, brochures, and other printed materials. The largest groups of files relate to the U.S. Council for International Friendship and the Communist Party of the USA. Documents in both files reveal the operations of the organization at the local, state, and national levels. Files on the Communist Party newspapers are not the newspapers themselves but materials related to the running of the newspaper, such as fundraising. Articles or letters to the editor of Communist newspapers are located in SERIES III. WRITINGS AND SPEECHES. Information on Communist Party candidates is in SERIES V. SUBJECT FILES. Organizations with very limited amounts of materials have been moved to the appropriate locations in SERIES V. SUBJECT FILES.
The subject files are arranged alphabetically and contain information on individuals, legislation, categories of people (such as women or youth), and geographic regions. Additional subject files relevant to Timpson's autobiography are located in SERIES III. WRITINGS AND SPEECHES. The bulk of the subject files are from a U.S. perspective, although there are some international materials in the subject files (such as labor and communism). There are also files on specific countries, most of them listed under their names, with the exception of some materials located under the heading Latin America and the Caribbean. Most of the state-level political candidates are from Massachusetts, but there are a few from outside of the state. Topics that are well-covered include elections, labor, legislation, nuclear weapons, peace, politics, and the Soviet Union. Documents relating to Timpson's indictments under the Smith and McCarran Acts are located in this series under the name of the legislation. There are also songs and poetry related to a wide variety of topics in this series.
The bulk of this series documents Timpson's personal life, beginning in her infancy and ending a few years before her death. There are, however, political images as well, including several photographs of Timpson with raised fists during protests and with friends and associates. The Photographs subseries includes her trips to Cuba, Yugoslavia, Spain, and the Soviet Union. Other photographs, especially of Timpson and her family, are located in SERIES VII. SCRAPBOOKS. The subseries Slides mostly contains family images, but it also includes commercially generated images of Leningrad.
This series includes sketches, photographs, commentary, maps, newspaper clippings and other memorabilia. Most of the material in this series documents family life and the relationships among the family members of the Burlak and Timpson families. Two albums document the 1933 Naumkeag Steam Cotton Company strike. Two albums document her trials under Smith Act indictment, and seven albums provide vivid details of husband Arthur's World War II battles. The World War II scrapbooks appear to have been based upon notes written during the summer of 1945 while Arthur was waiting to come home and cover the period between 1943 and 1945. The scrapbooks themselves were created much later, probably in the late 1950s or early 1960s. Due to the fragile nature of the scrapbooks, many of the albums have been reformatted to preserve their content. Although the original text of most of the scrapbooks was not preserved, those texts that included initials indicating which family member wrote which piece of the narrative have been kept.
This bulk of this series relates to Anne Burlak Timpson's family and her oral histories and interviews. The subseries Audiocassettes, VHS cassettes, and Mini DV cassettes all have preservation masters and use copies. They are arranged by type of the original material. If the use copy is in a different format, the format will be indicated in brackets after the title. The reels in the subseries Super 8 need to be reformatted before they can be viewed. Please check with the Sophia Smith Collection several weeks in advance if you are interested in viewing the films in this subseries.
[see also SERIES V. SUBJECT FILES, SERIES VII. SCRAPBOOKS]
[see also SERIES IV. ORGANIZATION FILES--Abraham Lincoln Brigade, SERIES V. SUBJECT FILES-Spanish Civil War]
[see also SERIES IV. ORGANIZATION FILES--Wonder Woman Foundation, Rhode Island Labor History Society]
[see also SERIES I. BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIALS--Interviews and oral histories, SERIES III. WRITINGS AND SPEECHES-Autobiography, and OVERSIZE MATERIALS]
[see also SERIES V. SUBJECT FILES-Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, McCarran Act, Smith Act]
[note: please use preservation copy instead of original]
[see also SERIES I. BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIALS-Family-- Arthur Timpson, Trip to Spain, SERIES V. SUBJECT FILES-Spanish Civil War, SERIES VI. PHOTOGRAPHS]
[see also SERIES V. SUBJECT FILES-- Civil Rights, Racism]
[see also SERIES III. WRITINGS AND SPEECHES-Autobiography-Research notes; and OVERSIZE MATERIALS]
[Spine title:
[see also HUAC, SERIES V. SUBJECT FILES-- Civil liberties, Smith Act]
[see also CPPAX, SERIES V. SUBJECT FILES--Peace]
[see also SERIES I. BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIALS--Interviews and oral histories, SERIES III. WRITINGS AND SPEECHES]
[see also SERIES V. SUBJECT FILES--Racism, Mel King]
[see also Boston Peace Council; and OVERSIZE MATERIALS]
[see also SERIES I. BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIALS--Awards; and [see also OVERSIZE MATERIALS]]
[see also Civil rights, Racism]
[see also Boston, Education, SERIES I. BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIALS--Memorabilia]
[see also Peace, Nuclear weapons]
[see also SERIES IV. ORGANIZATION FILES-CPPAX, HUAC]
[see also SERIES III. WRITINGS AND SPEECHES-Unpublished-Autobiography; SERIES IV. ORGANIZATION FILES--CPUSA]
[see also Elections, SERIES I. BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIALS--Memorabilia]
[see also Pat Bonner-Lyons, Elections, Racism, Unions]
[see also H. Stewart Hughes, Florence Luscomb]
[see also Pat Bonner-Lyons, Gary Dotterman, Mel King, Ed Teixeira]
[see also SERIES III. WRITINGS AND SPEECHES-Newsletters edited--
[see alsoSmith Act,SERIES III. WRITINGS AND SPEECHES--Tributes]
[seePolitics-National;SERIES IV. ORGANIZATION FILES -Rainbow Coalition]
[see alsoLegislation,Songs and poetry]
[see alsoMcCarran Act,Smith Act]
[see alsoSmith Act, McCarran Act]
[see alsoMcCarran Act, Peace]
[see alsoNuclear weapons, SERIES IV. ORGANIZATION FILES-CPPAX]
[see alsoLegislation, Civil liberties, McCarran and Smith Acts, SERIES IV. ORGANIZATION FILES--CPUSA]
[see also Songs and poetry, SERIES IV. ORGANIZATION FILES-CPPAX]
[see also Boston, Jamaica Plain, Education]
[see also SERIES IV. ORGANIZATION FILES--United Senior Association]
[see also SERIES IV. ORGANIZATION FILES--Abraham Lincoln Brigade]
[see also Legislation, SERIES IV. ORGANIZATION FILES--CPPAX]
[see also SERIES II. CORRESPONDENCE, SERIES IV. ORGANIZATION FILES--CPUSA, SERIES V. SUBJECT FILES--Elections]
[see also Hunger, Peace, Unemployment]
[see also SERIES IV. ORGANIZATION FILES--Abraham Lincoln Brigade]
[Note: These reels cannot be played until they have been reformatted. Contact the Sophia Smith Collection for more information.]